MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Podcasts and their use in education

Bachelor thesis

Brno 2018

Supervisor: Author:

Mgr. Pavla Buchtová Oliver Koštejn

Prohlášení

Prohlašuji, že jsem bakalářskou práci vypracoval samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.

Brno, 30. března 2018 ……………………….. Oliver Koštejn

Aknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Pavla Buchtová, for her helpful advice and the right amount of scepticism and encouragement.

Additionally, many thanks to my family and friends, for moral support, patience and love, especially during the trying times of my studies.

Thank you, Oliver

Annotation

The focus of this thesis is on the medium of podcasting. The thesis analyses podcasts in terms of the evolution of the medium, describes the variations in form and content while providing examples, acknowledges its advantages and disadvantages and maps the current state of its popularity and general awareness. The last chapter aims to provide proof of the potential podcasts present as a supplementary teaching material and its value in use as input for language acquisition.

Keywords: podcasting, podcast, media, audio drama, language acquisition, spoken word, audio

Anotace

Tato práce se zabývá médiem podcastingu. Práce analyzuje podcasty z hlediska evoluce media, popisuje rozdíly ve formě i v obsahu za pomoci příkladů, věnuje pozornost výhodám i nevýhodám média a vykresluje nynější stav jeho popularity a místa v obecném povědomí. Poslední kapitola se věnuje doložení potenciálu, který podcasty představují z hlediska jejich využití jako dodatečného materiálu k výuce a jako forma vstupu pro osvojování jazyka.

Klíčová slova: podcasting, podcast, média, rozhlasové hry, osvojování jazyka, mluvené slovo, audio

Contents

1 Introduction ...... 7

2 Podcasting as a medium ...... 8

2.1 Evolution of podcasting ...... 8

2.1.1 Beginnings (1991 - 2004) ...... 8

2.1.2 Making podcasting approachable (2004 – 2006) ...... 11

2.1.3 Monetization (2006 – 2014) ...... 13

2.1.4 The Golden Age (2014 – present) ...... 15

2.2 Podcasting in mainstream ...... 16

2.3 Types of podcasts ...... 18

2.3.1 Audio podcasts ...... 18

2.3.2 Enhanced podcasts ...... 19

2.3.3 Video podcasts ...... 20

2.4 Statistics ...... 21

3 Content varieties ...... 23

3.1 News and politics ...... 23

3.2 Technology and IT ...... 24

3.3 Comedy ...... 25

3.4 Art and culture ...... 26

3.5 Sports ...... 27

3.6 Lifestyle ...... 27

3.7 Educational ...... 28

3.8 Storytelling ...... 29

3.9 Audio drama ...... 30

4 Use in education ...... 33

4.1 Podcasts as teaching material ...... 33 4.2 Language acquisition through podcasts ...... 35

5. Conclusion ...... 41

1 Introduction

Podcasting is a term that has come to existence fourteen years ago and is a combination of words broadcasting and iPod (a personal portable media player made by the company Apple, Inc.), a portmanteau name created by the journalist Ben Hammersley in his article Why Online Radio is Booming. In the current time of fast evolution of new technologies and trends, fourteen years is a significant portion of time, however in its relatively long life, podcasting remains widely unknown among the general population. While there are valid reasons for its lack of popularity, there is a great potential in this medium, not only in the field of entertainment or art, but also as an educational tool as well as a news source.

I discovered podcasts through the Welcome to Night Vale audio drama in 2013. I chose the topic of podcasting for my thesis because podcasts became a part of my everyday life. However, in the five years of my awareness of the medium, I have met only a very small number of people familiar with podcasts and even smaller number of those that actually listen or subscribe to them. Additionally, I have not come across any podcast use in education in the four years of my university studies, not to mention my previous studies. In my opinion, this is a shame, since from my experience with the shows they can improve the listener’s creativity, knowledge and use of English language and pronunciation, provide interesting information and be as entertaining as books and movies, if not more.

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2 Podcasting as a medium

As is stated above, podcast is mainly considered to be a medium. An average consumer does not care as much about the medium itself as he cares about the content. The medium is only a way of getting the information or data from the producer to the consumer. However, various media have their own limitations which on themselves affect the produced content. This thesis is primarily focused on the content, but to correctly explain podcasting and its advantages, it has to cover the technical aspect of podcast as well as its history.

