Audiobooks vs Reading is a never-ending discussion. While both have their own advantages, like a coin has two sides, it has its disadvantages too. Audiobooks are trending in these times and people are losing interest in reading books instead are switching to listening to audiobooks. As a result, most of the people are parting their ways with reading.
Reading books and listening to audiobooks are both very entertaining with multiple similarities like a person can relate their imagination to both and they can also relate to the characters in the same way as the person can relate while reading and listening to audiobooks. Being a reader I have tried audiobooks recently and to be honest, I don’t prefer audiobooks myself however, I strongly believe that there should be a complete balance between reading and listening as they both have their own benefits and flaws.
Reading books enables the human mind to interpret carefully weaved words into the intricacies of thoughts, emotions, and wisdom. Reading is an immersive experience that can direct our brain to think more rationally while developing our core personality traits, vocabulary expansion, increase in imagination, entertainment, memory improvement, peace, etc. while listening to audiobooks helps us to pronounce words correctly, it is easier to use if one finds it boring to read and brings empathy and makes a story come alive.
In this article, I have distinguished between audiobooks and reading books while also stating their advantages and disadvantages over each other. Hopefully, it will give you a brief idea of what you should prefer and why.
Audiobooks Vs Reading
- 1. While listening to an audiobook may help more with empathy and making the story come alive, reading is better than listening for retaining the information. It holds the reader’s attention and helps them to remember the information as one concentrates more while reading than listening.
- As audiobooks have become increasingly more popular, it does beg the question of whether or not we are really getting the same benefits as traditional reading gives us. Reading is a cognitively engaging task that requires a higher level of language comprehension. However, in both situations, we are processing information associated with story comprehension. Whether we are reading or listening, our brain is working to connect the pieces of the puzzle, making sense of the plot, and attempting to predict what will happen next.
- Listening to an emotionally-driven storyteller engages emotional circuits in the brain and can heighten the intensity and imagery, leading to deeper processing of the narrative and greater enjoyment of the material than experienced by reading books.
- Listening to an audiobook may also lead to developing greater empathy because we can hear the emotion in the narrator’s voice and we are not just reading it on the page.
Benefits of Reading Books over Listening Audiobooks | Audiobooks Vs Reading
1. Improves Communication Skills
Reading equips us with language proficiency in a way that helps us to enhance our communication skills. It exposes us to vocabulary aspects of language that help us for better writing, conversing, and public speaking. Individuals who read daily will never run out of topics to talk about, making them more brilliant conversationalists than non-readers.
2. Helps in Mastering the Art of Writing
Reading is essential in mastering the skill of writing. Reading helps us to improve our vocabulary, language and expression which are the essential elements that go into a good piece of writing. It exposes us to a variety of writing styles, grammar compositions, sentence structures and expressions which influences our writing methods.
3. Promotes Self Discovery
Reading opens us up to newer realities, which is the most fundamental and essential skill. Reading not only helps to unleash our creative side but also helps us to dig into our imaginations and curiosities
4. Boosts Our Concentration Power
Reading books regularly helps us to focus and concentrate since it demands time and patience. Reading helps us to reinforce our brain into staying focused.
5. Reading Reduces Stress
Reading books relaxes our muscles and lowers the heartbeat. We also dissolve in the character and the situations we read about in the books. It can overpower the worries encircling our mental space and help relax our minds.
6. Improves Memory Power
Reading books involves memorizing characters and the storyline. It also helps retain memory by keeping the mind active and engaged. With the constant need to keep up with the story of a book, a reader has to be attentive at all times and remember all minute details to keep up with the story. This helps in the longer term in improving memory power.
7. Helps Calm Our Sleeplessness
Reading books help us to sleep better. It can relieve all our stress and act as a sleeping aid.
Also Read: 19 Amazing Benefits of Reading Books
Benefits of Audiobooks Over Reading Books
1. Teaches Pronunciation
Audiobooks teach us how to pronounce the words correctly while in reading books by ourselves we may pronounce the words incorrectly and may remain ignorant to it unless someone corrects it.
2. Audiobooks Helps To Relax
Since this modern generation have become quite addicted to the screens of TV, Laptops, mobiles, etc. listening to audiobooks comes as a relief because reading might add as added pressure for the eyes and may have negative effect on our body. Listening to audiobooks here come as a medicine where a reader can go through the novel/book without added stress on body.
3. Audiobooks Impacts Our Sleep
Scientific studies have confirmed that the blue lights emerging fom the digital screens have negative effect on our health and one of them is reduction in sleep. The blue rays of digital screens rubs the sleep off which is the main reason the younger generation never sleeps on time at night. Audiobooks helps in such cases as the person gets the time to relax and ease off their eyes and just listen to whatever they want also ushering them to a goodnight’s sleep.
4. Evokes Empathy
We can always feel more empathetic while listening to audiobooks as the narrator narrates their own stories than we can feel while reading a book written by someone else. As a narrator reads out the book, the soothing voices urges the listeners to listen more carefully and attentively without getting distracted which also evokes empathy towards the story or the narrator which may not be possible in reading as readers might get distracted easily.
5. Helps in Visualisation
Visualing any story or an act is much easier if narrated by someone rather than reading. While listening to audiobooks we are attentive more to listening and narrating the act in our mind in a creative way. One of the example is the book of Harry Potter which is a fiction story but helps in elevating out of the world imagination of others.
Also Read: Tricks to Read Books Effectively and Quickly
What Should You Prefer?
Listening to audiobooks vs reading is a longtime debate between two group of people. However, here we have come to discuss what should you prefer or if is okay to shift from reading to listening or vice-versa.
As per the study of researchers at the Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley published in Journal of Neuroscience, they did their research on 9 participants while they read and listened. The researchers were shocked to see that the data analysis of both the reports of all participants which revealed that both the mediums have uttered almost same emotional, cognitive areas of their brain.
The above study concludes that listening to audiobooks cannot be considered cheating towards reading books however it can be observed as another medium to read a book or relax your mind since they both have almost similar advantages and disadvantages.
Conclusion | Audiobooks Vs Reading
We spoke about the different aspects of audiobooks vs reading. The entire decision of what to choose lies in your own hands. Both teh mediums have their own pros and cons. There cannot be a certain answer to what to choose out of these as the decision is depended on the perspective you hold on to.
No medium beholds other in comparison as they both stand out in their field and depending on the needs of a reader they both can be favourable to everyone.
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