Podcasts and Language Teaching

As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts in this century of digital-native environment teachers should be highly vigilant to be able to use technologies for students’ benefits. For example one of the ways is using blogs in the classroom, which will help us to develop our students’ reading and writing skills. But there is no need to worry about listening and speaking skills, because for this we have PODCASTS.

Podcasts are audio or video files that can be easily created and uploaded to the internet or downloaded from it. So, podcasting is the ability to create or listen to audio or video content either live or downloaded for later use.

First of all I would like to speak about my own experience of podcasting. For the first time I’ve got familiar with the meaning of this term during my speaking course that I had in summer 2011. During this course we had an assignment to listen to podcasts and to bring the information to the class. At that time I felt really very unhappy, not because I didn’t like podcasting, in the contrary, because I’ve got familiar with it rather late. Because I’ve realized that I’ve wasted so much valuable time while I could listen and discover so many interesting and useful podcasts. However, “Better late than never” with this phrase in mind I’ve integrated podcasting into my everyday life, I’ve subscribed to some very interesting podcasts in English and in French (http://www.thepsychfiles.com/, www.learnfrenchbypodcast.com) and every single day I follow them when I do simple things like my everyday make-up, having breakfast, going to bed etc. 

How podcasting may be useful in language teaching? 

One of the most important things in foreign language classroom is the ability to provide as much authentic material as possible. In my opinion podcast is one of the “most “authentic materials. Podcasts may help us to get our students familiar with so different accents and variations of English, different speed of speech, pronunciation etc. It is known that all these factors play an important role in comprehensibility, so first of all podcasts increase students’ comprehensibility of native speech. 

Most of the podcasts provide transcripts with the audio recordings. This may be used for students giving them assignment to read and record themselves and compare with native speakers speech. This will give them a clear picture of nativelikeness of their speech. Very often students would end by imitating the native speech. It is more useful than just repeating and practicing words or sounds like we were doing at school. Researches show that podcasting is greatly welcomed by students, like the results of a research conducted by Ducate L. and Lomicka L. (2009) showed that Podcast project was perceived positively by students, and they appreciated the feedback given for their recordings and enjoyed opportunities for creativity during podcasts.

 Finally podcasts as blogs make the learning process more interactive. Students may evaluate each other’s recordings and give constructive feedback to peers and create positive and friendly atmosphere in the classroom. And my opinion is that positive environment is the pledge of successful learning and teaching.