> First, I reject the premise that audiobooks count as reading. We can agree it's consuming a book, or listening to one, but it's pretty objectively not reading.
For (some of) the specific points you're making here, you're right that reading is not the same as listening to an audiobook - you're not learning spelling and punctuation. I don't think that's true of grammar, sentence structure, etc, but ok.
However I push back strongly on the idea that, in general, "audiobooks don't count as reading" in other respects. It's drawing a completely artificial distinction between different modes of consuming information, almost always for the purposes of "gatekeeping" or making one thing seem "less" than the other.
The purpose of reading is mostly to get information and/or a story, "expanding one's horizons" as you put it. This is equally achieved via either physically reading or via listening to someone read the story to you. To the extent that we think reading books is a worthwhile endeavor, 90% of what you get is gotten via audiobooks as much as via physically reading.
> And because we communicate so much by text in the modern world, spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure can have an outsized impact on your life and social interactions
For (some of) the specific points you're making here, you're right that reading is not the same as listening to an audiobook - you're not learning spelling and punctuation. I don't think that's true of grammar, sentence structure, etc, but ok.
However I push back strongly on the idea that, in general, "audiobooks don't count as reading" in other respects. It's drawing a completely artificial distinction between different modes of consuming information, almost always for the purposes of "gatekeeping" or making one thing seem "less" than the other.
The purpose of reading is mostly to get information and/or a story, "expanding one's horizons" as you put it. This is equally achieved via either physically reading or via listening to someone read the story to you. To the extent that we think reading books is a worthwhile endeavor, 90% of what you get is gotten via audiobooks as much as via physically reading.
> And because we communicate so much by text in the modern world, spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure can have an outsized impact on your life and social interactions
We also communicate a lot by spoken language.