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Improving your English with audiobooks: what, when, and how to listen to?
5 May 2020

You can take a course on foreign languages or study with a tutor online, or you can study on your own using audiobooks. Ganna Reva, an English teacher from Kharkiv, shares the best practices. 

You can listen to audiobooks while driving, waiting in the queue, on the way to the supermarket, at home, while preparing your dinner. iTunes and Play Market have thousands of books from famous authors in a wide variety of genres. If you cannot find what you need on your own, here are three helpful resources from Ganna: 

  • Scribd. Here you can read books and listen to them as well. There are also magazines for your choice. 
  • Audible.The portal is owned by Amazon. Here is a wide choice of audiobooks from classics to modern literature. 
  • Audiobooks.This resource is also not a bad one but there is less modern literature than on Audible. 

All three services require a subscription but for the first month, you can listen to your favorite books for free. 

How to find an audiobook you are looking for?

Look for audiobooks with excellent narration

An unpleasant voice will discourage you from listening to a book! I love the series of Bridget Jones's Diary. Every year I watch this film and read the book with pleasure, BUT I cannot stand it in audio. I have a personal intolerance to the timbre and intonation of Tracie Bennett. It was difficult for me to listen to “Game of Thrones” narrated by Roy Dotricethe voice is hoarse and not for everybody, but alas, there is no alternative, and reading from paper or screen is not an option for me either. 

Choose books that would be interesting to you in Russian

If, for example, Ernest Hemingway never interested me in translation, then I would not want to read it in the original either. Social topics and topics about war are a “NO–NO” for me in any language. 

Choose modern literature for the greatest benefit

If you are listening to a book for your pleasure, then there are no limits at all. However, if an audiobook is a tool to improve your understanding and “pick up” some modern phrases, then think twice before listening to, say, Dickens or Martin. Do you need phrases from the 19th century (you do not speak Russian in the language of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky)? 

Choose a literary work series

Believe it or not, writers also have a limited vocabulary: they have a set of favorite phrases, so a few volumes later it will be much easier to listen to their works. Moreover, you will get used to the realities of the fictional world, remember the characters with their attributes and characteristics, immerse yourself in the plot twists and turns and start listening to the book for the book itself, and not purely for your benefit. 

Choose suspense books

If listening is not your strength (many people note that it is not easy to listen to books even in your native language), then you will periodically go off the book plot. Therefore, I recommend you listen to suspense books: detective fiction, thriller, dystopia, and fantasy. 

What to avoid when looking for an audiobook?

Low-quality narration and sound

The book should give you aesthetic pleasure, and not be a sophisticated form of torture. 

Complex classic works of literature

If you are not a true fan of such literature, language, and the era in general, then the classics are not your first choice. Develop your skill in modern literature, and only then “dive” into the 19th century and earlier. 

Abstract philosophy

In audio format, you will often run out of time to immerse yourself in philosophy. So, is it worth listening to not being able to hear the idea? 

Top audiobooks with excellent narration 

Note: This list is for those who have at least Intermediate English Level. 

  • Harry Potter narrated by Jim Dale (seven books). Books about the adventures of the wizard Harry Potter and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. 
  • Twilight narrated by Ilyana Kadushin (four books). “Twilight” is a story about a seventeen-year-old girl who falls in love with her vampire classmate. The audiobook series is worth listening to for the same reason as Harry Potter: excellent narration and 12–20 hours of it in each part. 
  • Shopaholic series (eight books). A series of books about the adventures of shopaholic Becky Bloomwood. “Shopaholic” is an easy-to-understand comedy with interesting vocabulary and excellent narration. 
  • Atlas Shrugged. “Atlas Shrugged” is a dystopia first published in 1957. The plot is about socialists coming to power all over the world. America is gradually plunging into chaos and darkness. You need to listen to this audiobook attentively: the narration comes from several people, so you need to keep your concentration not to miss the moment when the narrator changes. 
  • We also recommend listening to teenage dystopias. You can relax while listening to this genre as the language is simple enough. 
  • Divergent (four books). The series of books is about the dystopian Chicago of the future. Its people came up with a way to avoid conflict and maintain order in the society they are living in. They have five factions: Abnegation (the selfless), Amity (the peaceful), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), and Erudite (the intellectual). When children reach the age of 16, they undergo a serum-induced psychological aptitude test which indicates their best-suited faction. The main character turns out to be a divergent a person who cannot be identified in one of the factions. 
  • The Maze Runner (four books). “The Maze Runner” is a story of a teenager who takes an elevator to the Glade, a square space surrounded by a maze. There are 60 teenagers also locked with him. All of them have lost their memory and remember only their names. For about three years, teenagers have been trying to get out of the maze. 
  • The Hunger Games (three books). The story is about survival games demonstrated online will keep you in suspense until the very end. 

These books are worth listening to:

  • Shantaram (43 hours). The main character of the book is an ex-writer and a robber who escapes from an Australian prison where he was serving a 19–year sentence. After some time in Australia and New Zealand, with a false passport, he arrives in Bombay, India, where he meets local and foreign residents. They give him the Indian name Shantaram, which means “a man of peace”. In Bombay, the hero is engaged in small illegal transactions and this way earns his living. Shantaram gets many acquaintances among criminals. He goes to prison again, and after his release, he starts working for a large Bombay mafioso. 
  • Ready Player One (15 hours 41 minutes). The “Ready Player One” scene is set in 2045. The world is increasingly plunging into chaos, meanwhile, a computer game that immerses the player in virtual reality, distracting him from other pressing problems, appears. The creator of the game is a billionaire. He is dying. In his will, he says that he will leave his fortune to the player who will find the Easter egg hidden in the game. People all over the world are starting to compete. 
  • The Circle (13 hours 43 minutes). The main character May, a recent college graduate, lands a job at the global Internet company The Circle, which integrates e-mails of its users, social network pages, information about bank cards, and purchases into a single system. The world is informed about every step. People’s success depends on the information about them on the social network, and every extra minute spent outside the security cameras determines the level of their asociality. The Circle presents itself as a monopoly company that tries to make the world transparent and open. 

Tip: If your level is Beginner/Elementary/Pre-Intermediate, check out the simpler books by Pearson or Oxford with a focus on beginners. “For Pre-Intermediate students, I recommend the listen-read-listen format,” says Ganna. “First, people listen to audio and try to understand the main idea. Then, they read the text and find unfamiliar words, underline them, write out, translate. Then they listen to the audio at least one more time to see how many new words they could hear this time.” 

However, if your goal is to speak English fluently, audiobooks will not be enough. “Listening to an audiobook is one of the auxiliary methods of learning English,” says Ganna. “They help to catch the rhythm, intonation of foreign speech, as well as maintain and expand vocabulary.” 

Another way to develop interest and improve your English on your own is to listen to podcasts, radio, news, we already wrote about this earlier, see the #English hashtag in the article header.