The term itself is ambiguous in the sense of what it actually refers to. Podcast can mean the medium, but the shows are called podcasts as well. Additionally, it is also possible to refer to the individual episodes as podcasts. I will try to keep the meaning of the word clearly understandable from the context.

2.1 Evolution of podcasting

The birth of podcasting was made possible by the quickly improving technology in the fields of broadcasting, personal audio players and IT. Providing the technology and software necessary for their creation and use was only the beginning of the still ongoing evolution of this new medium. The internet in its current form is very different from the internet in the early 2000s, and with its evolution as a platform for content creation of all forms, freedom of speech, building communities and connecting the whole world, the podcasting scene had to change as well.

While podcasting started out predominantly as a hobby or a way of recording a journal and sharing opinions with a small group of people, in 2018 many podcast creators produce their shows as a main source of income and many shows have hundreds of thousands of fans eager to hear another episode. To understand the evolution, this chapter focuses on the history of the medium, mapping the key moments and events that formed podcasting into its current state.

2.1.1 Beginnings (1991 - 2004) Radio has been around approximately since the 1920s and has been the most popular and reliable way of getting audio content to the listener in a scheduled manner. However, with Internet, a completely new way of sharing information has been born. Multicast networks

8 provided the possibility of distributing audio and video files. After the invention of World Wide Web in 1991, a multicast network called MBone was one of the first to transfer audio talk programs this way (Lewis, “BUSSINESS TECHNOLOGY”).

In 1993, Internet Talk Radio, the first internet radio was founded by Carl Malamud, which gave start to a whole new way of radio production while maintaining the form of a conventional radio (“Internet Talk Radio”). Webcasts, as internet radios are sometimes called, are continuous broadcasts of music and talking content which a listener can find and listen to on the internet.

Next step towards the reality of podcasts happened in the late 1990s, when the first mp3 players with flash memory were invented, the first being MPMan MP F-10 made by a South Korean company SaeHan Information Systems. Then the first commercially sold hard-disk digital audio player, PJB-100 also known as Personal Jukebox was introduced by HanGo Electronics, bringing a hard-disk with a capacity of 4,8 GB of space (Buskirk, “Bragging rights”). The developer of this media player additionally presented a music download system PocketDJ, compatible with the player (Levy 234).

Replay Radio, later temporarily changed to Replay AV, was a service introduced in 2001 that enabled the listeners of internet radios to download shows from the publishers’ websites into the listener’s PC (Applian Technologies inc., “Bill Dettering).

Finally, right before the Rich Site Summary (RSS) based podcasting as we know it today started being developed, the first system that made automatic downloading of serial episodic audio content possible was presented by MP3 player manufacturer i2Go. Their service MyAudio2Go let the listeners download episodic content of news, entertainment, weather and music and it was possible to program the i2GoMediaManager software that worked with this service to download the latest content by itself into a PC or a portable audio player, as opposed to manual download. However, financial problems led to the end of the company and the service (Menta, “Test Drive”).

Web syndication is a way of pushing new content automatically from the internet to a device like a computer or a portable media player. Syndication is also what makes podcasts what they are. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, and it is the most commonly used type of web feed. Podcasting today works mainly through RSS feeds, but that was not yet possible in the year 2000. One of the most important steps

9 towards podcasting was the addition of support for “enclosures” in the RSS feeds, a way of giving the aggregator (a receiver and reader software) a url address to an audio or video file. The first proposition regarding enclosures was made by Tristan Louis in 2000 and Dave Winer, the author of RSS formatting, implemented this functionality after discussing the concept with Adam Curry, formerly a radio personality and a VJ (video jockey) on MTV, who was interested in the potential of change for audioblogging by implementing syndication (Wolfe, “Is Podcasting Dead?”). This was successfully tested by Winer creating a feed of Grateful Dead songs in January of 2001 (Winer, “Payload for RSS”). Nevertheless, the use of enclosures in RSS had only a small number of users in the first two years of its existence.

