When people ask me what should they do to improve their English, I always suggest: listen to audiobooks. In this post I am sharing with you two online sources where you can download audiobook for free. 🙂
When people ask me what should they do to improve their English, I always suggest: listen to audiobooks. I have mentioned this many times, but listening to something you enjoy keeps you motivated and you don’t even realise how fast you are improving your English at the same time. 🙂
Well, but where can we find audio books?
Have you heard of LibriVox.org and Audible.com? Let me introduce them to you.
LibriVox.org
LibriVox is a non-profit project that brings together all fans of audiobooks and volunteers who read and record audio books that are licensed under public domain. What does that mean? You can download wide variety of audiobooks in mp3 format for free. There’s no catch.
Let’s listen to Alice in Wonderland from Lewis Carrol for example:
And now it gets even better! When you click the link “Online text” on the left-hand side in the section “Links” you can read the whole book in its written form! (this is possible thanks to the successful project Gutenberg):
Alice in Wonderland full book text: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35688
With the book like this, you can use the Speech shadowing technique to get your pronunciation to the next level.
And no worries, if Alice in Wonderland is not your cup of tea, search the LibriVox database for the audio book of your choice. Please understand that you will find there books that are licensed under public domain only. Anyways, the database is huge, so I am sure you will find what you like. 🙂
Examples of popular audiobooks you can listen to:
- Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- Grimms’ Fairy Tales
- Bram Stoker: Dracula
- Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Tip: You may also like to download mobile app like this (iOS) or this (Android) to enjoy LibriVox audiobooks on the go with your mobile phone. 🙂
Audible.com
Our next source of audiobooks is Audible.com. It’s an Amazon’s audiobook e-shop – a normal paid service where you can sign-up for a membership and then receive credits you can use to download audiobooks.
I mention Audible in this post because now they have an offer – If you register, you can choose 2 audiobooks and download them to your computer or smartphone for free.
Note: Please keep in mind that if you won’t quit your Audible membership before the trial period is over, your card will be charged for real money. You can keep the audiobooks that you downloaded of course.
Here are the examples of audiobooks I downloaded from Audible: Think and Grow Rich from Napoleon Hill and Money: Master the game from Anthony Robbins. Then the book Flow is on my wish list.
Regardless of what audio book you choose, enjoy it! 😉
Do you know about any other sources where we can listen to audiobooks for free? What are you favourite books? Share your thoughts in the comment section below. 🙂