The Live The Adventure Letter 
Through audio learning, children will learn to listen. Good writing requires good listening skills.
People frequently place far too little emphasis on helping kids to become great writers and audio learning can help tremendously. The mechanics of writing, such as grammar, reading, vocabulary, and spelling, all get a lot of attention. However, dynamic writing often gets shoved to the wayside. Teachers and parents often don’t understand how much they can accomplish through teaching children to be good writers.
The Benefits Of Writing Skills For Children
Writing brings our your child’s creativity, self-expression, and even self-discovery. Writing assignments overwhelm and intimidate many children. This should tell us a lot. Kids need to develop expression through written content and audio learning is a great way to start.
Writing teaches grammar, reading, vocabulary, and spelling. In fact, teaching these subjects individually may not even be the best approach. Words put together in sentences and read in context can be so much more meaningful than single words. Children learn writing skills from what they hear. When a child listens to good, quality literature with interesting vocabulary, they channel what they hear through to their writing.
Teachers often think of writing as only a mechanical process. They think that children should learn to place words together in a proper order to become good writers. That is only part of the equation in nurturing a good writer. Good writing is intuitive, it is creative, and it comes from within, not from without.
Audio Learning Makes Them Better Listeners
Through audio learning, children will learn to listen. Good writing requires good listening skills. They will adapt to the “feel” of conversations and dialogue. They will gain better written dialogue skills because they learn to hear the speech. Their written dialogue transforms from sentences that characters say back and forth to a conversation between the characters. It sounds more natural because they learn to hear it as they listen to it often.
Audio Learning Teaches Grammar, Vocabulary, And Pronunciation
Children eventually begin to recognize patterns in language. Much of what we teach kids can learn by simple exposure. Just as they can pick up a second language by living in a bilingual home, they learn sentence structure and proper grammar usage by studying great literature.
Hearing the spoken words increases proper pronunciation, vocabulary, and comprehension. When kids read, they miss the added benefits of pronunciation and may skim over areas that get too complicated or boring. They can’t skim read an audio drama but must experience every part of it.
Kids will hear every new word and not just “see” it, but they will also understand it in context. They learn that there is more than one way to use words and express the thoughts that they are trying to convey.
Seeing a comma is different than hearing a comma. Children begin to understand that proper grammar isn’t just a bunch of rules, but it is necessary to make yourself understood. Spoken word is more about the purpose of the story rather than word usage and proper grammar. Once a child has something that they want to say and a story that they want to tell, proper grammar and word usage will become essential to them. Moreover, they will want to learn it. It will make sense because it has a purpose: to get their point across.
Good Writing Is Just Good Storytelling
If your child isn’t interested in writing, there’s a reason why. Writing can become mundane and your child will begin to see it as just words on a page. The reality is that writing is just good storytelling. Storytelling in its most basic beginnings was an audio version of stories that people told and passed from one generation to the next. It was only later that various cultures translated them into written versions.
Let your child experience audio learning and watch their writing transform into something beautiful that only they can give the world. After all,
“Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.” ~ Jeanette Winterson
You may also consider reading another Live The Adventure Letter article: Measuring Our Responsibilities In This World By Using God’s Word As Our Ultimate Standard
What are your thoughts on how audio learning can help kids to become better writers? Let us know in the comments below.
