Masaryk University Brno Faculty of Education Diploma thesis Brno 2008 Petr Bartoš
Masaryk University Brno Faculty of Education Department of English Language and Literature Podcasting New Technology in Education
Diploma thesis Brno 2008 Supervisor: Written by: PhDr. Tamara Váňová Petr Bartoš Declaration: I declare that I have written my diploma thesis myself and used only the sources listed in the enclosed bibliography. I agree with this thesis being deposited in the Library of the Faculty of Education at the Masaryk University and with its being made available for academic purposes. ...... Petr Bartoš
Acknowledgements: I would like to express my thanks to PhDr. Tamara Váňová for her guidance and professional advice on writing the thesis and Václav Štefela for technical advice.
Contents: Introduction……………………………………………………………………….. ..3 THEORETICAL PART 1. Listening…………………………………………………………... ..5 1.1. Importance of Listening……………………...... ..5 1.2. Models of Listening Processes……………………………………. ..7 1.2.1. The Bottom Up Model……………………………………………. ..7 1.2.1.1. A List of Bottom Up Skills……………………………………….. ..7 1.2.2. The Top Down Model……………………………………………....8 1.2.2.1. A List of Top Down Skills………………………………...... …9 1.2.3. Interactive Model…………………………………………………. ..9 1.3. Types of Listening…………………………………………………10 1.3.1. One way listening………………………………………….………10 1.3.2. Two way listening………………………………………………… 11 1.4. What Makes Listening Difficult…………………………………...12 2. Learning Strategies and Styles……………………………………. 16 2.1. Learner Strategies in Language Learning……………………….... 16 2.1.1. Direct Strategies…………………………………………………... 18 2.1.2. Indirect Strategies………………………………………………….19 2.2. Learning Styles…………………………………………………….22 2.2.1. Sensory Preferences………………………………………………. 22 2.2.2. Personality Types…………………………………………………. 23 2.2.3. Desired Degree of Generality……………………………………...24 2.2.4. Biological Differences……………………………………………..25 3. Podcasting………………………………………………………… 26 3.1. Podcast – What Is It? ……………………………………………...27 3.1.1. Improper Podcast…………………………………………………. 28 3.2. Brief History of Podcasting………………………………………..29 3.3. How Does It Work? ………………………………………...... 31 3.4. Podcasting in Education…………………………………………... 34 3.5. Examples of Basic Usage of Podcasting………………………….. 36
1 3.5.1. Lectures recording………………………………………………… 36 3.5.2. Independent learning……………………………………………… 37 3.5.3. Project based learning…………………………………………….. 38 3.6. English Language Teaching Podcasts……………………...... 40 3.6.1. Types of ELT Podcasts…………………………………………… 41 3.6.1.1. Content Types of ELT Podcasts…………………………………...42 3.7. Advantages and Disadvantages of Podcasting……………………. 44 3.7.1. Advantages………………………………………………………... 44 3.7.2. Disadvantages…………………………………………...... 45 PRACTICAL PART 4. Introduction……………………..………………………………… 47 5. My Experience with Podcasting in Education………………...... 49 6. Podcasting in Language Schools……………..……………...... 52 7. Finding Podcast…………………………………………………… 55 7.1. Podcast Directory………………..……………...... 55 7.2. Podcast Client……………………………………………………...57 8. Editing Podcast………………………...... 61 9. The Evaluation of the Questionnaire……………………………....64 Conclusion………………………………….……………………………………...70 Bibliography……………………………………………………………….……....72 Resume…………………………………………………………………….…...... 76 APPENDICES Appendix A………………………………………………………….………….....77 Appendix B…………………………………………………………………….….84 Appendix C…………………………………………………………………….….86
2 Introduction We live in the culture of digital media. Young people are permanently connected by technologies. Students nowadays are constantly involved in on line chatting, blogging, computer gaming, MP3 players, text messaging, mobile phones, and Internet surfing for many of their information and social needs. During this time teachers have been finding that students use computer and the Internet as well as their MP3 players and other digital media and devices mainly for their entertainment. As a result, questions continue to arise. How can teachers capture the attention and abilities of students in these media and turn them to educational benefit? However complicated the answer to these questions might be one possible answer is “Podcasting”. Podcasting is a new way of distributing audio files that allows users to be subscribed and thus receive up to date audio files as soon as they are posted. Podcasting is a relatively new technology and educators everywhere are still exploring its possibilities. One of the many promising possibilities is podcasting dedicated to the second or foreign language learning. When studying and learning second or foreign language it is important not only to speak the language but also to understand the authentic spoken form of the language. Teachers often try to provide the students with such possibilities. However, there is not always a chance to meet and communicate with native speakers in order to practice speaking and listening. What might help in such a situation is the employment of podcasting. There are literally thousands of educational podcasts available on the Internet for students and teachers who may download and listen to them or incorporate them into their lessons and lesson plans. The aim of this thesis is to introduce podcasting both from positive and negative viewpoint and outline its potential uses in the English language learning. The theoretical part focuses at the beginning on the importance of listening and on listening in general, as podcasting is mainly employed to teach and practice listening
3 skills both inside and outside the classroom. The listening section is followed by a few chapters dealing with learning styles and strategies as they strongly influence how and how well the students learn second or foreign language. Subsequently, the third part brings comprehensive information about podcasting. Starting with the history and origin of podcasting, going through its technical specifications, looking at the possible use in education, and ending with the list of its advantages and disadvantages. The practical part of the thesis deals with my personal experience with podcasting, examines the status of podcasting in the Czech languages schools, describes authentic experience of a language teacher with podcasting, brings detailed manual how to find, download and edit podcast and, lastly, presents the results of the questionnaire about the popularity of listening practice and awareness of podcasting among students enrolled in the ONLINE_A course.
4 THEORETICAL PART
1. Listening
1.1. Importance of Listening Listening comprehension is basically a process of understanding what the speaker said. This means understanding pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, and grasping the meaning of the speaker’s utterance. Acquiring good listening and speaking skills in English is the main concern of many second and foreign language learners, and today’s English teacher needs to be well informed about current approaches to the teaching of the aural and oral skills. Second language listening relatively ignored for many years within applied linguistics, has today come into its own. Although still somewhat neglected in second language acquisition research, listening now plays a more central role in language teaching. University entrance exams, school leaving tests, and other examinations have begun to include a listening comprehension components, an acknowledgment that listening ability is an important aspect of second language proficiency (Richards, In: Flowerdew & Miller, 2005: ix). When we focus on employment of our communication skills during an average day we soon realize that we listen more than read or speak. When we listen we are able to hear and decipher what other person is saying. In communication process listening is therefore a crucial element. According to various studies researches point out that many of us spend 70 to 80 percent of our waking hours in some form of communication. Of that time, we spend about 9 percent writing, 16 percent reading, 30 percent speaking, and 45 percent listening. Studies also confirm that most of us are poor and inefficient listeners. (Hatesohl and Lee, 1993)
5 According to Bulletin (1952) as quoted in An Investigation of Factors Influencing English Listening Comprehension and Possible Measures for Improvement 1, listening is the fundamental language skill. It is the medium through which people gain a large portion of their education, their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation. In this day of mass communication, much of it oral, it is of vital importance that students are taught to listen effectively and critically. Rost (1994: 141 142) emphasizes that listening is essential in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. “Without understanding input at the right level, learning cannot begin”. The results of numerous tests highlight two facts about listening. Firstly, it shows that listening skills are as important as speaking skills; we cannot communicate face to face unless the two types of skill are developed. The second point about listening is that, under many circumstances, it is a reciprocal skill. We cannot practice listening in the same way as we can rehearse speaking, or at least the part of speaking that has do with pronunciation, because we cannot usually predict what we will have to listen to. (Anne Anderson & Lynch (1988: 3 4).
Willis (1981:134) lists a series of micro skills of listening, which she calls enabling skills. They are:
predicting what people are going to talk about guessing at unknown words or phrases without panicking using one’s own knowledge of the subject to help one understand identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant information retaining relevant points (note taking, summarizing) recognizing discourse markers, e.g., Well; Oh, finally; etc. recognizing cohesive devices, e.g., such as and which, including link words, pronouns, references, etc. understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc., which give clues to meaning and social setting 1 An Investigation of Factors Influencing English Listening Comprehension and Possible Measures for Improvement. Retrieved January 20, 2008, from http://www.aare.edu.au/05pap/guo05088.pdf 6 1.2. Models of Listening Processes
Imagine the situation that your friend has just recently come back from holiday and shares with you all his experiences he underwent. An hour later another friend of you makes a phone call asking you to come to a friend’s house for a party, telling you how to get there. How do you listen in each case? Is there any difference? With the holiday experiences you would probably listen for the general idea without focusing on details. In contrast, when listening to the directions to the friend’s house you would listen carefully not to miss any word. The way you listen to holiday experiences could be characterised as a top down listening. This means understand the meaning of the message while using background knowledge. Whereas, when you listen to the directions to the friend’s house you focus on individual words. This could be characterised as a bottom up listening. 1.2.1. The Bottom -Up Model The bottom up model assumes that listeners build understanding by starting with the smallest units of the acoustic message: individual sounds, or phonemes. These are then combined into words, which, in turn, together make up phrases, clauses, and sentences. Finally, individual sentences combine to create ideas and concepts and relationships between them (Flowerdew & Miller , 2005: 24). According to Vandergrift (2002), “…listeners build meaning from lower level sounds to words to grammatical relationships to lexical meanings in order to arrive at the final message”. Nunan (2002: 239) states that “the process is a linear one, in which meaning itself is derived as the last step in the process” 1.2.1.1. A list of bottom up skills (According to: http://www.abax.co.jp/listen/topdown.html)
• discriminating between intonation contours in sentences • discriminating between phonemes • listening for word endings
7 • recognizing syllable patterns • being aware of sentence fillers in informal speech • recognizing words, discriminate between word boundaries • picking out details • differentiating between content and function words by stress pattern • finding the stressed syllable • recognizing words with weak or central vowels • recognizing when syllables or words are dropped • recognizing words when they are linked together in streams of speech
1.2.2. The Top -Down Model The top down model of listening emphasizes the use of previous knowledge in processing a text rather than relying upon the individual sounds and words. (Flowerdew & Miller, 2005: 24) The listener actively reconstructs the original meaning of the speaker using incoming sounds as clues. In this process, the listener uses prior knowledge of the context and situation with which the listening takes place to make sense of what he or she hears. “Context and situation include such things as knowledge of the topic at hand, the speaker or speakers, and their relationship to the situation, as well as to each other and prior events” (Nunan, 2002: 239). In other words listeners according to Vandergrift (2002) use top down skills when they use background knowledge to understand the meaning of a message. Background knowledge can be knowledge of the topic, the listening context, the text type, the culture or other information stored in long term memory as schemata (typical sequences or common situations around which world knowledge is organized). “Listeners use content words and contextual clues to form hypotheses in an exploratory fashion”.
8 1.2.2.1. A list of top down skills (According to: http://www.abax.co.jp/listen/topdown.html) • discriminating between emotions • getting the gist • recognizing the topic • using discourse structure to enhance listening strategies • identifying the speaker • evaluating themes • finding the main idea • finding supporting details • making inferences • understanding organizing principals of extended speech 1.2.3. Interactive Model If listening involves both bottom up and top down processing, there should be a model that synthesizes the two. This synthesizing model is known as “Interactive” and was developed, most notably, by Rumelhart (1975). (Flowerdew & Miller , 2005: 26) Nuan (2003), was quoted in Cha (2006: 43) that before listening, learners can brainstorm vocabulary, expressions, dialogues related to a given topic. In the process, learners base their information on their knowledge of life (top down information) as they generate vocabulary and sentence (bottom up data). This process is made as an integrating form of top down and bottom up data, which is called interactive processing.
