Hi guys!Today I'm going to talk a little bit about PODCASTS... Do you know what is a podcast? No?!? Don't worry, I realized what was a podcast more or less one week ago. A podcast is an online audio file which you can either listen to in the Internet or download on your PC or MP3 player and use it whenever you want. Podcasts deal with any topic and, serching the Web, you will find out any kind of podcasts related to the topic you are interested in. As far as my language learning is concerned, I think that using podcast is a clear example of how technologies can be used wisely nowadays depending on our specific needs. In this case, we, as students of English, can take advantage of these digital files and, by listening to them, we can have a chance to improve our listening skills, our pronunciation of English and even also our speaking skill. Up to a certain extent, podcasts - but also other Internet facilities - help us to become more indipendent and self-organized students because we can plan our language learning step by step by ourselves and have a chance to personalize our studying also outside the English class. But, obviously, podcasts cannot be a substitute for our daily involvement in speaking English directly and joining conversations in English. Podcast are a wonderful tool but they lack what is essential in a conversation between people, that is INTERACTION. It's true that, downloading the podcasts on your MP3 player or IPod, you can listen to them whenever you want and it's like having an English friend always accompanying us and talking to us. But we have to bear in mind that in this kind of thing there is only one voice speaking - the other one - and our role is basically passive because we just have to try to understand but we don't have to prove that we really understood what we were listening to.
Actually, I spent the last two hours in surfing the net to find out interesting websites that contain podcasts related to English learning and education. I must admit that it was quite hard to find specific websites because the Web offers a large amount of different stuff. In the end, I subscribed to 3 websites: two provide with podcasts in English on a wide range of topics and the other one is specific for people interested in learning and improving Business English. The first one is called China 232 A Fun and Free Way to learn English where you can find podcasts on different topics, serious and funny, to listen to or download. Each podcast is enriched with comments and explanations on the most important sentences or idiomatic expressions. The second website is Better@English where the English podcasts are also collected separatedly depending on your level of English: Intermediate, Upper-intermediate and Advanced. The last one, ESL Business News offers a weekly podcast of international business news read in a clear English and each podcast is accompanied by the script of the audio file.
I think this can be enough for now,
I hope you'll appreciate my suggestions. Let me know something about it!
Elena
4 commenti:
Hi Elena!
I just read the post and I really liked your comments about the utility of Podcasts. As you pointed out these audio files can be very useful but in the end the students are passive and the lack of interaction is certainly a weak point! We can listen to the conversations, monologues and dialogues but we won't never and ever fully participate!
As far as the Website you chose are concerned, I noticed that you picked up the same as Silvia, except for the last one about Business English. As I just went through Silvia's post and I already visited Betterat English.com and China232.com I decided to explore a little bit ESL Business English. I chose a Website which is very similar too: I think it's a very good idea to practice a bit of Business English so I guess I'm going to download some files and listen to them!
See you next week!
Giada
Hi Elena!
I really appreciated your suggestion! I noticed you mostly share yours with Silvia's. I like better@english because podcasts are divided by the level of difficulty even if there is not a large number of them in the advanced learners sections.
I agree with you when you say that even if listening to podcasts is great, we are passive learners who do not practise oral production skills.
I have some grammar tips for you:
- "Do youy know what a podcast IS?";
- "...or yo ucan download it...";
- (At the beginning of a sentence) However - instead of 'But';
- PodcastS are...;
- Each podcast (without S);
- If I were you I'd put more periods.
I hope I helped you. If I was wrong please tell me!
Good job,
Zara
Hi Elena!
Like you I didn’t know almost anything about podcasts, but once I went to visit some website podcats and tried to listen to some of them I realized how much important for our English learning they are!! ;-)
I totally agree with you that podcasts are a useful tool for our English learning, but as you said they don’t enable us to interact and improve our conversational skills..
Like you, I chose china232.com and betteratenglish: the first one because there are a lot of funny podcasts and each of them include a transcript and a discussion about each topic; the second one because it can be useful for any ESL learner as there you can find podcasts according to the level of English. I liked the third you chose as well as it offers a lot of podcasts concerning international business news!
See you tomorrow!
Hi Elena,
as your case and that of Silvia demonstrated, the websites about Podcasts are very similar!!!Probably you choose two identical websites because in your opinion are the best organized and useful! I think it is so!!
China232 offer a wide range of podcasts about different topic, some of them are very funny and also contain a transcription of the discussions and explanations about the most idiomatic expressions!!!
As you said in your post about passivity is true: podcasts are useful tools to learn how to speak english as a native speaker, but they don't offer the opportunity to interact with other people!
I think in every thing there 's always a good and a bad side!!!
See you soon!
Letizia
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