Why YSK: if you don’t have the ability or time to devote your visual attention to reading, you can still engage your mind the same way as you do while reading by listening to an audiobook. Virtually any modern audiobook player will also let you select the play speed, so you can listen to books at whatever rate you’re comfortable with.
Personally I know as I’ve gotten older the number of hours I’m physically able to read tends to no longer be able to match my desire to read, so it’s nice to be able to keep going even if my eyes are sore.
Historically, this is somewhat analogous to the late 19th century lectors that worked in some factories, paid by donated workers’ wages, to read/perform popular books for bored workers. Predictably in the US factory owners tended to have a problem with their workers listening to ‘communist literature,’ leading to firings, strikes, and violent crackdowns.
Pure anecdote, but my personal experience suggests that reading vs listening do not activate the same part of the brain. With textbooks specifically, reading assignments never seemed to do me much good - I’d read a page, really giving it my attention, but then make it to the end of the page and realize I have no idea what it was talking about like 3 paragraphs ago.
Enter the age of digital textbooks and text-to-speech software - fucking godsend for me, even when it’s the shitty Microsoft Sam style voice. Listening to the material instead of reading increased retention quite a bit.
Taking it up another notch, doing them both simultaneously was the clear winner. If I listen to a reading assignment while following along visually reading the text, it’s like a one-and-done and ready to take the test at the end of the semester with no further studying.
I discovered this superpower near the end of highschool, and it has absolutely carried me through everything since - if you think you might be an auditory learner, give it a shot!
It is very much about finding what works for each individual. It is understood different students learn best different ways.
I got a bunch of audio books and ebooks from HumbleBundle. I consumed the audio books first, and am going through the ebooks slower. Audio books were wonderful when driving or doing yard or house work. I would sometime have to rewind and repeat.
Ebooks required my focus so I haven’t found myself consuming them nearly as quickly.
I believe there’s some research that confirms your anecdote in that kids with reading comprehension difficulties had a much easier time reading when they were both reading and listening to the text at the same time. Entirely possible it’s applicable to the general population too (or maybe you just have undiagnosed dyslexia or something).