Winer’s company UserLand Software developed Radio Userland, a program for weblogging, which also acted as an aggregator. It was very user-friendly since it made it easy to send and receive audioblogs (Lillington, “Radio Userland). The only thing left to make podcasting possible was figuring out how to make an automatic transfer of audio from the program’s download folder to an audio player. However, there first needed to be enough content to make the development meaningful.

Weblogger Christopher Lydon came to Winer with a request in 2003. His aim was to conduct audio interviews with figures of the weblogging scene, politicians and other interesting guests and make these interviews available through a RSS feed with enclosures. Winer helped him realize this project by creating such feed. After getting 25 interviews, Winer started releasing these through the feed one by one. Even though the automatic push to the portable device was not developed by this point, Lydon’s feed of interviews eventually became Radio Open Source, the first and longest running podcast, functioning to this day (Doyle, “The First Podcast”).

Organized by Winer and his friends, a conference focused on weblogging called BloggerCon took place in October of 2003, marking an important milestone in podcasting history. It was there, where Adam Curry, as well as Kevin Marks, formerly developer from Apple, first presented their scripting that enabled transferring the enclosures from the feeds through iTunes into an iPod, effectively finishing the development of podcasting(Grumet, “A Slice of Podcasting History”). After this point only changes making it easier to use by the listeners were needed, but the technology already existed. Curry shared his scripting on his weblog a few days after the conference (Curry, “RSS2iPod”).

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2.1.2 Making podcasting approachable (2004 – 2006) Creating a user-friendly interface for the common listener was the next logical development. August Trometer and Ray Slakinski created iPodderX (later changed to Transistr), the first podcatcher software – its purpose was to scan for new content, download it and sync it to a portable media player. They first released the software for Macintosh and subsequently for PC (“iPodderX Speaks with RSS”).

At this point, it was time to give this new way of sharing audio content a name. In an article for The Guardian in February 2004, Ben Hammersley offered some suggestions, one being “Podcasting” (“Why Online Radio is Booming”). In September 2004, Dannie Gregoire used the term “podcaster” for a producer of automatically downloaded content, along with “pode/sode” for individual episodes of podcasts (Gregoire, “How to handle”). Addressing the technology podcasting became popular after podcasting personalities (Curry, Winer, Dave Slusher and others) started using it.

With a name attached to the technology, podcasting started getting attention. The number of podcasts started to grow as well, mainly because how easy it was to listen to and create them. Adam Curry was already hosting his podcast called Daily Source Code since August 2004, every day providing a new episode of radio-like show about his daily life, technology, the evolution of the podcasting scene and news in general (Chen, “Aug. 13, 2004”). In addition to that, his show had various reoccurring segments and also included playing music from the now defunct Podsafe Music Network (an archive of music from various artists that podcasters could use in their shows without licencing difficulties), established in 2005 by his own company PodShow (later changed to Mevio) (Meserve, “Podsafe Music Network”). Daily Source Code was on fifth place in a top ten podcasts list in a USA Today article. The “genres” of the top podcasts were technology (Engadget), pop culture (movie focused Reel Reviews), political talk shows (Free Talk Live), music (The Rock and Roll Geek Show) and the the top position was given to a “married-couple banter” talk show The Dawn and Drew Show (couple talk shows became relatively popular with podcast listeners) (della Cava, “Podcasting”). Byron Acohido shared information regarding how to subscribe to podcasts as well as how to become a podcaster in a related USA Today article (“Radio to the MP3”).

Liberated Syndication created the first podcast service provider in November 2004, which gave access to podcasting to more people, by providing storage, bandwidth and RSS

11 creation tools (“About”). Up to this point, mostly independent content producers created podcasts. However, the end of 2004 was the beginning for a number of podcasting entertainment networks, one of which was Adam Curry’s already mentioned Mevio.

With Mevio, Curry and Ron Bloom wanted to create an entertainment network which would make it easier for podcasters to gain an audience while also incorporating monetization model for the content makers and helping listeners to find podcasts that would interest them. Some of the most popular shows of the early podcasting era have started as a part of this network, some of them active to the present day (Barker et al. 107- 109). During its existence, Mevio faced a number of controversies and criticisms, including ones related to copyrights of the shows being overwritten by the network and the lack of transparency regarding the download metrics. Other networks tried to follow Mevio’s example and create a similarly functioning service, but many of them failed, mainly because networks like these are significantly beneficial for relatively small percentage of the producers while not very helpful for the rest. That and poor financial management led to Mevio closing down its service in 2014 and giving the content producers ten days to move their feeds elsewhere, which was met with general irritation from the podcasters (Cochrane, “Mevio Pulls the Plug!”).

