While I agree that listening to audiobooks critically is a skill set that has to be learned, so is reading critically on the page. You can skim a book; you can "read" a book and yet not think critically about it, which is part of what this post points out, of course. I learned to listen as critically as I had learned to read critically by training myself, and it took hard work. (I had a very, VERY strong motivation to learn that skill!)
I wish that critical listening were a more valued skill, educationally speaking, and were taught (especially as podcasts take off and people get more and more news through sound clips and such...).
What makes me angry is when people (and these are usually readers rather than listeners by preference) ASSUME that listeners aren't listening critically, assume that listening isn't, and can't be, a critical skill too. They seem to base this assumption on their own experience and on the fact that they either can't or have chosen not train themselves to listen critically themselves. I think that's OKAY. I very strongly agree with this post that it's problematic how we valorize skill sets, and I don't think it's bad that lots of people don't like to listen to audiobooks. That's fine! But it does make me angry how dismissive people can be of the people who DO.
Admittedly: I think that reading critically and listening critically, even by people who've trained themselves to do it carefully, are still not IDENTICAL skill sets. I do both, and I don't find them to be identical experiences. (After all, some studies have shown that even reading on the page and reading online are not identical experiences, particularly for non-native speakers of the language! Though for native/advanced speakers, the differences become vanishingly less important.) But I also think they're closer than people realize; and I think they're both valuable.
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I wish that critical listening were a more valued skill, educationally speaking, and were taught (especially as podcasts take off and people get more and more news through sound clips and such...).
What makes me angry is when people (and these are usually readers rather than listeners by preference) ASSUME that listeners aren't listening critically, assume that listening isn't, and can't be, a critical skill too. They seem to base this assumption on their own experience and on the fact that they either can't or have chosen not train themselves to listen critically themselves. I think that's OKAY. I very strongly agree with this post that it's problematic how we valorize skill sets, and I don't think it's bad that lots of people don't like to listen to audiobooks. That's fine! But it does make me angry how dismissive people can be of the people who DO.
Admittedly: I think that reading critically and listening critically, even by people who've trained themselves to do it carefully, are still not IDENTICAL skill sets. I do both, and I don't find them to be identical experiences. (After all, some studies have shown that even reading on the page and reading online are not identical experiences, particularly for non-native speakers of the language! Though for native/advanced speakers, the differences become vanishingly less important.) But I also think they're closer than people realize; and I think they're both valuable.