I love audiobooks and consume them frequently but I personally don’t call it reading. It doesn’t feel like the same activity to me. What do you think?
I love audiobooks and consume them frequently but I personally don’t call it reading. It doesn’t feel like the same activity to me. What do you think?
Not. Reading is active. Listening is passive. Two different experiences.
I’d agree that this is the case generally.
Though I find myself (with certain audio) pausing it and arguing (out loud no less) with the presenter occasionally, then rewinding.
I could do the same with a book I suppose, I just don’t.
They are different, and I’d say reading provides a more solid retention of the info. But I do get to learn a lot more because I can listen when I run.
I think you might be listening wrong.
Maybe I’m reading wrong.
Do you stop doing everything else while listening to an audiobook or podcast? Do you listen to them while driving, running, doing chores or working?
For the most part, yeah.
It’s definitely possible to read passively. You know, how sometimes the words just sound out in your head while you’re lost in some other thoughts. And it’s possible to sit quietly with headphones and actively listen, poring over every word while nothing distracts your focus.
But by default, I think the modes encourage active and passive engagement like you’re getting at.
nobody is reading war and peace passively.
that’s often the difference between literature and books as entertainment… one is meant to be active, the other passive.
and people who read passively absolutely hate literature because it doesn’t make any sense to them. hence why they attack it and call it stupid and worthless, because in their mind the only point of a book is to make them feel good and entertain them and if it’s not doing that, it’s not a good book.
I think one could read it passively. I’d imagine some students getting it assigned and just going through it as fast as possible to get the gist. I also don’t think always there’s a very clear difference between literature and casual reads.
But overall I agree, print encourages a more active approach by making self-paced the default. Leaves plenty of opportunities for meta-cognition. Audio can too tho, just depends how people engage.
yeah i had those students. I’d ask them why they were taking my class, and they’d look at me very confused. then they’d get a C and get really angry about it, then they’d write another paper telling me how stupid the book was and how only stupid people would like reading it, and get a D and finish the class with a C-.
they were usually engineering or science students… the same ones who probably think anyone who gets an English degree is a lazy dumbass while they are the smartest most hardworking students who ever existed because they had to spend hours doing problem sets per week, but didn’t put that same effort into the lit class they took… hmmm