Apple, Inc. was the largest company on the MP3 player market and their product which they controlled the market with, the iPod, was literally in the name of this new medium, so it only made sense they would sooner or later provide official support for podcasting. This was something a lot of podcast listeners as well as producers wanted. It would make podcasting much easier if there was no need for third party software. That step happened in June 2005 with the 4.9 update for iTunes, effectively turning their program into a podcatcher client among other changes. Users of iPods could now easily subscribe to a growing selection of podcasts without using third party software. On the day of the update launch, iTunes was offering 3,000 shows through their library with a promise of including more with time. At the same time, they stated that they do not want to act as “gatekeepers of podcasting”, but the submitted shows do have to go through an editorial process to prevent issues with copyright and objectionable content. Apple’s support of podcasts was accompanied by cease and desist orders addressed to companies and developers using the word ‘Pod’ or ‘iPod’ in the names of their software, which was the reason behind a lot of name changes (“Apple Brings Podcasts into iTunes”).

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The year 2005 was undoubtedly a year of podcasting. Not only were the numbers of independent podcasters growing rapidly, already famous personalities started producing podcasts as well, most notably The Ricky Gervais Show, originally a radio show, adapted into a podcast in late 2005. It got very popular very fast, since people already knew Gervais and his radio show, and the podcast became most popular on iTunes only two weeks after its creation (“THE RICKY GERVAIS PODCAST”). In December, “podcast” was named word of the year 2005 by the New Oxford American Dictionary (Bowers, “The Year of the Podcast”). According to Google Trends, a feature mapping searches of words or phrases in the Google search engine, the first searches of the word “podcast” appeared in September 2004 and by January 2006 the searches were nearly as high as the overall top (currently marked in February 2018) (see fig.1).

Fig. 1 (“Podcast”)

2.1.3 Monetization (2006 – 2014) Gervais’s podcast was technically the first mainstream podcast to get monetized. The second season of his show was provided for a fee of £4 in February 2006, but to do this, his show had to be turned into an episodic audiobook, because it lacked syndication (“Gervais Charges for Podcast Show”). However by 2007, monetization of podcast was on the rise, with the possibility to offer content through iTunes and other sites like Audible.com for a subscription fee. One of the very first continuous podcasts to use this subscription form was The Jack and Stench Show - its creators asked for $5 per month to cover the costs of production (“The Jamie, Jack and Stench Show”). Podcasting started out mostly as a free content medium, so some podcasters were looking for different ways of

13 generating income from their content than asking their listeners for money. The most common way was getting a sponsorship and feature advertisement in the episodes.

Another way of doing that was taking a podcast on a live venue tour, the pioneer of which was Lance Anderson and a couple of his friends. The Lance Anderson Podcast Experiment of February 2006 was the first of its kind, with a pre-produced show taking elements from the creators’ podcasts and adding live music by an indie band. For Anderson, this really was an experiment and not an attempt to gain money. The fact that such a show was unheard of meant that he was not able to secure a sponsor to help with the costs of creating the show and travelling from Los Angeles to Great Britain. Nigel Paice, the producer of the show, noted that they were ahead of their time and half a year later sponsors would queuing up to sponsor similar shows (Hunter 10-11).

In January 2012, almost three years after the creation of the crowdfunding platform, Radio Ambulante launched the first successful podcast Kickstarter campaign, raising over $40,000 from 600 backers in two months (“Radio Ambulante”). The same year a show produced by Roman Mars called 99% Invisible got a massive support on Kickstarter, raising over $170,000 to fund the third season of the show. He broke this record with another 99% Invisible campaign the year after that and in 2014 founded a podcast entertainment network Radiotopia, connecting creators of various podcasts and his own. The network was first funded by the Knight Foundation, and Mars then raised $620,000 for the network growth, organizing the most funded podcast related campaign on Kickstarter to date (Mars, “Radiotopia Kickstarter!”).

