Podcasting Services for EFL Classes
One of the never ending complaints by EFL/ESL teachers has been about the sources of authentic audio material for classes. Podcasts can be the solution to this problem.
Can learners benefit from this form of audio material? Of course! Having the chance to exercise their listening skills by listening to audio material, aside from the one they usually get along with textbooks. is always great practice for their ears. Being exposed to other kinds of accents is a nice training for students.
Is the language in podcasts too difficult for students? To answer this, it is the teacher’s task to listen to this audio material and evaluate the level it is appropriate for, bearing in mind Krashen’s maxim of i+1. Once the level is identified, if the material is suitable for any of the course book units or as an extracurricular activity, the teacher can decide which students will benefit from the listening task.
An important piece of advice for podcasting in or out of class is to keep some kind of “library” for a given class. Depending on the podcasts you may find on the Web or through iTunes, it is a good idea to create –somehow- a classification for them: in terms of thematic units or by the level of difficulty based on a CEF rating. Perhaps, a class wiki could be a good repository for this listening material, including the tasks students need to complete related to the podcast.
Considering the advantages of using podcasts, rather than other online audio clips, is that we can indeed find specialized ones for EFL/ESL learning. That is, we teachers can always have access to interesting material that somehow can be related or is linked to our course units. For this reason, it is really advantageous to use podcasts to foster language learning among students or as a nice way to consolidate what students are learning in class.
Some interesting sites I have used before with students are the following:
For vocabulary building: http://www.justvocabulary.com/
For new words: http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/Languages/Vocabulary-Building/MerriamWebsters-Word-of-the-Day-Podcast/19450#plink
For various thematic units: http://www.eslpod.com/website/index_new.html
For podcasts and vodcasts on various topics: http://www.podanza.com/
For podiobooks, not exactly podcasts: http://www.podiobooks.com/
For vodcasts, link to youtube: http://www.openculture.com/
I hope you find these sites interesting to explore and eventually use with your students. Good luck!
Jonathan Acuña
Universidad Latina
Costa Rica
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