9 1.3. Types of Listening We all know that while listening we do not pay the same attention to everything we hear. Vandergrift (2002), claims that people “listen selectively, according to the purpose of the task”. This determines the type of listening required and the way in which listeners will approach a task. Brown and Yule (1983) as quoted in Anderson and Lynch (1988: 5), differentiates between two types of communication: interactional and transactional. Whereas interactional language is "listener oriented", transactional language is "message oriented". Vandergrif (2002), states that “interactional use of language usually satisfies the social needs of the participants; e.g., small talk and casual conversations. Therefore, interactional listening is highly contextualized and two way, involving interaction with a speaker”. A transactional use of language, on the other hand is used primarily to communicate information; e.g., news broadcasts and lectures. In contrast with interactional listening, transactional listening requires accurate comprehension of a message with no opportunity for clarification with a speaker; one way listening (Ibid.). 1.3.1. One way listening One way or non reciprocal listening occurs when we are not actively taking part in the exchange of a message. One listens without talking and without giving nonverbal directions to the speaker (Moore, 2005: 363). Situations in which we typically engage in one way listening are the following: Radio and television programs Public address announcements (airports, train/bus stations, stores) Speeches and lectures Telephone customer service recordings 10 1.3.2. Two way listening Two way or reciprocal listening actively involves the listener in the exchange of information. In practice, listeners provide feedback to the speaker by asking for more information or by paraphrasing the speaker’s message (Moore, 2005: 363). Situations in which we typically engage in one way listening are the following: Face to face conversation Telephone interaction
11 1.4. What Makes Listening Difficult?
Language learners often face many problems when they firs attempt to listen to a new language. Although the problems are many and various, they are not all experienced by all students, nor are they experienced to the same degree by students from different backgrounds. (Underwood, 1989: 16) Anderson and Lynch (1988: 5) states that there are several different ways in which the listener can process, or fail to process, incoming speech, which could serve as a basis for evaluating the degree of success of a particular listening performance. Anderson and Lynch (ibid.: 5) offer us some reasons why the listeners may fail to process incoming speech: The listener may not hear adequately what has been said because of competing background noise or unfamiliarity with the speaker’s accent. In these situations the speech may have been “heard” in a strictly limited sense; the listeners recognizes that he has been spoken to but has no idea what the message contained in the speech was (ibid.: 5). The listener, this is presumably a common problem for the foreign listener, can hear adequately but is unable to understand. The speech may contain words or phrase that the listener is unable to understand because of serious problems with the syntax or semantics of the foreign language. (ibid.: 5 6) There are times when the listener “switches off” and do not listen. The listener is perfectly able to hear and understand the speaker but for some reason consciously or unconsciously does not listen. For example we might suddenly remember that we have only ten minutes before the post office is closed. In this sort of situation is common to find ourselves allowing the incoming speech from our interlocutor to flow past us as a stream of sound which we make no attempt to process (ibid.: 6).
12 Further in their book Anderson and Lynch (ibid.: 48 55) have investigated and found other factors that significantly cause difficulty in listening. Among them are: Information organization Familiarity of topic Explicitness of information redundancy sufficiency of information referring expressions Type of input According to Rixon (1986: 38) there are four main areas of listening difficulty for an EFL learner, these are: English structures with the weak relationship between English sounds and the meaning in language expressions in the context, changes in the sounds when they occur in rapid, connected speech with various tones, the rhythm pattern of English speech, and different ways of pronouncing the “same” sound. Whereas Ur (1984: 16), believes that listening difficulties of the EFL learners arise from seven main reasons: Speed, Repetition, Vocabulary, "Signals", Interpretation, Concentration, and Perfectionism Speed Speed is believed to be the greatest difficulty in listening comprehension. The inability, as opposed to reading comprehension, to control how quickly a speaker speaks seems to be one of the main problems of the listener. The listeners often feel that the utterances disappear, as it were, before they can sort them out, whereas the word in a written text remain on the page where the reader can look back at them or re examine them thoroughly. In other words, it means that students who are learning to listen cannot keep up. They are often preoccupied by the meaning of one part of what they hear that they miss the next part (ibid.: 16).
13 Repetition Another difficulty that often occurs is that the listener is not always in a position to get the speaker to repeat an utterance. This happens mainly when the students listen to the radio or watch television where of course repetition cannot be asked. When student practice listening in the class they may ask the teacher to repeat the recording. Unfortunately, in many cases it is in the teacher’s hands and on his decision and not in hands of the learner whether or not to play the recording again. Despite the fact that it is almost impossible for the teacher to judge whether or not the students have understood any particular section of what they have heard (ibid.: 17). Vocabulary The listener’s limited range of vocabulary is another obstacle in listening comprehension. Even though listener can in some circumstances stop the speaker and ask for clarification, the choice of vocabulary is not in his hands, and so the listener has to do his/her best to be able to follow and understand what the speaker says. In our native language we are generally able to continue with the interaction and to respond, despite understanding only a part of what a speaker means. In the mother tongue listeners often deduce the meaning of a word from its context when it is not understood or not heard clearly. For students of foreign language the unknown word in listening comprehension might be a barrier causing them to stop and think about the meaning of the word and thus making them miss the next part of the speech. This often happens when learners give more emphases to accuracy than fluency (ibid.: 17 18). "Signals" Another failure in listening comprehension is the lack of recognition of the “signals”. When people communicate they are using many way in which they indicate that they are moving from one point to another, or giving an example, or repeat a point. They use expressions like “Firstly, …….”, “Now, ……” or “Well, …….”. They may make use of different intonation, pause for a while, make some gesture, or slightly
14 move. To a person listening to a foreign language these signals are not immediately self evident and can easily be missed (ibid.: 18). According to Underwood (1984: 18), “students need to learn to listen (and if the speaker is visible, watch) for the “signals” in order to be able to connect the various utterances in the way the speaker intended them to be connected”. Interpretation Idioms, slang, reduced forms or the meaning of non verbal clues – facial expressions, nods, gestures, tone of voice – can easily be misinterpreted by listeners from other cultures. Also students who are not familiar with the context of communication may have considerable difficulty in interpreting the words they hear even if they can understand their “surface” meaning (ibid.: 19). Concentration Another major problem in listening comprehension is the inability to concentrate. This can be caused by a number of things. Students may find the listening work uninteresting, tiring or too demanding. If the topic will be interesting they will find concentration easier. Students might be tired, thus timing of listening practice is also very important. Rather difficult my make concentration also outside factors. The poor quality of recording and a bad acoustics of the classroom may as well cause the concentration to drop (ibid.: 17). Perfectionism Another problem of listening comprehension might be the traditional approach of teachers. They often “force” the students to understand everything in the lesson. They try to make the lesson perfect by repeating and pronouncing word carefully, by grading the language to suit their level, by speaking slowly and pausing frequently (ibid.: 19). Underwood (1984: 19) claims that, “because of this, students are worried if they fail to understand a particular word or phrase when they are listening, and become discouraged by their lack of success”.
15 2. Learning Strategies and Styles
Our learners need a great deal of exposure to spoken language and sufficient practice in various listening situations to develop their listening ability. However, in addition to exposure and practice, it is important for the listener to become engaged in the process of listening and develop a desire to understand. This is not something that exposure and practice alone can bring about. The ways in which individual learners try to become engaged, understand, and their approach to learning are called learning styles and strategies (Rost, 1991: 5)
2.1. Learner Strategies in Language Learning There has been a prominent shift within the field of language learning and teaching over the last thirty years with greater emphasis being put on learners and learning rather than on teachers and teaching. In parallel to this new shift of interest, how learners process new information and what kinds of strategies they employ to understand, learn or remember the information has been the primary concern of the researchers (such as O'Malley et al, 1985; Stern, 1992; Oxford, 2001) dealing with the area of foreign language learning Hismanoglu (200). Learning strategies are steps that learners take to enhance their own learning. For language learning are strategies especially important, because they are tools for active, self directed involvement, which is essential for developing communicative competence. One well known example is the mnemonic or memory devices used in ancient times to help storytellers remember their lines. (Oxford, 2001: 1) Strategies are referred to under various names, such as learning techniques, behaviour, or actions; or learning to learn, problem solving, or study skills. No matter what they are called, strategies can make learning more efficient and effective. (Oxford, R., Crookall, D. 1989: 404) According to Ellis (1994: 539), Oxford’s taxonomy of language learning strategies is the most comprehensive classification to date. Alternative taxonomies have been offered by O'Malley and Chamot (1990) and others.
16 The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) divides strategies into two major categories: direct and indirect, which are further subdivided into 6 groups. They can be summarized as follows (Oxford, 2001: 38 – 39): DIRECT STRATEGIES I. Memory Creating mental linkages Applying images and sounds Reviewing well Employing action II. Cognitive Practising Receiving and sending messages strategies Analysing and reasoning Creating structure for input and output III. Compensation strategies Guessing intelligently Overcoming limitations in speaking and writing INDIRECT STRATEGIES I. Metacognitive Strategies Cantering your learning Arranging and planning your learning Evaluating your learning II. Affective Strategies Lowering your anxiety Encouraging yourself Taking your emotional temperature
17 III. Social Strategies Asking questions Cooperating with others Empathising with others 2.1.1. Direct Strategies Direct strategies are called language learning strategies that directly involve the target language. All direct strategies require mental processing of the language, but the three groups of direct strategies (memory, cognitive, and compensation) do this processing differently and for different purposes. Oxford divides direct strategies into Memory Strategies, Cognitive Strategies and Compensation Strategies (2001: 37 50): Memory Strategies Memory strategies relate to how students remember language. They enable learners to store verbal material and then retrieve it when needed for communication. Memory strategies, sometimes called mnemonics, reflect very simple principles, such as arranging things in order, making associations, and reviewing. Various memory-related strategies enable learners to learn and retrieve information in an orderly string (e.g., acronyms), while other techniques create learning and retrieval via sounds (e.g., rhyming), images (e.g., a mental picture of the word itself or the meaning of the word), a combination of sounds and images (e.g., the keyword method), body movement (e.g., total physical response), mechanical means (e.g., flashcards), or location (e.g., on a page or blackboard) (Oxford 2001: 364) Cognitive Strategies Cognitive strategies relate to how students thing about their learning. They are essential in learning a new language. Cognitive strategies enable the learner to manipulate the language material in direct ways, e.g., through reasoning, analysis, note- taking, summarizing, synthesizing, outlining, reorganizing 18 information to develop stronger schemas (knowledge structures), practicing in naturalistic settings, and practicing structures and sounds formally. (Oxford, 2001: 364) Compensation Strategies Compensation strategies enable learners to comprehend and produce a new language in spite of lacking knowledge in this language. Compensation strategies are intended to make up for an inadequate repertoire of grammar and, especially of vocabulary. Compensatory strategies (e.g., guessing from the context in listening and reading; using synonyms and “talking around” the missing word to aid speaking and writing; and strictly for speaking, using gestures or pause words) help the learner make up for missing knowledge. (Oxford, 2001: 364) 2.1.2. Indirect Strategies Indirect strategies according to Oxford (2001: 135) support and manage language learning without (in many instances) directly involving the target language. The indirect strategies explained here work in tandem with the direct strategies described earlier. Indirect strategies are useful in vitally all language learning situations and are applicable to all four language skills. Oxford divides indirect strategies into Metacognitive, Affective and Social (2001: 135 – 147): Metacognitive Strategies “Metacognitive” means beyond, beside, or with the cognitive. Therefore metacognitive strategies relate to how students manage their own learning. Language learners are often overwhelmed by too much “newness” – unfamiliar vocabulary, confusing rules, different writing system etc.. With all this novelty, many learners lose their focus, which can only be regained by the conscious use of metacognitive strategies such as paying attention and overviewing/linking with already familiar material. Therefore metacognitive strategies are essential for successful language learning.