It was also common practice to encourage the listeners to donate money through PayPal or other services if they choose to support the podcast directly. This practice was improved upon in 2013, when Jack Conte founded Patreon, a service which makes it very easy for creators of any kind of content to accept donations on a monthly basis. In the system of this service, the content creator can set certain levels of subscription and depending on how much a fan contributes they can then get access to exclusive content not accessible by people who do not pay. These exclusive features can be for example unreleased episodes of the podcast, behind the scenes information or a piece of merchandise (Levitz, “Donation”). The Patreon service was very well accepted and in 2016, more than 35 content creators collected over $150,000 each. Among these top earners were at least four podcasting related projects. Patreon gave a sense of financial stability to a lot of content

14 creators to the point when they could actually focus on their art as a full time career (Arnold, “Top Patreon Pages”).

Giving the listeners an option of buying merchandise related to the shows was yet another way of monetizing a podcast. In some cases, the merchandise (T-shirts, smartphone cases etc.) also acts as advertising of the podcast to some extent. For a lot of people, supporting the creators by paying for content that can be acquired for free is still not a compelling prospect, on the other hand, paying for a piece of clothing, a poster, an accessory or novelty item seems like a fair deal. Many podcasts collaborate with various talented visual artists that design their merchandising, creating humorous or fashionable products that can capture the interest of the listeners.

2.1.4 The Golden Age (2014 – present) While podcast could be downloaded to and played on any portable mp3 player, it was always tied closely to Apple products. After the invention of smartphones – mobile phone devices allowing software installation - Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 and the App Store a year later. As an app, iTunes was among the first ones made by Apple and although it supported podcasts from its beginning, in 2012, Apple launched a standalone podcast app, to promote podcasts and make them easier to approach by people who have not yet hear about them (Panzarino, “Apple Launches”) . In 2014, they made the app undeletable, which, in combination with other factors, brought a “renaissance” of the relatively stagnating podcast consumer base (Moore and Moore, “The Future of Podcasting: A History Lesson”). According to The Podcast Consumer, annual study provided by Edison Research derived from their Infinite Dial study, the awareness of the term in the USA went from 22% in 2006 to 45% in 2010, and did not rise more than 1% until 2014 and after 2015 it started rising steadily by approximately 4.5% per year.

The “breaking point” in 2014 was tightly connected to the phenomenon of internet virality. In October, the first episode of Serial, a murder mystery documentary podcast, aired and instantly became a viral sensation. Produced and hosted by an investigative journalist Sarah Koenig, Serial was a twelve part podcast airing weekly and was developed by an already well known podcast This American Life. Presenting a gripping investigation of a murder of an 18-year-old student that happened in 1999, the podcast became the top subscribed even before it debuted and it reached five million downloads on iTunes in record time and remained in the top ten podcasts for months. The topic of the podcast

15 brought it into daily conversations, people were sharing it with their friends and for many people, Serial was the first contact with podcasting. It came out at the right time, the technology being easy to use for an average person and already present in many people’s pockets (i.e. the undeletable Apple Podcasts app) (Berry 170-178).

While Apple’s software for listening to podcasts works relatively well, Google does not have any official app on Android devices and even though it does provide the possibility to play podcasts in the search, subscription is possible through Play Music service only for US and Canada regions (Tanasychuk, “How to Use Podcasts”). However, there are many well programmed, easy-to-use independently created apps in the Google Play store; the most popular one at the moment is Podcast Addict with more than 5 million downloads (Hindy, “10 Best”). Spotify - one of the largest music streaming services - also supports podcasts, although as of March 2018, it offers only a fraction of podcasts and does not support syndication – podcasts have to be manually downloaded (Shaw, “Spotify Is Coming”).

2.2 Podcasting in mainstream

In fourteen years of existence, podcasts managed to evolve and spread through the awareness of the general population, especially in the last four years. However, the number of regular listeners is still relatively small, considering the amount of quality podcasts, advantages of podcast listening and options in choosing from the varieties. There are reasons why podcasts are not even among the top preferred audio based content and why it can be cumbersome for people to find podcasts that would suit their preferences.

