What’s it about?

Foreign language audiobooks are great learning tools. Combined with a matching transcript they become incredible resources. Today I’m going to show you how to use audiobooks to hugely boost your language level.

Why Audiobooks are great for learning languages

– Gain exposure to authentic native material.
– Learn tons of new vocabulary.
– Develop a native-like sense of individual words and phrases from their proper context.
– Improve your listening skills.
– Enjoy foreign literature in the original.

Who is it for?

I highly recommend this method for upper-intermediate learners and above. You should see a noticeable improvement in your foreign language ability in a matter of weeks.

For those who are only just starting out, tackling a whole audiobook is too much for now. Indeed, your time will be better invested in developing your vocabulary base and understanding for the critical structures of the language. Come back to audiobooks once you are ready.

Yep. Sounds good. So what do I need to do?

My suggested procedure for the audiobook with transcript method is simple:

1. Find interesting material to listen to with a matching text (discussed later)
2. Listen to the first chapter. Just listen for now, without reading the text. Try to just get the gist of what is going on in the story and focus on what you can understand.
3. Next, listen and read at the same time. You are likely to understand a lot more  of the content during this second round. Take time to notice unknown words and make a mental note of them., perhaps guessing at what they might mean. There is no need to look them up with a dictionary at this stage.
4. Listen to the chapter one more time.

OK I did the first chapter. What next?

If you can roughly follow the plot and understand around 50% of the words, then move on to the next chapter and repeat the above process. The reason I recommend skipping the dictionary where possible is twofold:

1. New words will tend to make their meanings known to you if you give them enough time. The context of the story you are listening to will often give them away. Your brain is great at making  its theories all on its own. After all, that is how you learned your native language.

2. This language stuff is supposed to be fun. I want you to enjoy the content and let it flow. Over time, this will positively reinforce your learning and you will begin to look forward to it.

If it is proving difficult to follow the general story and your comprehension is below 50% then a different strategy is required. In this case, we will break our rule. Look up some of the unknown words with a dictionary. Don’t go too crazy though! Try to find out the meaning for the vocabulary items that seem to repeat themselves. These will usually be the most useful ones to know. You can write down the definitions or make flashcards for them in a program such as Anki. When you have looked up a decent number of words, try starting again through steps 2-4 of our procedure. Your comprehension should be much better this time. Now you can move onto the next chapter.

Which audiobooks do you recommend for language learning?

To study with optimal effectiveness, you should aim to find content that is both interesting and understandable.

Many of you will find that a familiar story or topic will make for a better audiobook to start out with. This way, you will already know the context and be able to decipher the meaning of new words with greater ease. Of course this will depend on your level in the language. If you are comfortable with your listening skills, then by all means move onto completely new content.

I have listened to and read the Little Prince in several languages. It is just right for me – a short and enjoyable story with fairly straightforward vocabulary. Others prefer using religious texts such as the Bible. No subject matter or genre is objectively inferior to another. What matters is what is interesting to you.

We can make some generalizations though. Fiction light on dialogue and heavy on abstract descriptions (e.g. Kafka) will be much tougher than a trashy romance novel. It may be surprising to some that low brow content tends to make better language learning material, especially when you are starting out.

Resources

Audiobooks with transcripts are incredibly helpful, but the challenge up until now has been to find them. To help out, we have assembled lists of audiobooks for all the East Asian languages. We hope you find them useful. Enjoy!

Japanese audiobook list
Chinese audiobook list

We would love to hear your feedback on this method. Have you tried something similar in the past? Did it help you? Let us know in the comments section below!

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

For whatever reason, the Japanese are not big fans of audiobooks. I have spent a great deal of time looking around for good quality audiobooks in Japanese, but usually ended up frustrated by how scattered the resources were.

The following list is therefore an attempt to bring together all the Japanese audiobooks that I could find. Many of them are free. I have provided links to the audio file, transcript, physical book or e-book wherever possible. Enjoy!

Update April 2019: Some of the Japanese audiobooks have been removed from Audible so I’ve removed the broken links. If you have any audiobooks to add to this list, please let me know in the comments!

Japanese Audiobooks

Fairy Tale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” (8 min)

Audio (free with Audible trial)
Book

Fairy Tale “Beauty and the Beast” (9 min)

Audio (free with Audible trial)
Transcript
Book
Book (manga)

Fairy Tale “Cinderella” (8 min)

Audio (free with Audible trial)
Transcript
E-book

O Henry “Gift of the Magi” (25 min)

Audio (free) 
Transcript
Parallel Text 
E-book

Kurosaku “Yuusha to Muramusume” (1 hour 15 min)

Audio (paid)
Transcript (no longer available)

James Allen “As a Man Thinketh” (1 hour 28 min)

Audio (paid)
English transcript
E-book
Book

O Henry “The Last Leaf” (25 min) 

Audio (free) 
Parallel Text 
E-book

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “Captain of the Polestar” (27 min)

Audio (free)
Transcript
Book

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “The Gloria Scott” (79 min)

Audio (free)
Transcript
Parallel Text 
Book

Edgar Allan Poe “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (100 min)