19 Metacognitive strategies (e.g., identifying one’s own learning style preferences and needs, planning for an L2 task, gathering and organizing materials, arranging a study space and a schedule, monitoring mistakes, and evaluating task success, and evaluating the success of any type of learning strategy) are employed for managing the learning process overall. (Oxford, 2001: 364) Affective Strategies Affective strategies relate to students’ feelings. They provide learners with several ways of controlling their emotions, regulating their motivations, and improving their learning attitudes. Good learners are often those who know how to control their emotions and attitudes about learning. The affective side of the learner is probably one of the very biggest influences on language learning success of failure. Affective strategies, such as identifying one’s mood and anxiety level, talking about feelings, rewarding oneself for good performance, and using deep breathing or positive self-talk, have been shown to be significantly related to L2 proficiency. (Oxford, 2001: 364) Social Strategies Language is a form of social behaviour; it is communicating, and communication occurs between and among people. Social strategies thus can assist learners' learning through communication and interactions with others. Cooperating in general / with peers and with more proficient users of the target language / is imperative for language learner. Cooperation implies the absence of competition and the presence of group spirit. Social strategies (e.g., asking questions to get verification, asking for clarification of a confusing point, asking for help in doing a language task, talking with a native-speaking conversation partner, and exploring cultural and social norms) help the learner work with others and understand the target culture as well as the language. (Oxford 2001: 364) It is unlikely that learning strategies will solve all language learning problems, but “used eclectically, in conjunction with other techniques, learning strategies may well
20 prove to be an extremely useful addition to a language learner’s tool kit” (Griffiths, 2004: 17).
21 2.2. Learning Styles According to Cornett (1983: 9) learning style can be defined as a consistent pattern of behaviour but with a certain range of individual variability. In other words, learning styles are different approaches that students use in acquiring a new language or in learning any other subject. Many classifications of learning styles have been developed. According to the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia, there are over 80 learning style models. In this chapter we will discuss four dimensions of learning style that are according to Oxford (2001: 360) likely to by among those most strongly associated with second language learning (L2). These are: sensory preferences, personality types, desired degree of generality, and biological differences (ibid.) 2.2.1. Sensory Preferences Sensory preferences can be according to Oxford (2003: 3) divided into four main areas: visual , auditory , kinesthetic (movement oriented), and tactile (touch oriented). Sensory preferences refer to the physical, perceptual learning channels with which the student is the most comfortable. • Visual students like to read and obtain a great deal from visual stimulation. For them, lectures, conversations, and oral directions without any visual backup can be very confusing. • Auditory students are comfortable without visual input and therefore enjoy and profit from unembellished lectures, conversations, and oral directions. They are excited by classroom interactions in role plays and similar activities. They sometimes, however, have difficulty with written work. • Kinesthetic and tactile students like lots of movement and enjoy working with tangible objects, collages, and flashcards. Sitting at a desk for very long is not for them; they prefer to have frequent breaks and move around the room.
22 2.2.2. Personality Types Another style aspect that is important for L2 education is that of personality type, which according to Oxford (2003: 4 6) consists of four strands: extraverted vs. introverted ; intuitive random vs. sensing sequential ; thinking vs. feeling ; and closure oriented/judging vs. open/perceiving . Extroverted vs. Introverted By definition, extraverts gain their greatest energy from the external world. They want interaction with people and have many friendships, some deep and some not. In contrast, introverts derive their energy from the internal world, seeking solitude and tending to have just a few friendships, which are often very deep. Extraverts and introverts can learn to work together with the help of the teacher. Enforcing time limits in the L2 classroom can keep extraverts’ enthusiasm to a manageable level. Rotating the person in charge of leading L2 discussions gives introverts the opportunity to participate equally with extraverts (Oxford, 2003: 5) Intuitive Random vs. Sensing Sequential Intuitive random students think in abstract, futuristic, large scale, and nonsequential ways. They like to create theories and new possibilities, often have sudden insights, and prefer to guide their own learning. In contrast, sensing sequential learners are grounded in the here and now. They like facts rather than theories, want guidance and specific instruction from the teacher, and look for consistency. The key to teaching both intuitive random and sensing sequential learners is to offer variety and choice: sometimes a highly organized structure for sensing sequential learners and at other times multiple options and enrichment activities for intuitive random students (Oxford, 2003: 5). Thinking vs. Feeling Thinking learners are oriented toward the stark truth, even if it hurts some people’s feelings. They want to be viewed as competent and do not tend to offer praise easily
23 – even though they might secretly desire to be praised themselves. Sometimes they seem detached. In comparison, feeling learners value other people in very personal ways. They show empathy and compassion through words, not just behaviors, and say whatever is needed to smooth over difficult situations. Though they often wear their hearts on their sleeves, they want to be respected for personal contributions and hard work. L2 teachers can help thinking learners show greater overt compassion to their feeling classmates and can suggest that feeling learners might tone down their emotional expression while working with thinking learners (Oxford, 2003: 5 – 6). Closure oriented/Judging vs. Open/Perceiving Closure oriented students want to reach judgments or completion quickly and want clarity as soon as possible. These students are serious, hardworking learners who like to be given written information and enjoy specific tasks with deadlines. In contrast, open learners want to stay available for continuously new perceptions and are therefore sometimes called “perceiving.” They take L2 learning less seriously, treating it like a game to be enjoyed rather than a set of tasks to be completed. Open learners dislike deadlines; they want to have a good time and seem to soak up L2 information by osmosis rather than hard effort. Closure oriented and open learners provide a good balance for each other in the L2 classroom. The former are the task driven learners, and the latter know how to have fun (Oxford, 2003: 6). 2.2.3. Desired Degree of Generality This strand contrasts the learner who focuses on the main idea or big picture with the learner who concentrates on details (Oxford, 2003: 6 7). • Global or holistic students like socially interactive, communicative events in which they can emphasize the main idea and avoid analysis of grammatical minutiae. They are comfortable even when not having all the information and they feel free to guess from the context. • Analytic students tend to concentrate on grammatical details and often avoid more free flowing communicative activities. Because of their concern for precision, analytic learners typically do not take the risks necessary for 24 guessing from the context unless they are fairly sure of the accuracy of their guesses. The global student and the analytic student have much to learn from each other. A balance between generality and specificity is very useful for L2 learning. 2.2.4. Biological Differences Differences in L2 learning style can also be related to biological factors, such as biorhythms, sustenance, and location (Oxford, 2003: 7): • Biorhythms reveal the times of day when students feel good and perform their best. Some L2 learners are morning people, while others do not want to start learning until the afternoon, and still others are creatures of the evening, happily “pulling an all nighter” when necessary. • Sustenance refers to the need for food or drink while learning. Quite a number of L2 learners do not feel comfortable learning without a candy bar, a cup of coffee, or a soda in hand, but others are distracted from study by food and drink. • Location involves the nature of the environment: temperature, lighting, sound, and even the firmness of the chairs. L2 students differ widely with regard to these environmental factors. The biological aspects of L2 learning style are often forgotten, but vigilant teachers can often make accommodations and compromises when needed.
25 3. Podcasting The unrelenting development of the Interned has brought new opportunities for educators to communicate with learners. Many educational institutions took advantage of the great potential of the virtual learning and incorporated e learning into their traditional teaching methods as a part of the blended learning approaches. In comparison with traditional lectures, e learning has the advantage of allowing learners to choose when, where and how they study. M learning or mobile learning draws on the best aspects of e learning and extend its usage by employing portable wireless technologies. These are computing devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and MP3 Players. These devices, the ever increasing accessibility of technology, and the fast pace at which technology is changing today, have had an immense impact on development and expansion of students’ learning styles and strategies (Flowerdew and Miller, 2005: 165). The massive advancement of the Internet and portable wireless technologies enabled the gradual development of inherent part of e learning and m learning; Podcasting. The technology of podcasting is relatively new and yet seems to be becoming a very popular method in education, giving the learners the opportunity to study anytime and anywhere. “Like other digital technology innovation podcasting is flexible, dynamic and powerful means and has something to offer all teachers no matter what the subject of grade level” (Gura & King, 2007: 148). In language learning podcasting help popularize the area that is often not very popular among students, and that is often not given much attention – listening. What is this new technology about? How does it work? How can students or educators use it to enhance their learning or teaching, as the case may be? These are all questions we will try to find an answer below.
26 3.1. Podcast – What Is It?
Podcast is a new technology for delivering audio files to listeners over the Internet.
Wikipedia describes a podcast and podcasting as 1:
“a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. Though the same content may also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from other digital-media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added. Like the term broadcast, podcast can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting . The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster .”
Braun's (2007: 2) definition of podcast, in the first chapter of her book about podcasting, is short and simple. She describes podcast as: „ regularly produced audio and video files that are available for subscription and that can be automatically downloaded to a computer and / or portable audio and video device.“
Geoghegan & Klass (2005: 3) describe podcast simply as: “ audio content available on the Internet that can be automatically delivered to our computer or MP3 player. ” To sum it up, a podcast is, when we omit the technical specifications, an audio file that someone posted on the internet that can be automatically delivered to your computer and listen to whenever you feel. It is just like a radio broadcast, but over the internet. For that reason Podcast is often referred to as "radio on demand 2" or "time shifted radio 3". The term “podcasting” originates from the Apple Computer Corporation’s iPod, which is a portable digital audio player that allows user to download music from their computer directly to the device for later listening. The term "podcasting" is a 1 Podcast . Wikipedia. Retrieved January 22, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast 2 Biever, C. (2005) Podcasters' deliver radio-on-demand Retrieved June 12, 2008, from http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6982 3 Greeny, R. (2004) Podcast: Time shifted radio listening gets a new name. Retrieved June 12, 2008, from http://www.webtalkguys.com/102304.shtml 27 blend of the words "iPod" and "broadcasting". This term is no longer related only to iPod but refers to any software and hardware combination that permits automatic downloading of audio files for listening at the user’s convenience 1. 3.1.1. Improper Podcast With the boom of podcasting, which have increased prominence of the production and consumption of audio content, many people embarked on the journey of creating their own show. This often results in creation of audio shows that are lacking the main features of podcast. That is the ability to be “pushed” to subscriber. To make it clear what is and is not a podcast see this comparison by Gura& King (2007: 149): Audio Post: single audio files produced on the Internet which are available for audience consumption when needed Audio Blog or Voice Blog: an ongoing series of audio files are produced and posted in anticipation of audience use. This is done periodically but continually. Podcast: an ongoing series of audio files that are produced, posted, “pushed” to subscribers via RSS feed and delivered as soon as they are produced. Although some of the audio files are wrongfully called podcasting they all fulfil the same function i.e. to be listened to. 1 7 things you should know about…Podcasting. Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7003.pdf 28 3.2. Brief History of Podcasting Podcasting’s origins are firmly rooted in web radio. A combination of factors and technologies contributed to its eventual birth in 2003. Among the pioneers of podcasting are Adam Curry and Dave Winer 1.
In 2000 Curry and Winer collaborated in using RSS technology and their media content to provide the first prototype of podcast. Now that there was some audio content appearing Curry started to work on software, later known as podcatcher, which would automatically download audio files to his computer and further synchronize them to his iPod. First podcatcher software iPodder alias news feed aggregator or collector for podcasts, checked for new updates to see where to go and download the audio file in a form of MPEG 1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3). The MP3 was then automatically transferred to an iPod (Van Orden, 2005) 2.
By the late 2004, detailed articles on podcasts became available online and in less than 12 months, the podcasting phenomenon exploded with more than two million hits generated for a “podcasting” Google search. Less than a year later, the popularity of podcasts had has become so popular that Apple Computers, Inc. integrated podcasts in its iTunes software 3.
As there was a huge number of unorganized amateur podcasts on the Internet, sites that list podcast (Fig. 3.2.1.) became a vital resource in finding the kind of content that would interest different individuals. Sites like podcasters.org, podcast.net and ipodder.org became a vital service for a growing number of listeners.
