Using Podcasts in World Language Classes

(Elena Spathis; September 03/2021.)

In a sense, language teachers act as tour guides as we lead our students through the unfamiliar territory that is a newlanguage. Over the course of this cultural and linguistic journey, we hope to witness them as they grow into culturally competent communicators. Therefore, we must ensure that they have ample opportunities to practice listening, speaking, reading, and writing in the target language throughout the school year. Each year, my students consistently share that they find listening comprehension tasks to be the most difficult and nerve-racking. Without a doubt, listening to native speakers use the language at a fast pace can be daunting for language learners of all ages. To help build my students’ listening skills as well as their cultural awareness, I strive to expose them to a wide range of culturally rich songs, videos, and audio clips. Repeated practice improves their skills and builds their confidence.

With the rise in popularity of audiobooks and podcasts over the past few years, I suddenly thought to myself, why not integrate podcasts into my classes? Rather than repeatedly playing quick audio clips for my students, I felt that a podcast could tell a compelling story. This was likely to immediately engage them and hopefully could make listening to the target language a bit less overwhelming. I found myself exploring the award-winning Radio Ambulante by NPR, despite the fact that it was not a traditional language-learning podcast. Upon browsing the multitude of culturally focused podcasts on the site, I noticed that they aligned well with my units. Many of the episodes focused on immigration experiences, while others discussed environmental challenges or global issues. When using any podcast, I focus on designing pre-listening, while- -listening, and post-listening activities for students to complete. Here are some key steps for incorporating podcasts.

1. Preview the material. Prior to listening to the podcast, I present students with the title and theme of the episode and ask them to share what they know about the particular topic. I also have them make predictions in pairs as to what the podcast might address. This sets them up for success once they start listening.

2. Encourage active listening. While students listen to each podcast section, I provide them with cloze-style activities or a series of open-ended comprehension questions, students need to fill in the blanks with missing words; you can have them focus on verbs, nouns, adjectives, or a mix. I often have them participate in think-pair-share activities and ask them to share their responses with a partner. Sometimes I simply ask them to share what they’ve understood in the target language aloud.

3. Finish with reflection. Upon listening to the entirety of the podcast, I lead a whole-class discussion in which we collectively talk about the highlights and takeaways. While improving students’ listening skills is at the forefront, podcasts also allow for a wide range of speaking and writing tasks. If you are looking for podcast options take a look at an article in Afar magazine called “15 Best Podcasts to Help You Master a New Language”, which is broken down by proficiency level and language. Instead of treating listening comprehension as a drill, we can take a more creative and engaging approach by exploring world-language podcasts.

(Available at: https://www.edutopia.org/article/using-podcasts-worldlanguage- classes.)