Audiobooks and Hörspiele (fist posted November 15, 2014)

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of audiobooks for my son's L2 development. Since I am not a native speaker of the L2 and learned it in an academic context, my own L2 production was initially deficient with regard to the linguistic strata associated with childhood: specific idioms and euphemisms of all kinds, especially for bodily experiences and activities; language of concrete physical description, especially of how simple devices work; onomatopoeic words; animal sounds, etc. 

German children's audiobooks made up for these deficiencies for my son and simultaneously taught me a great deal. Furthermore, audio materials, especially multicharacter Hörspiele, allow for regular exposure to a wide variety of different voice types, regional accents, and modes of oral speech, as well as to imitations of everyday communicative phenomena like mutiple people speaking at the same time, interruptions, voices from a distance, etc. 

  
My son has been listening to audiobooks ever since he began German at age 2.2. For the past two years, between ages 2.8 and 4.11, he has been listening about 90 minutes per week. At the time I am writing this, he has done about 250-300 hours of listening to about 70 audiobooks and Hörspiele in the three years he has been learning German. 

There is a major logistical qualification. I have found only one way to get my son to engage in sustained and concentrated listening: in the car, while strapped into his seat. All those hundreds of hours were logged on the road. In fact, much of this driving was for no other purpose than for listening to audiobooks. 

I avoid busy roads and traffic, either cruising very slowly around local neighborhoods (usually in the very early morning) or else out in the country. Fortunately, we live in a small town within easy reach of hundreds of miles of rural roads. If we lived in or near a big city and had difficulty escaping urban or suburban traffic conditions, I would not undertake the risk of so much unnecessary driving. As it is, I only feel guilty about increasing my carbon footprint. 

Chandler Bridge Road, 7 min. from my house

Weekly listening routine. Once per week we take long drive in the country, listening for 45 minutes to an hour. On two other weekdays, we get in 10-20 minutes of listening before I drop Jamie off at school or his grandmother's. The weekend is usually good for another chunk of 15-30 minutes. Then there are scattered bits of time here and there in the afternoon as we run errands or whatever. On longer drives or vacation roadtrips, Jamie will sometimes listen for several hours at a time. 

Technology and method. I get all our German audiobooks and Hörspiele from Audible.de, downloading them via the Audible app directly onto an Ipod touch (a smartphone would work just as well), which plugs into an Ipod jack on a cord into the car stereo. While driving slowly in a residential area or on a country road with no traffic, I have my Ipod in my right palm with my thumb hovering over the icon that makes the recording skip back ten seconds. This is because Jamie likes to hear favorite bits over and over again, a desire I encourage and indulge, since repetition is pure language-learning gold. The pause icon is right there too, which we make liberal use of in order to talk about the story as we are listening. 

(Classical guitarist fingernails!)

Repetition and discussion are a fundamental part of the experience, and the technology makes a difference here: skipping back and pausing is not as quick and easy with a CD player as it is with an Ipod. Nor is it as safe, since you need to take your eyes off the road for a split second. With a bit of practice, this is not necessary with an Ipod touch (or a smartphone) using the Audible app. 

Again, let me make safety issues clear: Only on residential streets and backroads do I do the Ipod-in-the-palm thing. If we're listening while running errands in suburban traffic, there are no pauses or playbacks until we are parked somewhere. 

Primary materials. So far I have placed the greatest emphasis on stories I first read out loud to Jamie from books or e-reader. So the audibook is already a repetition. Our listening tracks our reading very closely; usually same or next day, and we listen only as far as we have read. I do this for three main reasons. First, I like to prioritize the written medium and the intimacy of reading out loud together as the primary literary experience. Secondly, I can make sure Jamie already understands everything before the listening begins, from plot points down to important words and phrases. Thirdly, since the audiobook or Hörspiel generally represents a performative enhancement of what I am capable (with great character voices by professional narrators and actors, catchy songs and soundtracks, cool sound effects), Jamie is less interested in reading a book together that we have first experienced as an audiobook.

For the first two years, the listening was dominated by four main groups of stories:

1) Nine Hörspiele based on Hans de Beer's Der kleine Eisbär (from 2.2-3.5 years)

2) Sixteen audiobooks from Ingo Siegner's Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss (from 3.6-4.3 years)

3) Fairy tales by the Grimms (2.5-years-present). 

4) Bible stories (3.10 years-present)

Beginning at age 4.8, the focus has shifted to longer chapter books. We have been working our way through Otfried Preußler's stories (so far Der Räuber Hotzenplotz 1, 2, and 3; Das kleine Gespenst, and Die kleine Hexe) and German audio productions of Roald Dahl's Charlie und die Schokoladenfabrik and Sophiechen und der Riese. In the case of the latter, Jamie first reads the stories with my wife in the original English. 

Other great serials we have dipped into for which great audio productions are avaliable include the Findus und Petterson tales by Sven Nordquist, Max Kruse's Urmel stories, and the endless Benjamin Blümchen Hörspiele. There are dozens more we have not listened to. 

Secondary materials. There is also a massive amount of high-quality German children's non-fiction to be had in audio production. The Random House/cbj audio series "Ich weiß was" is fabulous, covering most areas of basic knowledge in a very entertaining manner. The science and philosophy-oriented Hörspiele by the German astronomer Harald Lesch are truly stellar, managing to broach deep existential and ethical questions in a manner understandable and entertaining for a four-year-old. 

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We usually listen to these sorts of things in shorter snippets, since as not-fiction they do not hold Jamie's attention for very long. We have also listened to a good deal of poetry and mythology. 

Tie-ins to visual media. The more media through which a child can experience a story, the better for language-learning purposes. This factor also partly guides my choice of what we listen to. Of the above materials, many are available as films, television shows, or plays, either free via YouTube or at sites like Kinderkino.de.

In my experience, however, it is best to wait until one has read the book and listened to the audiobook before getting to the visual media. I have found that once J has seen the movie or show, he is less interested in a repeated reading of or listening to the story.