One can say that podcasting in not a novelty. The possibility to stream and download audio are as old as the World Wide Web, and the RSS specification that enabled to spread podcasting has been around for several years. What is new about podcasting is the ease of publication, ease of subscription, and ease of use across multiple environments, typically over computer speakers, over a car stereo, and over 1 History of Podcasting . Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.podcastblaster.com/history of podcasting.html 2 The History of Podcasting. Retrieved June 18, 2008, from http://www.how to podcast tutorial.com/history of podcasting.htm 3 History of Podcasting . Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.podcastblaster.com/history of odcasting.html 29 headphones—all while the listener is walking or driving or travelling or otherwise moving about (Cambel, 2005). Figure 3.2.1.: The podcastpickle.com directory
30 3.3. How Does It Work?
The non profit association EDUCAUSE, whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology, describes how podcast works as follows 1:
Podcasting is a unique innovation in content publishing based in large part on its inherent simplicity and ease of use. Users simply connect their portable audio devices to their computer, log on to a podcasting subscription service, and subscribe to that site’s feeds. Audio content is then “pushed” from the original source directly and automatically to the user’s iPod or MP3 player. All of the tools needed to create, modify, and distribute podcasts are within reach of anyone with a reasonably well-configured laptop. The desire to improve the quality of podcasts has resulted in rich Web-based resources outlining principles of sound, equipment recommendations, and shared experiences. Podcasting demonstrates the power of audio over text (listening as opposed to reading), allowing podcast users to listen and learn while they walk, jog, ride the bus, or are otherwise away from their computer screen. Perhaps most significantly, podcast technology empowers users to publish audio content directly and seamlessly onto the Web.
In podcasting we have to take into consideration two entities. These two entities are the podcaster (broadcaster) and the listener (audience). Every podcast begins with the podcaster who has to do several things to create a podcast. These steps are in a simplified way summarized in the following four stages 2:
Stage 1
Podcaster creates audio content. The audio content is usually in MP3 format which delivers almost CD quality sound. Next, the podcaster must possess web space for posting the audio content on a website for potential listeners. Then the podcaster must upload the media files to his web space from where the listeners will be able to reach that file.
1 7 things you should know about…Podcasting . Retrieved June 25, 2008, from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7003.pdf 2 What is a Podcast . Retrieved June 25, 2008, from ttp://help.ziepod.com/index.php?docid=WHATISPODCAST 31 Stage 2
Then, the podcaster informs subscribers, that is listeners, about where he puts that audio file and what it is about, by creating a new entry in the feed file and entering descriptive information, such as full address of that audio file, title, and short description. Figure 3.3.1.: How Podcast Works 1
Stage 3
If listener subscribes to that feed file via podcast client – podcatcher (Fig.3.3.2), podcatcher periodically checks that feed file and looks for new entries. When there is a new one, the software notifies the subscriber (listener) of those new episodes so that he can take an appropriate action, such as initiating its download.
1 Retrieved and adapted from: http://help.ziepod.com/PodcastIntro.png 32 Stage 4
After detection of a new episode, since podcatcher knows where to find that audio file, the listener can simply download the audio MP3 file to the computer and further to a portable audio player, and listen to it instantly (streaming) or later. Figure 3.3.2.: Podcast client ZiePOD in use 1
1 Retrieved July 05, 2008, from http://www.rozhlas.cz/podcast/recenze/_galerie/446054?type=image&pozice=1 33 3.4. Podcasting in Education More people are learning through the Internet, via a single class or an entire program. However, the Web is a medium in which instructional techniques are still being developed. One of the recent developments resulted in the creation of podcasting that has been soon adopted by many educators for educational purposes. Podcast is an audio file that is possible to download from the Internet and as such, can be used to supplement online and face to face classes, allowing students to personalize their learning and freeing faculty to try more interactive teaching methods in the classroom (Farkas, 2007: 190). Furthermore, podcasting is unlimited resource of authentic material which can use for teaching as well as learning foreign languages. Not every school has resources to employ a native speaker to confront the students with authentic speech. With podcasting this practice is infinitely easier. Since its “birth”, the interest in podcasting for educational purposes is constantly growing. The reasons might be several. Gura & King (2007: 152) believe that podcasting brings opportunity for many teachers to explore areas of teaching that are attractive, but which few teachers actually manage to make practice. Harold in Thomas (2006) claims that podcasting may create a new paradigm of teaching and learning; note taking, for example, is "almost history," and podcasting is helping students to think more creatively and critically: "The idea is that they can actually ruminate, and listen again to lectures and tutorials as a way of encouraging critical, analytical approaches." Podcasting become alternative method of learning which can help to improve students listening skills. Most of producers of podcasts are educators who use this technology to communicate with their students outside the traditional class.
34 Podcasting is also a tool which allows teachers to share their ideas and suggestions in order to improve their method of teaching 1. Gura& King (2007: 159) believe that “podcasts can be used to enhance, enrich and extend the scope, reach, and efficacy of classroom activities” in addition, they claim that “podcast content that is just right for a given instructional situation becomes a resource of exceptional potential”. Podcasting in education may have many forms and purposes. Scott Huette (2006)2, offers several suggestions: Lectures online Presentations Supplemental Material Primary Sources Lectures for distance learning to facilitate self paced learning for re mediation of slower learners to allow faculty to offer advanced and or highly motivated learners extra content for helping students with listening and/or other disabilities for multi lingual education to provide the ability for educators to feature guest speakers from remote locations to allow educators to escape the tedium of lecturing to offer a richer learning environment
1 Podcasting . Wikitech. Retrieved July 15, 2008, from http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Podcasting 2 Huette, S. (2006). Podcasting . Retrieved July 17, 2008, from http://tep.uoregon.edu/shared/blogswikispodcasts/Podcasting.pdf 35 3.5. Examples of Basic Usage of Podcasting Podcasting have brought us inexhaustible amount of authentic listening materials which might be used especially in the language learning classes. Gura & King (2007: 182) believe that “bringing authentic material into the learning experience has long been a favoured practice of teachers and podcasting is one way that technology makes this previously difficult to achieve practice infinitely easier.” Podcast often provides content that is not available through other means. If the teachers use the material effectively, it might bring the real word into the classroom and raise the spirit of the class. Kelly at.el.(2002) 1 claims that “exposing the students to cultural features generates a deeper understanding of and interest in the topic. On one hand, the students develop their ability to zero in on relevant information, and on the other, they learn how to disregard what is not relevant. As students pool their individual strengths they gain confidence in being able to function in an English speaking society.” Owing to podcasting, there are all kinds of listening materials and activities created to these materials on the Internet. The possible usage of such a material in the traditionally organized classes may vary while staying within the curriculum. 3.5.1. Lectures recording One typical use of podcasting in education is recording lectures that students can later download from the school web pages and listen whenever they want. These lecture podcasts are recorded for reviewing or for making up in the case of students who miss a class. Over the past years, more faculties at colleges and universities have begun podcasting lectures. For example Stanford University has its own page at iTunes (itunes.stanford.edu) that includes publicly available podcast lectures as well as private section for students of specific classes (Farkas, 2007: 190). 1 Kelly at.el.(2002). Effective Ways to Use Authentic Materials with ESL/EFL Students . Retrieved July 20, 2008, from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Kelly Authentic.html 36 Malan (2007) 1 in his study describes the usage of recorded lectures at Harvard University as very effective. Traditional lectures were recorded and then podcast to allow students to review them if they wished. He claims that publishing the podcast increased subscribers by 100 fold from the 60 actually enrolled in his class to over 6000 from all over the globe. However, many educators believe that if the lecture is provided as podcast the students will skip classes and therefore the attendance will drop (Gura& King, 2007: 147) Anyhow, the features and potentials of podcasting give us more variations in use than just reproducing the lectures and making them available for review. One of them might be use of the audio materials for independent learning outside of the classroom. 3.5.2. Independent learning Teachers frequently supplement teaching of foreign languages with audio tapes to provide students with authentic material to listen to. These materials are primarily used for listening in the class. The advent of podcasting brings the teachers the opportunity to extend the listening practice outside the classroom wall. As it was said before, there are thousands of podcast available on the internet waiting to be listened to. These audio materials are of different styles, topics, levels and languages. Gura & King state that, “one of the ways that podcasting enhances teaching and learning is to free the learning experience from the classroom and school, even from the home where homework and studying are done, making it a truly anywhere, anytime opportunity”. According to Godwin Jones (2005) “the popularity of MP3 players among students means that students could easily download podcasts in the target language (e.g., from
1 Malan, J.D. (2007). Podcasting Computer Science E-1.Retrieved July 20, 2008 from http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~malan/publications/fp150 malan.pdf 37 a newspaper site, blog, radio program) for listening on the go”. Podcasting and MP3 players thus allow the listener to control their listening as well as learning. Podcasts might be employed in various ways outside the class. They might be used as preparatory materials for up coming lesson, materials for reflection after lesson, complementary material to lessons or simply as a recommended material for self study. An example of such a study approach might be the Englishcaster site (www.englishcaster.com). This site contains links to a number of podcasts for EFL, ESL, TESOL, TEFL students who are interested in self study. Each podcast on this web page is summarized and available for review by students or teachers who use them. Besides reviewing students or teachers can listen to, rate, review and submit podcasts, as well as other English study resources. 3.5.3. Project based learning Project based learning (PBL) is a model for classroom activity that exchanges the classroom practices of short, isolated, teacher centred lessons for learning activities that are long term, interdisciplinary, student centred, and integrated with real world issues and practices 1. Owing to its popularity, relatively simple and low cost production, podcasting has rapidly become popular medium for both teachers and students in project based learning. Nowadays teachers and students are using podcasting as an alternative to student produced newspapers or exchange letters, creating a student produced Podcast instead. Student created podcast serves as medium for student expressions, news, interviews, and related themes specific to the student’s own school (Shelley) 2. This form of PBL according to Gura & King (2007: 154), “enables students to acquire new knowledge and skills in the course of developing, planning, and creating a product of 1 Why do project-based learning? Retrieved July 22, 2008 from http://pblmm.k12.ca.us/PBLGuide/WhyPBL.html 2 Podcasting in the classroom . Retrieved July 20, 2008 from http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~nshelley/index.html 38 performance and provides students an opportunity to developed higher order thinking skills through hypothesizing, questioning, and analyzing”. By recording audio and later publishing it online students might address wider audience and share their work not only with the rest of the class or school but also with a partner school, parents or worldwide audience. Podcasts according to Fryer 1 can “provide a virtual “window” into schools, permitting a variety of interested stakeholders to gain an in depth understanding of the issues students are studying, the new things they are learning, and the evidences of learning (student projects) they are creating as a result of their work both at home and at school”. As an example of such a student created podcast might serves The Bardwell Road Centre Podcast (http://bardwellroad.podomatic.com). This podcast is created by Geoff Taylor, teaching EFL to adults in St Clare's, a private school/college in Oxford, and his pupils. This podcast is as Taylor claims 2 nearly always produced by/with adult students in his morning class, which is lowest level, pre intermediate class. It's normally about 8 10 minutes long, and on a unified theme or topic. 