Audiobooks are becoming more popular among youngsters. Publishing Perspectives’ audiobook report reveals that over 57% of audiobook listeners are between 18 and 44 years old, meaning they’re within your age range. This isn’t surprising, as adults in this group are more likely to be digitally inclined than older generations.
In fact, you and your fellow college classmates may be among this percentage, and you might already enjoy audiobooks for entertainment. Yet, did you know that they can be great for helping you learn more, too? Here are a few reasons why audiobooks can boost the college learning experience:
Audiobooks increase your accessibility to learning materials
College tuition is one thing, but even the textbooks you need come at eye-popping prices. Business Insider’s article on college textbooks reveals cases where a sophomore spent $500 on her books for one semester—and where a nursing student spent a whopping $472 on a single textbook. This can make college learning inaccessible to a lot of people.
That’s where audiobooks can help. Today, more cost-effective services are making learning materials more accessible. A subscription to Everand’s digital library , which will cost you roughly one book per month, will give you free rein to thousands of audiobooks in educational categories like science, math, history, and philosophy. You can even access test prep aids like Kaplan’s MCAT Biochemistry Audio Review and Schaum’s Outline of Modern European History to study for your next exam. These options can be handy for refreshing your memory or solving practice problems, and they’re available for a significantly more affordable price.
Audiobooks help you make productive use of free time
As a college student, you may have pockets of free time you’re unsure what to do with. That can include your commute to school or time between classes. Student paper Mocs News shares that some students spend their free time resting and chilling with friends, while others say they use it productively by doing homework. After all, your free time may be too short for hanging out or eating, but also too long that it makes you bored.
Instead of letting these hours pass by, why not use them productively like these students do by listening to an audiobook? For example, you can use that 10-minute walk to your next class to prepare and listen to an audiobook related to the lesson you’re about to have. And if you stop in the middle of a chapter, you can always just pause it and come back to it later. It’s a great way to maximize the time you have in college.
Audiobooks improve your language comprehension and fluency
Studying abroad is a big decision, with our post “How to Decide Where to Go For Study Abroad” noting that choosing to study somewhere requiring you to learn a new language should be a factor to consider. If this is something you want to do, you’ll want to improve your language skills to prepare—especially since it can help you read and write complicated papers and research studies down the line. One way you can start is by learning the basics of that new language before embarking on your journey as an international student.
Audiobooks can help you establish those basic and crucial language skills. By listening to language lessons narrated by an instructor or trying your hand at foreign language novels, you can better familiarize yourself with the conversational and grammatical conventions that language requires. If you need help determining which audiobooks to start with, try using the social app BookSloth. This lets you connect with fellow readers from all around the world, so you can easily find a native speaker who can give you the best audiobook recommendations for the language of your choice.
Audiobooks are accessible, convenient, and effective learning materials. They can help increase your knowledge for higher grades, more productive breaks, and better language skills, so consider making the most of them in college!
For more articles about education plans, keep browsing Educated Leader.
