Page 156 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

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format in Spain and Latin America. The results of the 2016 report on eBooks in Latin America and Spain, Evolución del libro electrónico en América Latina y España. Informe 2016,154 compiled by Dosdoce.com in collaboration with Bookwire, confirms this upward trend, which is also borne out by the fact that the supply of audiobooks in Spanish has increased from the approximately 1,000 items available two years ago to the current 4,000. There has also been a significant increase in fiction as a percentage of audiobooks, as it now accounts for 77% of those available in Spanish compared to 23% nonfiction.
As the members of the E-Lectra research group of electronic publishing and digital reading and writing point out,155 the advantages of digital au- diobooks are many: the quality of the audio does not deteriorate and they can be consumed while the user is doing other things. They are also easy to download. They are therefore an alternative to conventional reading and are very useful for learning languages (and other disciplines). They also help improve listening skills and, as we saw in the previous chapter, enable people with special needs and children who do not know how to read to access literature.
Other specialists also stress that audiobooks boost reading comprehension (85% of what we learn is through hearing and listening), even though they do not require the decodifying pro- cess that is involved in reading processes. And they can help schoolchildren read print books that are above their level, as listening – provided it is done attentively, of course – helps them retain a bigger vocabulary.
The fact is that the supply of audiobooks has increased significantly in Spain and we have publishers and platforms that provide high-qual- ity products for all ages. In the field of audiobook promotion, it is interesting to stress the Sound Learning platform,156 an initiative promoted by the Audio Publishers Association (APA) to offer schoolteachers, librarians and other mediators a set of literacy tools in the field of audiobooks. It
provides a variety of resources for learning about the possibilities these works offer as sources of enjoyment (in the case of fiction) and as meth- ods of learning (in the case of nonfiction). It also offers guides and standards for helping incor- porate audiobooks into learning programmes of schools and libraries.
Generating experiences, arousing curiosity and stimulating conversation on reading in the digital context
The act of reading is closely linked to that of thinking and is directly connected with that
of communication – with talking, dialoguing and sharing, as we have seen. Readers first engage in dialogue with the texts, and from there with themselves and others. Conjugating these infinitives in a balanced way is key to fully exercising the role of critical reader capable of communicating with reasoned arguments. As the physicist Jorge Wagensberg reminds us, “an individual is capable of doing two things: think- ing and talking. A chimpanzee thinks more than it talks, and a parrot talks more than it thinks”.
Reading, reflection and dialogue in turn feed
on curiosity, and in the digital context we
find many stimuli for giving free rein to it and kindling the desire to know more. The challenge lies in making reading a significant and exciting experience so that it is not supplanted by other alternatives in the fierce competition for people’s time that exists in the digital society. This where what is known as “economy of attention” comes into play, a concept that is gaining importance as information increases in size and accessibility and our attention is accordingly divided among the many activities that are demanding it.
Reading and the social reader
The socialisation factor is powerfully present in the digital reading environment, though it is not exclusive to it; although reading in print
STRATEGIES/APPROACHES FOR GIVING IMPETUS TO READING
Readers in the digital age