1 Fryer, W.A. Classroom Audio Podcasting . Retrieved July 30, 2008 from http://www.wtvi.com/TEKS/05_06_articles/classroom audio podcasting.html 2 Introduction to The Bardwell Road Center Podcast. Retrieved July 28, 2008 from http://geofftaylor.wikispaces.com/ 39 3.6. English Language Teaching Podcasts English language teaching (ELT) podcasts can be used for both intensive and extensive listening activities. However, ELT podcasts are particularly suitable for extensive listening, for the purpose of motivating students’ interest in listening to English, and providing them with exposure to native speakers’ speech (Rost, In: Man Man SZE, 1991: 119). According to Guru and King (2007: 147), “ELS students have a natural need to consume content that is rich in listening to spoken language and instructional programs designed for them require constant acquisition of new content to satisfy that need.” Stanley (2006) 1 states that “podcasts offer language teachers and students a wide range of possibilities for extra listening both inside and outside of the classroom. Supplementing the (often) scripted and stilted textbook listenings with the real life authentic conversations you can find on many podcasts is an attractive option for language teachers (not to mention their students).” If chosen carefully, extracts from podcasts can provoke stimulating discussion, and bring different variations of voices and varieties of English into the classroom, and podcasts can be selected because their theme ties into the curriculum (Stanley, 2006). Stanley (2006) further claims that at more advanced levels, students can be encouraged to download and listen to entire episodes of podcasts that we choose for them for homework. If we add listening activities, which can be as simple as a note taking or/and summary writing task (both of which require minimal teacher preparation), then this becomes more focused and rewarding for the students. As podcasting matures, the popularity of this technology grows as well as the number of educators adopting it. This large number, however, tends to sort itself out into an ample, but finite number of approaches and practices. (King & Gura, 2007: 181). 1 Stanley, G. Podcasting: Audio on the Internet comes of age. Retrieved August 20, 2008 from http://www writing.berkeley.edu/TESL EJ/ej36/int.html 40 3.6.1. Types of ELT Podcasts There are various types of podcasts teachers and educators might use with their students. Stanley (2005) 1 divides them into 3 sections: Authentic podcast Teacher created podcast Students created podcast Authentic podcast Such podcasts are often not aimed at ELT students but can be a rich source of listening. Many of these will only be suitable for use with advanced students, but others, such as 6 Minute English (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/how2/) from BBC World service or Listen to English – Learn English (http://www.listen to english.com/), are ideal for use with upper and lower lever classes. Such podcast according to King & Gura (2007: 201) “can be played easily to the class in a whole group instruction activity, substituting the digital audio items for textbooks or supplementary hard copy items”. Teacher podcasts These podcasts, as the heading suggests, are created by teachers, and are usually aimed at helping students learn by producing listening content that is not available elsewhere, or that gives a local flavour. The Bob and Rob Show (http://www.thebobandrobshow.com) and The Word Nerds (http://thewordnerds.org/) podcasts are two very different types of teacher produced podcast. King & Gura (2007: 201 ) state that such a podcast material is “not intended to take place of teaching but rather to extend the reach and availability of the teacher’s voice to times other than class time” 1 Podcasting for ELT. Retrieved July 07, 2008 from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/podcasting elt 41 Student podcasts These podcasts are produced by students, but often with teacher help. Students can listen to these and experience the culture and hear about the lives and interests of other students from around the world. For example English Conversations (http://englishconversations.org/) is a podcast largely made by students for students. King & Gura (2007: 201) believe that “creating podcast in a form of a project can be highly motivating opportunities to produce an authentic product/performance to be presented to real audience”. 3.6.1.1. Content Types of ELT Podcasts The range of ELT podcasts is growing, and many are supported by transcripts and various exercises. A brief survey of forms of ELT podcasts, adapted from Man Man SZE (2007) 1, reveals the following content types: Comprehensive (e.g., http://www.thebobandrobshow.com) These are podcasts that cover a wide range of content types, such as traditional listening comprehension activities, interviews, and vocabulary. A well known “comprehensive” podcast is the one quoted above, created by Bob and Rob, teachers of English at Japanese universities. Whole lessons (e.g., http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com) These are whole lessons based on a podcast. The podcast quoted above, for example, makes use of a news story in each episode. The text of the news story is provided, and is accompanied by the audio file. There is then a lesson plan accompanied with worksheet materials. In effect, these are ready made lessons based on podcasts which teachers can use in the classroom directly. Vocabulary, idioms, etc. (e.g., http://premiumenglish.podbean.com) This is a popular type of podcast, probably because it is easy to produce. In this kind of podcast, the host chooses some vocabulary items and explains their usage. 1Developing Students’ Listening and Speaking Skills Through ELT Podcasts. Retrieved August 18, 2008 from http://podcasterpaul.wikispaces.com/file/view/06_EJ_ELTPodcasts.pdf 42 Conversations with a script (e.g., http://englishconversations.org/) These podcasts contain conversations between native speakers. To help less proficient learners, each episode is accompanied by the script, for learners to refer to while listening to the conversation. Jokes (e.g., http://www.manythings.org/jokes) These are podcasts containing jokes. Because they usually play on language, they encourage careful listening by the learner. Stories (e.g., http://celticmythpodshow.com) These are usually story read aloud. They may or may not be followed by listening comprehension questions. Poetry (e.g., http://classicpoetryaloud.com/) – These are podcast containing the great poems of the past. One can listen to the declamation and read the poem. Many non native students of English find that listening to poetry gives an added dimension to their understanding and appreciation of the language. More podcasts for students can be found by looking at educational podcast directories such as The Education Podcast Network (http://epnweb.org) or RECAP (Russell Educational Consultancy and Productions) at (http://recap.ltd.uk/podcasting/).
43 3.7. Advantages and Disadvantages of Podcasting The podcasting technology as any other teaching or learning tool has many advantages as well as disadvantages. In this chapter we will take in depth look at them. So what are the advantages and disadvantages of podcasting? 3.7.1. Advantages Podcasting offers an opportunity to bridges the traditional classroom setting with a medium that is both popular and part of students’ daily lives. The primary benefits of podcasting for the students and educators are quite simple. Foster & Havemann (2008) 1 believe that there are several advantages of using podcasts in the class for lectures and students assignments. “First, podcasting is an exciting and novel means for students to take a more active role in their own learning experience. As students realize their podcast assignments may be published online with potentially hundreds of listeners through free podcast directories, their attention to the quality and detail of their assignments may improve. Second, podcasting is adaptable to the students' learning needs. Students can access the material whenever and as often as they would like, thereby reinforcing critical concepts or details they may have missed in the original classroom lecture. Finally, assignments that require students to generate, edit, and publish their own podcasts reinforce critical communication skills such as writing text that will be orally presented online or in a classroom”. To summarize what was written above Podcast: makes it possible for students to remind connected to the school, their teachers, and their peers, but untethered to even the web, computers, wireless, and networks while they are of on their own (King & Gura, 2007: 189). provides repeat access to lectures – for the students who where absent from the class or for reviewing 1 The Basics of Educational Podcasting: Enhancing the Student Learning Experience Retrieved August 20, 2008 from http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/document_mb004 44 could assist students with different learning styles, international student with language barriers, and some types of learning disabilities (Field, 2008) 1 is portable and always available – thanks to mobile phones and MP3 players students can listen to the podcast wherever and whenever they want is automatic – students no longer have to visit specific web and download new posts. Thanks to subscription the new content of the web site is automatically pushed to the student’s computers invites global audience – when students created podcast is posted on the Web anyone in the world can download and listen to it is cheap – most of the podcast available on the Internet are for free and the creation of podcast is also a low cost process 3.7.2. Disadvantages There are by all means more advantages than disadvantages that accompany podcasting. Still there are disadvantages that should be mentioned though some of which are related to the use of any technology: Bandwidth – or a rate of data transfer, this means the speed of the Internet. The lower the speed the more time one will need for downloading MP3 audio file No interaction – listening to podcast as a part of asynchronous learning makes it impossible for students to ask questions or interact Training is needed – before teachers starts to produce podcast either alone or together with the class, they have to learn how to use the software and hardware needed for podcasting Inability to skim – imagine that you have downloaded 20 minutes of podcast and would like to find out whether it is suitable for any usage, to skim a book or a magazine is a lot easier Lecture attendance – by posting lectures on the Internet the attendance of the lectures might drop
1Enhanced Lecture Podcasting Benefits. Retrieved August 25, 2008 from http://edc.carleton.ca/blog/index.php/2008/02/12/enhanced lecture podcasting benefits/ 45 Money – some professional podcast that guarantee good quality content might charge some fee. Also Internet connection, computer and MP3 player do cost money Time – although there are aggregators for finding and downloading podcast, it might be still difficult to find relevant podcast. Also planning and integrating podcast into teaching requires certain time
46 PRACTICAL PART 4. Introduction I first learned about podcasting two years ago from my colleague who is a fan of the Internet as well as of all the new conveniences the World Wide Web provides. At that time he was regularly listening to a podcast created by an editorial stuff of the gaming server of the LEVEL magazine (http://www.hrej.cz/). This podcast offers discussions on the latest news from the world of computer games. After our debate about advantages of podcasting I searched the Internet and find out that this “new” technology is often used for teaching and learning languages. I must confess that I was very excited about this finding. The possibility that I may improve my English language and not only that by listening to someone’s narration, while being on my way to or from work, school or wherever, was exciting. I immediately searched the Internet again and tried to find some podcast that would be worth listening to. Later on I have tried several shows that were more or less acceptable until I came across “The Bob and Rob Show” (http://www.thebobandrobshow.com). This is or rather was, as the regular podcast lessons ended this September (2008), regular British and American English lessons for EFL/ESL students. These lessons were created by Bob and Rob, American and British teachers currently living and teaching English at Japanese universities. These podcast included conversations on various topics, idioms, grammar and slang both in British and American English together with transcription of each lesson. By listening to this show I have realized that podcast might be used in the language classes to substitute often boring and dull listening exercises on the course books’ CDs or tapes. However, as I am not a practicing teacher I have not had the opportunity to try to use podcast in a real class. Thanks to Mrs. Váňová I had a chance to try it out in the online English course called ONLINE_A. All my experiences are described and clearly illustrated in this practical part of my thesis.
47 In the following chapters I describe how I worked with podcasting in the ONLINE_A course and clearly illustrate how to find podcast, download and edit it. Further I describe how I inquired 180 language schools about usage of podcasting and lastly the result of my questionnaire about popularity of listening practice and awareness of podcasting among ONLINE_A students.
48 5. My Experience with Podcasting in Education During the spring term in 2007 I worked as an e tutor in the online course of English language (ONLINE_A) at Masaryk University. This course was designed by Mrs. Váňová and could be taken by any student of the university no matter of their program of study or level of English. This course have become quite popular and currently is enrolled by about 4 000 students despite the fact that the students will receive if they accomplish all assignments, only two credits. The reasons of its popularity might be various but in my opinion student like the relative liberty they have in studying this subject. They do not have to attend any classes and may work as they want and whenever they please. My task in this course was to attend to students’ inquiries about English grammar, correcting their mistakes and take part in online discussions on various topics. Apart from this, I was asked by Mrs.Vaňová to find a suitable podcast for such a variety of students, if necessary edit it and create some suitable exercises to these podcasts. We agreed that the podcast should be for intermediate to upper intermediate students, not longer than 5 minutes, easy to be listened to and understood, and preferably interesting. To check the understanding, every listening should have been accompanied with a transcript and a “fill in the gap” exercise. We estimated that students would not be willing to listen to something longer that 5 minutes and something that is boring and hard to absorb. I searched the Internet and found one podcast that fully fulfilled our criteria; Breaking News English (www.breakingnewsenglish.com). Breaking News English is EFL and ESL podcast, created by Sean Banville, a Master in TEFL/TESL, about current events, accompanied with lesson plans (see Appendix A). Anyone, as the author has given permission, is allowed to print out and duplicate paper copies of the lessons for study purposes and the MP3 files may be downloaded and used for teaching purposes in class or for listening practice by students 1.
1 Retrieved November 02, 2008 from http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/copyright.html 49 I think that this podcast is ideal material for teachers to use in the class. Why I think so might be apparent from the author’s description of its features 1:
The lessons are free. There is a new lesson every three days. All lessons are based on stories currently in the news as the world's news breaks, teach it. All lessons are also downloadable in Word.doc and PDF formats. Listening files can be downloaded in mp3 format or subscribed to via a podcast. Classroom handouts are readily reproducible. There is a graded listening with each lesson. Teachers can easily copy and paste the parts of the lessons they want to use.
