Way back when I was studying Shakespeare as a sophomore in college, the rather animated professor used to act out scenes from the plays, lunging toward us in sword battles, and moving about the room reciting a character’s solilioquy. More than just bringing the text to life, his readings helped us absorb the language of Shakespeare’s time, to hear the inflections and the pronunciations of words no longer part of standard vocabulary.

This professor recommended that we listen to the plays on cassette tape, and read along at home…some of the best advice I ever took. Rather than insist that we struggle through the text, the professor turned to technology as a teaching tool. I found that our local library stocked every play we studied, and I was able to digest and more importantly, enjoy material that was otherwise tough to grasp. I quickly picked up Old Will’s language and was able to read and understand material without the audio accompaniment.

I have recommended this strategy to many high school students who were reading anything from The Red Badge of Courage to Moby Dick. Hearing the text spoken as you read along has many benefits, especially for children in our multi-media saturated society.

Now that books on tape are a thing of the past, audio books are recorded on compact disc, and MP3 formats…and you don’t need to be studying Shakespeare to put them to good use. If your youngsters resist reading, you may try loading some books onto their iPods/MP3 player for listening pleasure during car rides.

Audible Kids offers thousands of recent kid’s books in downloadable format that can be played over the computer speakers, loaded on the MP3 player, or burned onto a disc.

Some are priced as low as 99 cents. Others are free. Today, audiblekids made a several additional books free to FoxandFriends viewers.

Older texts, such as the Beatrix Potter series, some Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Alice in Wonderland,, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Kipling’s Just So Stories are available free at Wiredforbooks.