Reading literature in the Digital Age: Connecting students to texts orally and aurally

Writers and literature enjoy a prominent position in the culture and society of the German-speaking world. Today, German-speaking authors actively cultivate an online presence through publishers’ websites, personal webpages, blogs, and online forums. In this way, the Internet has transformed the literary reading experience of yore into a four-skill media extravaganza. This engenders unrivaled access to the aural, textual, and visual environment in which literary texts reside, a multisensory world in which our students thrive. This essay proposes that audio and video files can fill the gap between how students read and how literature typically has been taught. By analyzing recordings of authors reading their work, performing their work, and being interviewed about their work available in online databases, radio podcasts, and video segments, students learn to access literary texts aurally. This expanded context can revitalize literature for the contemporary language classroom. Following a theoretical introduction about reading in the Digital Age, we present strategies for implementation in sample lesson plans. Our approach exemplifies how combining authorial voices with texts elevates reading to a multimedia experience that increases both listening and reading comprehension.