How Read Along Audio Books Can Improve Literacy Skills

Read along audiobooks are a valuable resource for students with learning disabilities in basic reading or reading comprehension. Such students often face severe disadvantages in the primary grades of elementary school while learning to read. These learning challenges may persist in the middle, high school or the college years, where reading is necessary to learn any class content.

Frustrated with their struggles with literacy, many children with learning disabilities or dyslexia will not only hesitate to read but avoid doing so whenever possible. Fortunately, such students can take advantage of the number of resources available to help, including audiobooks.

Audiobooks can be used as part of a special education program and can be included in individual education programs or section 504 plans as adaptations for assessment and classwork.

Students are usually open to using audiobooks, and many are available on the Internet for free download for playback. This gives them "the cool factor" so important to teens and tweens. Students may also use audiobooks as they read to help them comprehend literature-based assignments or those from the widely used Accelerated Reader program. That software tracks the progress children make in reading.

The following roundup of websites all includes audiobooks available for free download. Consulting such books as they read can give students the literacy boost they need to make reading assignments bearable.

• Verkaro.net has a limited collection, focusing mainly on classic literature. The quality, however, is quite good.
• LibriVox.org has a collection of nearly 1,000 works of literature in the public domain. Works were generally published before 1923. So, anyone who's studying, say, Shakespeare or Jane Austen might want to check it out.
• Project Gutenberg is possibly the most comprehensive collection of free audiobooks online. Volunteers read many of the books, while computers generated the rest. The site also includes selections in several world languages.

Parents and teachers in the trenches use reading strategies every day. If you're one of them, try to find other educators or parents with whom you can share ideas. Discussing your reading-intervention successes and failures may help someone else. On the other hand, you could gain valuable information by asking teachers and parents of children with learning disabilities about their misfires and triumphs.