Moreover, the listening files are not longer than 3 minutes and some of the lessons are of two levels of difficulties – easy and hard. Thanks to this podcast my further work was very easy. I downloaded several podcasts and edited (how to edit see bellow in the section Editing ) them, as the listening files contained information about the origin of the podcast and I did not want the students to visit the web page of the podcast and to look at the answers to the exercises that were part of the listening. When I edited the listenings, adapted the while listening exercises and converted them to the IS (Informational System of Masaryk University) format I posted them to a ROPOT (Revision, Opinion Poll and Testing) section in IS. Václav Štefela, as a technical administrator, later embedded the exercises among others in the Online_A course and enabled the students to download the listening files for further use. I do not have any concrete numbers of how many students took this exercise or how popular these exercises were, but there were several positive reactions and I was recently told by Mrs. Váňová that these exercises are still very popular among the students.
1 Retrieved November 02, 2008 from http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/about.html 50 The only drawback I am aware of in this “project” was the voice of the speaker. If you listen again and again the same reserved, languid voice you might get tired, bored and exhausted.
51 6. Podcasting in Language Schools As a part of my research, to see how podcast is known, used or popular among educators, I addressed 180 language schools mainly from Brno and Prague, but also from various regions in the Czech Republic, with the following questions:
Do you use podcast in your classes or as a support to your classes? In case your answer is positive, how do you use it? How often? How are the reactions of the students? Do you have any favourite podcast?
The result of the short questionnaire was rather surprising. From the 180 language schools polled only 31 responded and only 3 admitted using podcasts in their classes.
Some of the representatives of the language schools who responded negatively and thus do not use podcast for educational purposes admitted that they had never heard of podcasting (EUROLINGUA), had to search information about podcasting in encyclopaedia (SMAJL), do not use podcast because of the lack of interest from their students (Miramare Language School), do not normally use podcasts, as they posses a huge range of materials and employ a number of native speakers (Brno English Centre), or they “give way to more elaborated methods as e learning solutions Tell me more ” (Skřivánek s.r.o.).
Among those who responded positively were Bellschool, Green Gate and AKCENT International House Prague.
Ms. Bilovska, the director of the studies from the Bellschools, stated in her email that they are working on extending podcasts into their classes, and that the use of podcasts among the lecturers is very individual. Some lecturers use podcast regularly whereas others sporadically just to vary the classes. She further stated that they often use podcasts together with comprehension questions created by the lecturers and that these podcast are appreciated mainly by the students from the company classes and the students preparing themselves for the Cambridge examinations. According to
52 Ms. Bilovska generally popular podcast are those created by BBC and here favourite is Guardian daily podcast.
Ms. Slavíčková, the director of the language school Green Gate, claims that they are using podcast occasionally and mainly in Business and Financial English classes. They are using mainly BBC podcasts and she hopes that the podcast will be employed more in the future. She also claims that there is not enough information about podcasting and according to her to find podcast is rather difficult. The most elaborated response came from Miss. Rolińska (see Appendix B) who is a lector at the language school AKCENT International House Prague. Miss. Rolińska downloads podcast from BBC Radio and uses this audio with her students or referrers the students to those podcasts and makes them aware of the fact that the podcasts can be downloaded and thus listened to as many times as they wish. According to Rolińska, having the possibility of downloading podcasts provides a wealth of new resources, resources that are topical, up to date, authentic and relevant. She believes that educators can bring more voices and various accents into the classroom by using listening; listening that the students will find relevant to their job, interests, etc. Educators can build up a database of recordings, their own portable library and if they accompany the recordings with worksheets, graded for different levels, then even better. Miss. Rolińska started experimenting with podcasts two years ago in her advanced conversation class. As she states, she had been teaching them for some time when she realized that too much routine had sneaked into her teaching and decided to bring in the BBC podcasts. Her reasons were plain: “It's so much easier. You don't have to be at standby, sort of hunting to get the right programme; you don't have to have all this bulky equipment like tape recorder, etc. You just go onto www.bbc.co.uk and browse the podcasts and hit the download button. And it's there on your mp3 player. And the recording is of excellent quality. And you can play it as many times as you want. And you can email that to your students if they wish to listen again. So swift, so easy.”
53 She started playing around with the podcasts. “Using Audacity, I was chopping them up into smaller sections which were easier to digest and absorb.” Rolińska claims that the students found listening to podcasts a worthwhile experience. “I could see they were struggling at the beginning. But their motivation levels were soaring. We were listening to little fragments again and again. Soon I gave them the control over the device so that they could rewind as many times as they wanted. It was intensive listening practice and they found it useful.” After some time she conducted a survey to see how her students felt about the listening lessons. The result was positive, “all of the students were happy and enthusiastic about the focus being directed to listening. Most of them were happy to use the authentic materials. They found them difficult and challenging but the challenge was motivating not demotivating. They were willing to proceed and do more. They believed that soon they would see the results”. Rolińska believes that “listening to podcasts gave her students a great opportunity to learn live and natural language with all the features of spoken grammar, spoken discourse markers, hesitations, etc. It gave them the possibility of observing the mechanism of connected speech and I she thinks that it was a very constructive learning experience for them”. From this short research it is obvious that podcast is not very popular tool among teachers at language schools and that some educators do not have even the slightest idea what podcasting is about. Although it has many advantages, the majority of educators at language schools does not employ podcasting for listening practice and probably still rely on audio cassettes or CD enclosed to their course books.
54 7. Finding Podcast Now when we know what the podcast is the other step is to find podcasts we would enjoy and which would meet our requirements. Finding podcast is relatively easy thanks to many web applications that update information about most of the shows available on the Internet. Searching for podcasts might be a wonderful experience as you can come across shows you would never thought you might be interested in. All you need is a computer with an Internet connection, a web browser (Mozzila, Explorer, etc.) or podcast client (podcatcher), headphones or speakers. Although finding podcast is relatively easy to choose one that would satisfy our needs might be a matter of a few minutes or several days. It all depends on our taste and type of the show we are looking for. Fortunately most of the shows are well explored and exhaustively mapped. Invaluable tool for finding podcasts is “podcast directory” 7.1. Podcast Directory A podcast directory can be described as an inventory of many, sometimes several thousands, of podcasts submitted and divided into various categories. Thanks to this directory finding podcast you are looking for is effortless. You can choose from several available on the Internet. Among them are:
Podcast Alley (http://podcastalley.com) Podcast Pickle (http://podcastpickle.com) Podcastdirectory.com (http://www.podcastdirectory.com) Podcast Central (http://podcastcentral.com)
Now, if you for instance use Podcastdirectory.com (Fig. 7.1.1.) you will find out that this particular directory offers you about twenty six various categorises of podcast to choose from. These categories are ranging from art, through business, comedy, education to science, TV and film.
55 Figure 7.1.1.: PodcastDirectory.com On the directory’s web page you can not only find neatly arranged podcast but also learn most of the information you need: the name of the podcast, titles of recent shows, the RSS feed, links to the site. Most directories also allow you to listen to entire podcast straight from the directory, which is an ideal way to get to know the content and the quality of the sound. As majority of podcasts have their own web site, by visiting them you can learn more information about the creators, about the show and discover additional materials such as a handout, lesson plan or entire lesson.
56 7.2. Podcast Client When you finally find desired podcasts or some that you think might be useful, you can save their web page among your favourite bookmarks and visit them from time to time to check whether there is a new show to listen to or to download. But why would you bother to do that when someone or rather something might do it for you? Podcast client (podcatcher) is free software that helps you to search and download new podcasts. Owing to this user friendly software the podcast will automatically come to you. There are just a few steps you have to do to get each new show of your favourite podcast automatically downloaded to your computer. First you have to choose podcast client you will use. They are several on the Internet you can choose from, regardless your operating system (Linux, Windows or Mac OS X). Among the most used are: Doppler (www.dopplerradio.net) iPodder (www.apple.com/itunes) Juice (juicereceiver.sourceforge.net) myPodder (www.podcastready.com), and Ziepod (www.ziepod.com) The best place to compare, choose and discuss the various podcatchers and their features is the web site Podcatcher Matrix (www.podcatchermatrix.org). Now that you have found some podcast and installed podcatcher you have to make one important thing to make it all works, to subscribe. The automatic downloading of your podcasts is accomplished by subscribing to the podcast. To subscribe means to set the podcatcher to receive the RSS feed (Figure 7.2.1.). This can be done manually by copying and pasting the RSS feed address into the podcatcher.
57 Figure 7.2.1.: An RSS feed icon Most of the podcast clients work on the same principles. You install one, you subscribe (the podcast) you receive (a show). For step by step demonstration of how to use podcatcher, how to subscribe and how to download podcast I have chosen Ziepod and a podcast called Listen to English learn English! . First you download the podcast client (Figure 7.2.2.) from its web page, in this time from www.ziepod.com, and install it onto your computer. Figure 7.2.2.: Podcast Client When you first open the client you have several options. You can rate podcast episodes, search episodes on the Internet, directly listen to podcasts, download them for your MP3 Player or you can easily subscribe to podcasts and get notified of new episodes.
58 To subscribe new podcast go to “Subscriptions” section and press Add Add Podcast. (Fig. 7.2.3.) Figure 7.2.3.: Add Podcast A new window will appear that will ask you to enter the podcast feed address. The only thing you have to do is to copy the address of the RSS feed of your podcast, paste it in required place and submit it by pressing finish (Fig. 7.2.4.). In our case the RSS feed is : http://feeds.feedburner.com/ListenToEnglish LearnEnglish Figure 7.2.4.: Subscribing Podcast
59 If the RSS feed is correct and valid the podcatcher will automatically search and load everything available on the subscribed web page (Fig. 7.2.5.). This means all the podcasts which you can immediately listen to, transcription of the listening, all kind of exercises or complete lesson plans. The amount or additional materials you receive depends entirely on the creator of the podcast. Figure 7.2.5.: Receiving Podcast Now the final step is easy. To download the podcast to your computer just select the podcast you would like to obtain and press Downloads button. The podcast episode will be immediately downloaded to you computer where the program created file which stores downloaded podcast. In our case go to Documents/My Ziepod Downloads/ Listen to English learn English! This all might be completed in few minutes. It all depends on the speed of your Internet connection. The faster, the better. From now on when ever you open the podcatcher you will be immediately informed about everything new that happened on the subscribed pages. If there is a new content it will be awaiting you, ready to be downloaded. 60 8. Editing Podcast In the previous chapter we looked on how to find, subscribe and download podcast. This chapter will focus more closely on editing the podcast and its use in the class. Since we have downloaded someone else’s work we might not always be completely satisfied with the product. The podcast might be too long, contain strong or offensive language, advertisements or something you would like to omit. There is nothing easier than to edit the material. Again on the Internet you can find plenty of easy to use, free of charge, software that you can use for editing audio files. One that offers you more than adjusting MP3 file is called Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net). Audacity is free audio editor and recorder. Whit this free, open source software that is available also in Czech language, you can improve the quality of sounds, edit or adjust the volume in just a few simple steps. Editing: 1. Open Audacity and use File / Open to open the file you want to edit. 2. The main commands for editing audio are under the Edit menu (such as cut, copy and paste) and the Effect menu (you can do things like boost the bass, change pitch or tempo, or remove noise) (Fig. 8.1.).
Figure 8.1.: Main Commands in Audacity
61 3. Audacity applies edits to selected areas of the audio track. To select a particular area, click in the track and drag the shaded area with the mouse.
Figure 8.2.: Selecting Area of the Audio Track 4. To cut out the selected (shaded) area just go to edits and select remove. After these few steps you have edited audio track which you can play and check whether everything is as intended and later save. 5. To save the audio track go to File and choose Export as MP3 (Fig. 8.3.)
Figure 8.3.: Exporting Audio into MP3
62 There are many detailed user guides for Audacity on the Internet. Those who would like to learn more about this free software and how to use it might visit Czech web portal Digital Universe (http://www.digitaluniverse.cz). This new portal provides a variety of information not only about audacity software but also about various podcasts and podcasting itself.