Audio (free)
Transcript
Parallel Text 
Book

Hans Christian Andersen “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (21 min) 

Audio (free) 
Transcript
Parallel Text 
Book (manga)

Oscar Wilde “The Selfish Giant” (16 min) 

Audio (free) 
Transcript
Parallel Text 
Book

Ryunosuke Akutagawa “Spider’s Thread” (10 min) 

Audio (free) 
Transcript
Translation (unavailable) 
E-book

Ryunosuke Akutagawa “Rashomon” (18 min)

Audio (free) 
Transcript
Translation 
E-book

Ryunosuke Akutagawa “The Dog, Shiro” (28 min)

Audio (free) 
Transcript

Kenji Miyazawa “Night on the Milky Way Train” (134 min)

Audio (free)
Transcript
Translation 
E-book (Miyazawa’s complete works)

Kenji Miyazawa “The First Deer Dance” (20 min)

Audio (free)
Transcript
E-book (Miyazawa’s complete works)

Kenji Miyazawa “The Great Bear of the Crows” (20 min)

Audio (free) 1 2 3
Transcript
Translation 
E-book (Miyazawa’s complete works)

Maurice LeBlanc “Edith Au Cou De Cygne” (52 min)

Audio (free)
Transcript

Lyman Frank Baum“A Kidnapped Santa Claus” (22 min) 

Audio (free)
Transcript

Osamu Dazai “Memories” (114 min)

Audio (free)
Transcript
E-book (Amazon JP store only)

Osamu Dazai “A Poor Man’s Got His Pride” (27 min)

Audio (free) 
Transcript
E-book (Amazon JP store only)

Gilbert K Chesterton “The Sins of Prince Saradine” (Incomplete)

Audio (free)
Transcript
Parallel Text 
E-book (Amazon JP store only)

Soseki Natsume “Three Cornered World” (Complete)(275 min)

Audio (free)
Transcript
Book (manga)

Soseki Natsume “I am a Cat” (Complete)(22 hr)

Audio (free) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Transcript
E-book

Robert Louis Stevenson “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” (Complete)(224 min)

Audio (free)
Transcript
Book (manga)

E.C. Tubb “The Winds of Gath” (Complete) (5 hr)

Audio (free)
Book

Notes:

1. Some people (like me!) prefer to own the real book rather than just a website transcript, so the Japanese e-book and physical book versions have been listed for your convenience. However, please note that the text in the book may be different from the audiobook depending on the edition. While the exact transcript is preferable, don’t stress too much if it doesn’t match up. It will still be helpful if you read it!

2. I adapted this list from an old post on the HTLAL forum that was full of broken links. I have also added several materials to the list.

3. Many of the audiobooks and e-books that I found were listed on Amazon.com. For copyright reasons, they might not be available on your local Amazon store, so try looking on Amazon.com if in doubt.

Add to Our List!

Do you know of any other useful Japanese audiobooks? Paid or free is OK. Please let us know below in the comments and we will add them to this list! We’d also be grateful for any reports of dead links or incorrect transcripts. Thank you.

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

This is the list of audiobooks in Chinese that we were able to find so far. Most come together with the transcript.

Fortress Besieged “Fortress besieged” (14+ hours)
Audio (free)
Transcript (gone)
Book

Jonathan Swift “Gulliver’s Travels” (approx. 3 hours)
Audio (free)
Book
E-book

Ernest Hemingway “The Old Man and the Sea” (4+ hours)
Audio (free)
Book
E-book

George Lucas, Alan Dean Foster “Star Wars” (approx. 8 hours)
Audio (free)
Transcript (simplified)
Transcript (traditional)

Lu Xun and Yang Xianyi “True Story of Ah Q” (approx. 2 hours)
Audio (free)
Transcript (simplified)
Translation
Book (bilingual)

Leo Tolstoy “Anne Karenina” (50+ hours)
Audio (free)
Transcript (not fully matching audio)
Book

Charlotte Bronte “Jane Eyre”
Audio (free)
Transcript (gone)
Book
E-book

Folk Tales “1001 Nights”
Audio (free)
Book

Jules Verne “Around the World in 80 Days”
Audio (free)
Book
E-book

Ba Jin “The Family”
Audio (free)
Transcript
Book

Margaret Mitchell “Gone with the Wind”
Audio (free)
Book

Notes about Chinese Audiobooks:

1. Some people (like me!) prefer to own the real physical book rather than just a website transcript, so the Chinese e-book and physical book versions have been listed for your convenience. However, please note that the text in the book may be different from the audiobook depending on the edition. While the exact transcript is preferable, don’t stress too much if it doesn’t match up. It will still be helpful if you read it!

2. I adapted this list from an old forum post. Some of the dead links have been removed and updated.

3. Many of the audiobooks and e-books that I found were listed on Amazon.com. For copyright reasons, they might not be available on your local Amazon store, so try looking on Amazon.com if in doubt.

4. If you’re looking for more Chinese audio to study from, we think Chinese Class 101 is worth checking out.

Have you found any other high quality Chinese audiobooks available online? Please let us know below in the comments and we will add them to this list! We’d also be grateful for any reports of dead links or incorrect transcripts. Thank you.

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.