English audiobooks: how to listen and read at the same time

An audiobook helps you learn English when you also have the text in front of you. Listen and read at the same time, in a book where you understand most of the words. You can try it tonight in the books.dev reader. The voice there is made by a computer, not recorded by a person.

First, a small test. Read this line silently: "I never said she stole my money." Now say it aloud and stress a different word each time. Seven words, seven meanings. That is what a voice gives you and a page does not.

Why listening alone does not teach much

You press play and start cooking. An hour later you remember the sauce, but not the story. It happens to everyone.

Here is why. A spoken word comes once and then it is gone. A written word waits for you. You can look at it again, slowly. When you are learning a language, you need that second look.

Research points the same way. One study with college students in Japan^[1] compared three ways of meeting new words: reading, reading while listening, and listening only. Students learned some new words in all three ways, but most words were not learned. After three months, listening only did worst: the students kept almost none of the new words.

Page plus voice: what each one gives you

The page shows you what the words are. The voice shows you how they sound. Each one fixes a problem the other one has.

What your eyes and ears do

• Spelling and sound. You see "though" and you hear it. Now you know the letters do not match the sound.
• Word boundaries. In fast speech, words run together. On the page they have clear spaces.
• Stress. The voice tells you which word is important. Writing does not.

Three ways, side by side

The study above is small, and it tested words, not whole books. In it, reading and reading while listening gave similar results. So we do not promise that the voice makes you learn faster. What it does is give you the sound of the words, and a steady speed to keep up with.

Three passes on one page

Do not listen to a whole book at once. Take one page and use it three times. The first time is easy. The last time is the real test.

One page, three passes

1. Pass 1

   Listen

   Press play. Do not look at the text. Just catch the story. One minute, no stress.

2. Pass 2

   Follow

   Play it again and read along. Put your finger on the line. Mark the few words that stop you from understanding. Do not stop for every word.

3. Pass 3

   Keep up

   Play it at normal speed. Do not pause. Read to the end of the page together with the voice.

Words that stopped you in the second pass are worth saving. For what to do with them, see how to read books in English. In books.dev, saved words come back as word cards, so you meet them again later.

The trap

One honest note. In most books here, the reader does not highlight the words as the voice speaks. You are the cursor. Use your finger or your eyes to keep your place. It sounds like a small job, but it makes you listen.

Which level to start with

Some books exist in more than one level. The level label on the site tells you which one you are opening. How we measure reading levels explains how the label is made.

Press play on a page and ask yourself one question. What happens?

B1: when the story slips away

Easiest books first.

B2: when words are missing

Short books are good for the three passes.

C1: when you want more

Longer words and longer sentences. Start with a short one.

You can change the level at any time with the filters in the app. Open a book and check that narration is available for it.

There are no A1 or A2 books in the catalogue. If you are below B1, read what to read before B1.

The narrator is a machine

The voice in books.dev is synthetic speech, not a person's recording. A computer makes it from the text. On-demand narration uses voices from Microsoft Azure Speech. Some books have narration made in advance with open-source speech models.

What you get

• The voice reads the same text as your edition, so the page and the sound match.
• You can replay a sentence as many times as you want.
• You can change the voice and the speed in the reader settings.

What you lose

A machine does not act. It has no jokes, no whisper, no tired old man. It can also say a name or a rare word wrongly. The terms of the service say this openly.

Also, the easier versions of the books are made with AI and are not checked by a human. Keep this in mind when you read.

When a human voice is better

Some people say machine voices are not good for learners. They have a point if you want acting and accents to copy. For keeping pace with the page, a voice that matches the text matters more.

If you want a human, try LibriVox^[2]. It is a non-profit project where volunteers read books in the public domain, and the recordings are free. Quality is different from reader to reader, and old books can have old ideas. Pair a recording with the same book text from Project Gutenberg, and you have your own read-along.

When it still does not work

Find your problem, then pick the fix.

• You understand the page but not the voice: slow the voice down and repeat the Follow pass.
• Your eyes race ahead: cover the lines below with a card.
• You lose the plot every few sentences: go down one level. This is not a failure. The book is simply too hard today.
• You are bored: change the genre. Try humor, detective or adventure.

FAQ

Your turn

You do not need a plan. You need one page and one minute.