63 9. The Evaluation of the Questionnaire In this chapter I will summarize the results of a survey about the popularity of listening, as a part of the language learning, and the awareness of podcasting among ONLINE_A students. The main objective of the survey was to find out whether the students like listening exercises, whether and how they practice listening, whether they are aware of the existence of podcasting and how they use it. For the purpose of the survey I have created questionnaire 1 regarding listening in language learning and podcasting. As I did not know how many students had any idea about podcasting, the questionnaire is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on listening generally ending with the question regarding the awareness of podcasting. Those who admitted familiarity with podcasting should have continued further in the second part and answer the questions dealing with their experience with podcasting. The questionnaire I have created was transformed by Václav Štefela in to the IS format, embedded in to ONLINE_A course, and all the students, who enrolled this course, were asked to take part in. From the four thousands and five students enrolled in this course responded to the appeal to complete the questionnaire 44 percent which means 1770 students. From the total 38 percent were women while 62 percent where men (Fig. 9.1.). 38% Female Male 62% Figure 9.1.: Gender 1 For the questionnaire see appendix C. 64 Among the respondents were representatives of all the Faculties of Masaryk University (Fig. 9.2.). Most of which were students from the Faculty of Informatics (20%) and the Faculty of Arts (17%) whereas least from the Faculty of Social Studies and the Faculty of Sports (both 3%). Economics Informatics 5% 11% 17% 4% Social Studies 3% Arts Medicine 23% Education 20% Law 3% 14% Science Sports Studies
Figure 9.2.: Faculty The results of the questionnaire are following: Majority of the students (60%) responded positively to the question whether they like listening exercises in English language learning (Fig. 9.3.) and 98 percent of all the students think that listening exercises are important for language learning (Fig. 9.4.) 30% Yes No 60% Don’t know 10% Figure 9.3.: Popularity of Listening Exercises in English Language Yes 98% No Don't know
1% 1%
Figure 9.4. : Importance of Listening in Language Learning
65 Exactly half of the students (50%) think that teachers do not devote appropriate time to the development of listening skills whereas 19 percent think they do. Remaining 31 percent could not decide (Fig. 9.5.). 31% Yes No Don't know 50% 19% Figure 9.5.: Teachers Devote Appropriate Time to Listening Skills Development Majority of the responding students (70%) works on development of their listening skills also outside of the classroom. Among the responses to the question how they practice their listening skills, according to the frequency of occurrence from the top, were: Watching to the movies or series on TV without subtitles or with English subtitles Listening to the music (plus translating the lyrics) Listening to the radio or watching TV news ( BBC, VOA, CNN) Conversing with English speakers Travelling abroad Listening to materials from the course books, library or Internet Listening to audio books Listening to podcasts Watching videos on YouTube.com Through the ONLINE_A course Attending language courses Playing PC games At work Chatting on the Skype Only 27 percent of respondents have ever heard of podcasting (Fig. 9.6.) and only 29 percent of those who had heard about podcasting have ever listened to it (Fig. 9.7.).
66 27% Yes No
73% Figure 9.6.: Have You Ever Heard of Podcasting?
29% Yes No
71%
Figure 9.7.: Have You Ever Listened to Any Podcast?
The reasons for listening to the podcasts were various but only 14 percent of students stated that they had ever used podcast consciously for foreign language improvement. Among the reasons for listening to the podcast from the top were: for fun gaining new information from various areas (sport, new technologies, games, new from Faculty etc.) from curiosity language improvement learning (history, java, python, etc.) Still there were only 2 percent of inquired students who believed that podcasting is not a good device for foreign language learning (Fig 9.8.).
62% Yes No Don't know 2% 36% Figure 9.8.: Students Believe that Podcasting is a Good Device for Second Language Learning
67 In the last question of the questionnaire participants were asked whether they are currently listening to any podcasts (Fig. 9.9.), and to name them.
88% Yes No 12% Figure 9.9.: Students Currently Listening to the Podcast
Students who are listening to podcast (12%) named various shows that belong to their “favourite”. Among them were shows as: Programming or Web developing: Hanselminutes (www.hanselminutes.com), Software Engineering Radio (www.se radio.net) or StackOverflow (blog.stackoverflow.com) Language Podcasts : Coffee Break French Podcasts (coffeebreakfrench.libsyn.com), VOA Special English (www.voanews.com/specialenglish/podcasts.cfm) Listen to English learn English! (www.listen to english.com) OE3 (http://oe3.orf.at/) and others Latest news beyond the mainstream : Mysterious Universe (http://mysteriousuniverse.org/) DIY and technology : Make (http://blog.makezine.com/podcast) Inspired Talks By The World’s Greatest Thinkers And Doers: TED: Ideas Worth Spreading: Inspired talks (http://www.ted.com) News, stories and commentaries: NPR: National Public Radio (www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php) BBC (www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory) etc. Games and Entertainment: BlizzCast (www.blizzard.com/blizzcast/) or Anime Pulse (http://www.anime pulse.com), and others.
68 Summary The questionnaire revealed that the majority of the students like listening practice in the English language, and that the students are aware of the fact that listening is important for language learning. In general, however, students feel the lack of listening practice in the classes and the majority of them work on their listening skill improvement in various ways outside the school. As I expected there is relatively low awareness and use of podcasting among students. This finding leads me to believe that podcasting has not been recognized by or popular among the teachers and educators. The results of the short questionnaire among the language schools only support such a presupposition.
69 10. Conclusion The diploma thesis focuses on podcasting as a new phenomenon in education, primarily language education. The aim of this work was to introduce podcasting as a useful tool for language learning, to illustrate how it is used and how to work with it. As podcasting is frequently used for learning and improving listening skills I gave attention to the listening theories at the beginning of my thesis, further I summarised the language styles and strategies that have become an important and inherent part of the second language development. In the part devoted to podcasting I have tried to describe and outline the forms and functions of podcasting in language education. All the data used in the theoretical part are based on the experiences of foreign teachers and educators as there is very little or no information about employment of podcasting in the Czech schools. I also have to admit that as a trained (but not practising) teacher I had very restricted opportunity to try podcasting in a real class. However, my limited experience with podcasting in education is described in the practical part. The practical part of the thesis brings information about the real life experience with podcasting in the language education, detailed descriptions of how to find and adapt the podcast for the usage in a real class together with information about the student’s awareness of this issue. I am certain that podcasting might be a powerful tool in education and of a great benefit to the language students and not only to them. Sad to say, teachers are often, in my opinion, too busy, inadequately equipped, in a rut or maybe too lazy to fully embrace the opportunities that this technology presents and often rely only on the listening materials enclosed to the coursebook. Unfortunately, there is also resistance on the part of the students too, as they often want to follow the coursebook or focus on grammar.
70 I am also convinced, and the students only confirmed my belief in the survey that teachers frequently do not pay appropriate attention to listening practice and often do not feel the slightest need to bring something extra to the class. If I take into considerations everything mentioned above together with the state of the computer equipment and the Internet access of the students and teachers on many schools, I have to admit that I am rather sceptic about the future of podcasting in the Czech schools.
71 Bibliography Anderson, A. and Lynch, T. (1988). Listening . London: Oxford University Press. Cornett, C. (1983). What You Should Know about Teaching and Learning Styles (Fastback No. 191). Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa Foundation. Braun, L. W. (2007). Listen up!: podcasting for schools and libraries . Medford: Information Today. Brown, G., & Yule, G. (1983). Teaching the spoken language . Cambridge: CUP. Ellis, R. (1994). Understanding Second Language Acquisition . Oxford: OUP. Flowerdew, J. and Miller L. (2005) A pedagogical model for second language listening' in Second language listening : theory and praktice. CUP, New York. Farkas, M. G. (2007). Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication and Community Online. Medford, NJ: Information Today. Geoghegan, M.W., Klass, D. (2005). Podcast solutions: The complete guide to podcasting . Berkley, CA: Apress. Oxford, R. (1990). Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know . New York: Newbury House Publishers. Oxford, R. (2001). Language learning styles and strategies . In M. Celce Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed., pp. 359 366). Boston: Heinle & Heinle/Thompson International. Moore, Kenneth D. (2005). Effective Instructional Strategies: From Theory to Practice . Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage.
72 Morley, J. (2001). Aural comprehension instruction: Principles and practices . In M. Celce Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language, (pp.69 85). Boston: Heinle & Heinle Nunan, D. (2003). Methodology. In D. Nunan (Ed.), Practical English Language Teaching . New York: McGraw Hill Companies. Nunan, D. (2002) Listening in language learning . In Richards J.C. and Renandya, W.A. (2002) Methodology in Language Teaching. An Anthology of Current Practice. Cambridge: CUP. Rixon, S. (1986). Developing Listening Skills . London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd.1986 Rost, M. (1991). Listening in action: Activities for developing listening in language teaching. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Rost, M. 1994. Introducing Listening . London: Penguin Rost, M. (2002). Teaching and Researching Listening . London, UK: Longman Ur, P. (1984). Teaching Listening Comprehension . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Willis, J. (1981). Teaching English through English . London: Longman. Internet Sources Campbell, G. (2005). There’s Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 40, no. 6 (November/December 2005): 32–47. [online]. [cit.2008 08 25] URL
73 Cha, Jae Guk. (2006). A study of listening strategies favored by Korean university students. Modern English Education , 7(2), 39 56. [online]. [cit.2008 08 25] URL
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75 Resumé Hlavním cílem této práce je pozvednout povědomí učitelů anglického jazyka a přinést základní informace o relativně novém nástroji pro výuku cizího jazyka tj. Podcastingu, a jeho využití ve výuce. Jelikož podcasting je hojně využíván pro zdokonalení poslechových dovedností, teoretická část se zaměřuje na poslech a obecné informace týkající se podcastingu, tj. informace o historii, tvorbě a uplatnění ve výuce či jeho formy i výhody a nevýhody jeho použití. V praktické části je potom popsána autorova zkušenost s výukou pomocí podcastu, zkušenosti lektorky z jazykové školy (AKCENT International House Prague), dále pak přináší informace a stručný návod jak a kde podcast hledat, stáhnout a upravit pro vlastní potřebu či výsledky dotazníku o povědomí studentů o podcastingu. Resume The main aim of this work is to raise the awareness and bring the basic information to the English teachers and educators about relatively new tool for language learning, i.e. Podcasting, and its use in education. Since podcasting is profusely used for teaching and learning listening, the theoretical part of the thesis focuses on listening and general information regarding podcasting, i.e. data about the history, its creation and application in education or information about its forms and the pros and cons of its utilization. In the practical part the author describes his own experience with podcasting in education together with the experience of the language school teacher (AKCENT International House Prague), further brings information and a brief guide where to find, and how to download and edit podcast for the personal usage or the result of the questionnaire of the students’ awareness of podcasting.
76 Appendix A Transcript of an Exemplary Podcast http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/0502/27.happy_hairdressers.html Hairdressers top job satisfaction poll (Sun 27 Feb) BNE: Have you noticed that every time you go for a perm or a trim that hairdresser is always very chatty? The reason they are so happy is that most of them love their jobs. This is according to a survey conducted by the City & Guilds of London Institute, which asked 1,200 workers about their job satisfaction Forty per cent of hairdressers are very happy in their jobs, while civil servants, social workers and architects are the unhappiest workers. None of the top ten positions in the Happiness Index included office jobs. The happiest workers were those who used their hands. In second place were religious ministers, followed by chefs, beauticians and plumbers. The survey showed that people who can run their own business and be self employed are happiest. Desk workers came very low on the happiness scale. Teachers didn’t seem to be too happy either – only 8% said they enjoyed their work. There wasn’t a figure for English teachers, although their job satisfaction is probably very high. English teachers also smile a lot and generally love their jobs. City and Guilds advised workers to start every day positively, chat to colleagues, and brighten the workplace with personal photographs and flowers. POSSIBLE WARM UPS / COOL DOWNS 1. CHAT: Talk in pairs or groups about hairdressers / English teachers / job satisfaction office jobs / desk work / dream job / … To make things more dynamic, try telling your students they only have one minute (or 2) on each chat topic before changing topics / partners. Change topic / partner frequently to energize the class. 2. HAIRDRESSER BRAINSTORM: Spend one minute writing down all of the different words you associate with the word ‘hairdresser’. Share your words with your partner / group and talk about them.
