Immersion Reading

Events Coordinator Ali Boyne shares how reading along to Audiobooks helped her attention span and taught her how to read for pleasure again.

It has been claimed that Spongebob Squarepants is to blame for Gen Z’s increasingly short attention span, due to the fast-paced nature of the show, and the fact the scene changes, on average, every 11 seconds. For those of Gen Z who were able to inhale novels and read series over the course of a single weekend in their younger years, Spongebob felt like a great place to lay blame for their inability to pick up a book and instead head straight to Netflix for our dose of storytelling and entertainment.

Until the University of Otago debunked this claim in a 2018 study.

I realised I needed to stop blaming Spongebob for my lack of literature and revisit reading for pleasure, something I had long forgotten how to do (a secret I had kept to myself- how can you work in a library and not read for pleasure)?

Immersion reading or Audio assisted reading is when you read and listen to text at the same time. Microsoft have this function available for reading emails and there are browser plug-ins that allow you to listen to the text on any website you visit. Many modern devices have this built in for eReaders such as Kindle, and Amazon’s audiobook subscription, Audible, offers the ability to read along to some of the audiobooks they offer. 

I began Immersion Reading by borrowing a physical copy Game of Thrones from the Library and got a free trial of Audible to access the audiobook.

It’s incredible when both your ears and your eyes are focused on the same task, it removes room for distraction, it helps you engage with and understand more what you are reading and opens your imagination beyond its usual scope.

I used to imagine characters from novels interacting and acting out chapters in my own home. All wrapped up in the modernity of my flat, comfy on my tattered old couch, sitting on my TV remote, looking extremely out of place. Now they have their own world, old stone castles and rolling green hills, a grand train gliding through the Scottish countryside, or even California in the 1970s, the way my favourite characters appear in my head feels new and exciting, but it also feels more accurate, leaving me fully interested in the story I’m reading as it is somewhere I have never been before.

While Immersion Reading began as an accessibility feature for visual imparity and has most recently been promoted as a great way for people with ADHD to focus, I’d argue Immersion Reading can be a tool utilised by anyone; former gifted kids who forgot how to read for pleasure, parents too busy encouraging their children to read that they never do, children who need a little more guidance with their literacy, or just people with busy brains.

But you need not solely rely on technology to Immersion Read. Your local library will also have VOX Books available for young people, which have a permanently attached VOX Reader to transform an ordinary print book into an all-in-one read along. For adults, our libraries have talking books, a collection of CDS that make up a novel. Paired with a borrowed book from the library, you can try out Immersion Reading without needing the internet.

Check out some of the amazing talking books we have in our collection here.