Do we need to read while listening to an audiobook? How will we make the connection between writing and speaking?

If you are learning Spanish or another language that’s written very phonetically, then there’s no reason to. If you have acquired a word by listening and you see it written, you’ll be able to make the connection every single time. Therefore, the listening and the reading can happen independently of each other with no problem whatsoever and without you needing to take any additional measures. For English and other languages in which the relation between writing and pronunciation is not consistent, it may be helpful. While we still recommend focusing on listening until you get to level 5 or 6, once you start reading you can try reading while listening to the corresponding audiobook, or watch videos, movies and shows with matching subtitles. You can do that for a while until you get used to the most common spelling patterns. Once you do that, you will have gained the ability to identify words that you've heard but haven’t seen before. Chinese and Japanese are different from other languages in this regard, and require more specialized advice. We won’t be getting into these two languages here, since we would need a whole FAQ page just for that.