In a recent white paper from Stephen Krashen and Beniko Mason, published in the Journal of English Language Teaching, the authors strongly suggest that direct teaching of vocabulary is not as efficient as acquiring vocabulary via listening the stories, and…
(New York Times) In the Opinion essay “Is Listening to a Book the Same Thing as Reading It,?” Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist, compares the benefits of reading a book with the advantages of listening to one: A few years…
(Forbes) Let’s face it: the education sector—especially K-12 public school systems—aren’t usually the earliest adopters of new technology. Despite the fact that they’re equipping our children for the future, they don’t always move the fastest to get there. For that…
(The New York Times) Our children aren’t being taught to read in ways that line up with what scientists have discovered about how people actually learn. It’s a problem that has been hiding in plain sight for decades. According to…
(The Hechinger Report) Despite the claims of those who propose to “disrupt” education with video lessons and a well-intentioned emphasis on STEM, reading remains the backbone of a real education. Unlike other species, humans use language as a kind of…
(Star Tribune) As a reader of a certain age, I have begun to take an actuarial view of my bookshelves. How many of these books am I really going to read before my own final chapter? With more and more…
(Pew Research Center) Americans are spreading their book consumption across several formats, and the use of audiobooks is rising. About three-quarters (74%) of Americans have read a book in the past 12 months in any format, a figure that has…
I've been asked this question a lot and I hate it. I’ll describe why in a bit, but for now I’ll just change it to “does your mind do more or less the same thing when you listening to an…