ELT'oSpHere

Aslı Saglam's Blog about CPD in ELT

Podcasts in Language Class

March28

“We onlystudy for exams and I don’t enjoy learning English” commented one of my students today. I understand this comment and agree with it to a certain extend but on the other hand I have a weekly outline that I need to follow. I need to cover some certain objectives and materials as a teacher!! Students do not like listening to lectures and recorded listening of the course book and then having discussions about the topic they listened to all the time. At times they resist to speak in English, and shift back to Turkish. But, then… Can there be more enjoyable way(s) of catering for the needs of the students and the curriculum?

There is a need for an alternative, supplementary resource for listening and speaking skills

 I think that using podcasts has the potential of expanding the borders of the classroom and developing learners’ speaking and listening skills. Usually there are either teacher (or other teaching parties)-created or student-created podcasts. Last year I had the chance to work in podcasting projects with students who created their own podcast pages.  And it was really fun.

our class

our class

 I and my teaching partner Nil Bilen asked my students to create their own podcasts (Click here) and use and revise language functions and lexis covered in lessons. I would like to say that posting/publishing/ presenting the students’ outcome on a podcast to real audience for feedback and evaluation lead students to do their best instead of simply fulfilling an assignment. Therefore, I believe that students’ attitudes and motivation towards working with podcasts are very positive. I observed that students were deeply into the task of creating their own podcast.

This was my first experience working with podcasts and at the beginning I had to work a lot on my own to discover ways of making use of the provider; podomatic. I discovered how to publish an episode, upload a picture and personalise my podcast. Also, I decided to record episodes in class as students were discussing the topics given. The rationale behind this was to familiarise students with podomatic as well as to save time. I asked the groups to assign the rest of class a task  (E.g. Listen and decide: Who do you agree with?). Some students wrote some parts of their dialogues down saying that felt safer and comfortable. After this lesson we had a second round of posting and I encouraged students to discuss naturally (they could have notes but asked them not to write a transcript). Next step was assigning students to podcast and publish on their own outside class. We promoted our class podcast page and I really think that authenticity (real world!!) was better maintained this way. At this point I would also like to say that advanced students’ conversations/podcasts can set a good example for students at lower levels. They may benefit from these podcasts.

In addition, asking students to listen to podcasts that are already available could be beneficial and enjoyable. I would like to share some that could be used for English for academic purposes (EAP). Here comes my list. 

 Listen to English and learn English with podcasts in English

INSEAD Knowledge – Best of business research

Online video and audio: programmes and multimedia | The Economist

Podcasts – Learn at Any Time – The Open University

ScienceLive – Podcasts

PodcastAlley.com — The place to find Podcasts

Video — Animals, Travel, Kids — National Geographic

Naked Scientists Science Podcasts and Science Radio Shows

LearnEnglish Podcasts Themes Archive

 Do you have any other sites in mind? Please share…

Happy listening to us all…

One Comment to

“Podcasts in Language Class”

  1. April 26th, 2011 at 11:55 am       Laura Says:

    Dear Asli,

    What a great idea! I wish I had had the time to check before I delivered my plenary on motivation a couple of weeks ago. This is an inspired approach to getting students to take their English speaking seriously.

    Brilliant!

    Laura


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