The Text and the Speech : An Interview Study of Talking Book Use among Students with Dyslexia

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how students in higher education use talking books. This has been inves-tigated through qualitative interviews with nine students. The intention has been to find out how they use talk-ing books and why they have chosen to do it in the way they have, looking specifically on whether there are strategies shared by most of the interviewees. As a theoretical basis of the thesis I have chosen a study, described by Sigrid Hongset, where dyslectic pu-pils tried using printed text and text on tape, as well as both simultaneously. George Kingsley Zipfs “Principle of least effort” will act as a supplemental theory. The interviews show that the students use talking books in different ways. Most read them via a computer, either using a program specifically made for talking book reading or a general purpose audio program. Some used portable players, such as mp3-players. None of them used a talking book player at the time and only a few used several of the special functions that the digital DAISY format offers. All the interviewees used printed books alongside the talking books. Some used them concurrently, while others did not. One thing they had in common was that they had, mostly purposefully, made strategies for how to study with the talking books, but these strategies were vastly different between them. It was obvious that different factors were important regarding their choices of technique. They were working towards as hassle free a use as possible. In this aspect there was a noticeable clash between different kinds of effort. The need not to carry around cumbersome equipment might for example be greater than the need to have all the functions of the DAISY format available. Several of them did not have full knowledge of the functions available in the DAISY format, but they did not appear to view that as a problem. Meanwhile there was a certain amount of frustration aimed towards insuf-ficiencies inherit in the talking book format