77 3. MY HAIR HISTORY: Write down very brief notes of the history of your hair. What styles did you have as a kid? Are you happy with your style now? What kind of hair would you love? 4. HAPPY JOBS: What are the good things and bad things about the following jobs? Which would you like / hate to do? (The money is the same for all of them) NASA astronaut US president BBC TV sports reporter (international) Games software developer Chanel fashion model Teacher of English to speakers of other languages Tsunami relief director Manchester United soccer player (men’s or women’s teams) World Wildlife Fund (WWF) vet Department store Santa Claus PRE READING IDEAS 1. WORD SEARCH: Students look in their dictionaries / computer to find collocates, other meanings, information, synonyms … of the words ‘happy’ and ‘worker’. 2. TRUE / FALSE: Look at the headline and guess whether these sentences are true or false: Hairdressers are always very chatty. T / F All hairdressers are very happy in their jobs. T / F Architects are the unhappiest workers. T / F Three out of the ten happiest jobs involved some kind of deskwork. T / F The happiest workers were those who used their heads. T / F Teachers are very happy. T / F English teachers smile a lot and generally love their jobs. T / F To be happy in your job you must brighten the workplace with personal photographs and flowers. T / F
78 3. SYNONYM MATCH: Match the following synonyms from the article: (a) trim carried out (b) chatty position (c) conducted number (d) satisfaction decorate (e) civil servants ranking (f) index haircut (g) place contentedness (h) run talkative (i) figure operate (j) brighten government workers 4. PHRASE MATCH: Match the following phrases based on the article (sometimes more than one combination is possible): (a) Have you conducted by the City & Guilds (b) very own business (c) most of them love chatty (d) a survey workplace (e) None of the top employed (f) those who used noticed (g) run their positively (h) self ten positions (i) start every day their hands (j) brighten the their jobs WHILE READING ACTIVITIES GAP FILL: Put the missing words under each paragraph into the gaps. Hairdressers top job satisfaction poll (Sun 27 Feb) BNE: Have you ______ that every time you go for a perm or a trim the hairdresser is always very chatty? The reason they are so happy is that most of them ______ their jobs. This is according to a survey conducted by the City & Guilds
79 of London Institute, which asked 1,200 workers about their job ______. Forty per cent of hairdressers are very happy in their jobs, while civil servants, social workers and architects are the unhappiest workers. None of the top ten positions in the Happiness Index included ______ jobs. The happiest workers were those who used their ______. In second place were religious ministers, followed by chefs, beauticians and plumbers. The survey showed that people who can ______ their own business and be self employed are happiest. Desk workers came very low on the happiness ______. Teachers didn’t seem to be too happy either – only 8% said they enjoyed their work. There wasn’t a ______ for English teachers, although their job satisfaction is probably very high. English teachers also smile a lot and generally love their jobs. City and Guilds advised workers to start every day positively, chat to colleagues, and ______ the workplace with personal photographs and flowers. office noticed run figure satisfaction hands brighten scale love 2. TRUE/FALSE: Students check their answers to the T/F exercise. 3. SYNONYMS: Students check their answers to the synonyms exercise. 4. PHRASE MATCH: Students check their answers to the phrase match exercise. 5. QUESTIONS: Students make notes for questions they would like to ask the class about the article. 6. VOCABULARY: Students circle any words they do not understand. In groups pool unknown words and use dictionaries to find the meanings. POST READING IDEAS 1. GAP FILL: Check the answers to the gap fill exercise. 2. QUESTIONS: Students ask the discussion questions they thought of above to their partner / group / class. Pool the questions for all students to share. 3. VOCABULARY: As a class, go over the vocabulary students circled above. 4. STUDENT GENERATED SURVEY: Pairs/Groups write down 3 questions based on the article. Conduct their surveys alone. Report back to partners to compare answers. Report to other groups / the whole class. 5. ‘HAPPY’/ ‘WORKER’: Students make questions based on their findings from pre reading activity #1. 6. DISCUSSION: Students ask each other the following questions: What do you think of this article?
80 What is your dream job? Would you like to be a hairdresser? Would you like to do the same as your parents? What did you want to do when you were ten (sixteen / twenty one)? When do you want to retire? What’s most important to you when choosing a job? Would you prefer to work with your hands or use your head? If you ran your own business, what would you do? What are the pros and cons of being self employed? Would you prefer to work at home, doing an Internet related job? How about working overseas? Out of all your friends, who has the best / worst job? Do you think teaching English is easy / stressful? What is the best way to enjoy your work? Which is better, a blue collar or white collar job? Do you want to go far in your career? How far? Teacher / Student additional questions. HOMEWORK 1. VOCAB EXTENSION: Choose several of the words from the text. Use a dictionary or Google’s search field (or another search engine) to build up more associations / collocations of each word. 2. INTERNET: Search the Internet and find more information on job satisfaction. Share your findings with your class next lesson. 3. YOUR JOB’S AD: Create an advertisement for a job you have done. Outline all the benefits and perks of the job, and the requirements for applicants. Advertise this job in your next class and conduct interviews to find the best candidate. 4. MY DREAM JOB: You now have your dream job. Write a diary/journal entry about your first week of work. ANSWERS
81 TRUE / FALSE: Hairdressers are always very chatty. T All hairdressers are very happy in their jobs. F Architects are the unhappiest workers. T Three out of the ten happiest jobs involved some kind of deskwork. F The happiest workers were those who used their heads. F Teachers are very happy. F English teachers smile a lot and generally love their jobs. T To be happy in your job you must brighten the workplace with personal photographs and flowers. T SYNONYM MATCH: (a) trim haircut (b) chatty talkative (c) conducted carried out (d) satisfaction contentedness (e) civil servants government workers (f) index ranking (g) place position (h) run operate (i) figure number (j) brighten decorate PHRASE MATCH: (a) Have you noticed (b) very chatty (c) most of them love their jobs (d) a survey conducted by the City & Guilds (e) None of the top ten positions (f) those who used their hands (g) run their own business (h) self employed (i) start every day positively (j) brighten the workplace
82 FULL TEXT Hairdressers top job satisfaction poll (Sun 27 Feb) BNE: Have you noticed that every time you go for a perm or a trim the hairdresser is always very chatty? The reason they are so happy is that most of them love their jobs. This is according to a survey conducted by the City & Guilds of London Institute, which asked 1,200 workers about their job satisfaction . Forty per cent of hairdressers are very happy in their jobs, while civil servants, social workers and architects are the unhappiest workers. None of the top ten positions in the Happiness Index included office jobs. The happiest workers were those who used their hands . In second place were religious ministers, followed by chefs, beauticians and plumbers. The survey showed that people who can run their own business and be self employed are happiest. Desk workers came very low on the happiness scale . Teachers didn’t seem to be too happy either – only 8% said they enjoyed their work. There wasn’t a figure for English teachers, although their job satisfaction is probably very high. English teachers also smile a lot and generally love their jobs. City and Guilds advised workers to start every day positively, chat to colleagues, and brighten the workplace with personal photographs and flowers.
83 Appendix B A letter form Miss. Rolińska, a lector at the language school AKCENT International House Prague Dear Petr I'm really sorry that I haven't got back to you earlier but as you've assumed yourself quite rightly I am very busy and struggling to meet deadlines here at work. Anyway, let me share my experience at least briefly. I wanted to write something more comprehensive but well, hope that will be more helpful than the information I've given you so far (which wasn't much !) When I talk about using podcasts in TEFL I mean downloading radio programmes (predominantly from BBC Radio) and using them with my students or referring students to those podcasts and making them aware of the fact that the podcasts can be downloaded and thus listened to as many times as they wish. Having the possibility of downloading podcasts provides a wealth of new resources, resources that are topical, up to date, authentic and relevant. You can bring more voices, various accents into the classroom, you can bring listenings that students will find relevant to their job, interests, etc. You can build up a database of recordings, your own portable library. If you accompany the recordings with worksheets, graded for different levels, then even better. I started experimenting with podcasts two years ago in my advanced conversation class. I'd been teaching them for some time then and one day I found that too much routine had sneaked into my teaching. The familiar article followed by some comprehension questions and discussion seemed like a worn out idea. Learning language at an advanced level is quite tricky, both for the students and the teacher as you can't really see quick progress any more. It's more about expanding the knowledge in terms of vocab and working on fluency. Students find it daunting at times. And it's difficult to stimulate them. My students' reading skills were good, so was their speaking. They were communicative and easily got their message across. Their listening comprehension, however, was not that good and upon discussing that with them, we decided to direct the lesson focus to that. I decided to bring in the podcasts. It's so much easier. You don't have to be at standby, sort of hunting to get the right programme, you don't have to have all this bulky equipment like tape recorder, etc. You just go onto www.bbc.co.uk and browse the podcasts and hit the download button. And it's there on your mp3 player. And the recording is of excellent quality. And you can play it as many times as you want. And you can email that to your students if they wish to listen again. So swift, so easy.
84 Then I started playing around with the podcasts. Using audacity (free audio editing software), I was chopping them up into smaller sections which were easier to digest and absorb. Students found it a worthwhile experience. I could see they were struggling at the beginning. But their motivation levels were soaring. We were listening to little fragments again and again. Soon I gave them the control over the device so that they could rewind as many times as they wanted. It was intensive listening practice and they found it useful. After some time I conducted a survey to see how they felt about our listening lessons. All of them were happy and enthusiastic about the focus being directed to listening. Most of them were happy to use the authentic materials. They found them difficult and challenging but the challenge was motivating not demotivating. They were willing to proceed and do more. They believed that soon they would see the results. Listening to podcasts gave them a great opportunity to learn live and natural language with all the features of spoken grammar, spoken discourse markers, hesitations, etc. It gave them the possibility of observing the mechanism of connected speech and I think it was a very constructive learning experience for them. Well, that's my podcasting experience in a nutshell. I wish I could do more of that and actually produce a podcast with my students. Or produce podcasts for my students. Podcasting is a wonderful tool, you can create relevant and interesting materials. Good luck with your thesis, Petr and sorry for the delayed answer. Best Ania PS The only issue I'd like to consider in the nearest future is the copyright.
85 Appendix C Questionnaire Pohlaví Žena Muž Fakulta ………………………………………………. 1. Máte rád/a poslechová cvičení v anglickém jazyce? Ano Ne Nevím 2. Myslíte si, že jsou poslechová cvičení důležitá při výuce cizího jazyka? Ano Ne Nevím 3. Myslíte si, že se učitelé/lektoři dostatečně věnují rozvoji poslechových dovedností svých studentů? Ano Ne Nevím 4. Snažíte se zdokonalit si své poslechové dovednosti i mimo rámec výuky? Ano Ne 4.1 Pokud ano, jak? …………………………………………………………………
86 5. Slyšel/a jste někdy o podcastingu? Ano Ne (Pokud je vaše odpověď záporná, dotazník zde pro Vás končí. Děkuji za účast.) 6. Už jste někdy podcast poslouchal/a ? Ano Ne 6.1 Pokud ano, za jakým účelem? ……………………………………………………………………… 7. Použil/a jste někdy podcast ke zdokonalení se v cizím jazyce? Ano Ne 8. Myslíte si, že je podcasting dobrý prostředek k výuce cizího jazyka? Ano Ne Nevím 9. Posloucháte nějaký cizojazyčný podcast? Ano Ne 9.1 Pokud ano, jaký? ………………………………………………………………………..
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