Audiobooks can help students learn new words—especially when paired with one-on-one instruction

Millions of students nationwide use text-supplemented audiobooks, learning tools that are thought to help those who struggle with reading keep up in the classroom. A new study by scientists at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research finds that many students do benefit from audiobooks, gaining new vocabulary through the stories they hear. But study participants learned significantly more when audiobooks were paired with explicit one-on-one instruction—and this was especially true for students who were poor readers.