First of all, podcasts are not as effortless to listen to as radio broadcasting. Listening to radio means only switching it on and finding a station, on the other hand, to listen to a podcast, you have to download the correct software, chose from the wide offer of different shows, select an episode and download it. Additionally, listeners generally do not care when they start and stop listening to radio or start watching a show, but for some podcasts (usually audio dramas) the story is continuous throughout the whole show, therefore it takes time to catch up with the releases.

Podcasts can also be difficult to consume due to the fact they can be time demanding. With the average episode of a podcast moving between 20 minutes and an hour, the listener has to decide if it’s worth committing to listening to the whole episode based on the first few

16 sentences. This can be even more difficult because many podcasts start with advertisement, updates and introduction.

Another reason why podcasts are still not popular enough to be considered mainstream is the difficulty of sharing a podcast on social media compared to songs or videos, which can be shared with relative ease on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other social networks. On most of these sites, a person can post a link from YouTube or Spotify and the site will present it as an element that can be played without redirecting to the source page, while with podcasts, a shared link will usually make a person go to a different website hosting the podcast. In addition, the fact that podcasts are mostly listened to offline on a portable device makes immediate sharing less likely.

Potential podcast listeners can get annoyed by the quality of some shows compared to conventional radio or TV. Podcasts are relatively easy to create and can be produced de facto by anybody with a microphone; therefore there are many amateur podcasts, some with unpleasant audio, non-charismatic host or uninteresting content.

Finding the right show to listen to can be tiresome, on the other hand there are helpful sites on the internet, with lists of most popular shows in various categories. Furthermore, internet forums, like Reddit, are frequented by people who can provide additional information, share their favourite shows or recommend podcasts similar to those a listener has enjoyed in the past.

In the last few years, podcasts started being noticed by producers of TV shows, and actually being adapted into TV series. A notable podcast being adapted is Homecoming, a brilliantly written psychological thriller audio drama revolving about a caseworker at a secret government facility who helps soldiers with re-joining the normal life after their service. The actors of the podcast are actually established and well known, for example Catherine Keener and David Schwimmer, which provided a lot of professionalism to the production. The TV show is set to premier this year and star Julia Roberts as the main character (Andreeva, “Homecoming”). This might give podcasts a boost into the general awareness, as it happened with some books, namely Harry Potter or Hunger Games, after their adaptation into movies.

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2.3 Types of podcasts

Podcasts can be divided into many categories according to different criteria. While this thesis will focus on the content varieties in the following part, it is worth mentioning the different types of podcasts.

Most people think that podcast is only a series of audio files with spoken word that can be downloaded on the internet. As mentioned above, the key element of podcasts is the syndication, the automatic transfer of files into the listener’s computer or portable player. However, podcasting is not limited only to audio. While it is the most commonly used type, podcasts can also be produced in video form as well as so-called enhanced form of audio.

2.3.1 Audio podcasts The most widely used type is audio podcast. When people talk about podcasts, they usually mean the audio variety. They are very easy to create, all the creator needs is a computer and a microphone (preferably of high quality), software for editing audio files (some programs can cost up to $100, but many free alternatives are easily accessible online), internet connection and an idea regarding the content.

Audio podcast are generally produced in the mp3 format, which is compatible with almost every computer and portable media player. However, this is not a rule and instead of the mp3 format, some creators choose alternative formats like AAC. Podcasts produced exclusively in the Vorbis audio format Ogg are called oggcasts. The main difference between a conventional audio podcast and an oggcast is that the Ogg Vorbis is a patent- free and open source technology. The quality of the format is equal or slightly higher than the mp3 format. The lack of patent restrictions and licensing is the main reason it is popular in free software communities (“Vorbis Audio Compression”). Nonetheless, there is only a small number of active oggcasts nowadays.

One of the advantages of audio podcasts is the relatively small file size of individual episodes – an average episode has from 20 to 100 megabytes, depending on length and quality of the audio. In the early days of podcasting, download speed was much slower than today and portable media players had a very restricted storage space, and both of these factors were important for the invention of podcasts. With the rapid evolution of

18 technology however, downloading an episode nowadays takes a couple of seconds and takes up negligible space on today’s multi-gigabyte SD cards and storage space.

The only thing that could be perceived as a negative aspect is the obvious restriction to audio-only content. On one hand, this considerably limits the possibilities of the content. Some things, especially specific objects, events, or people, can be described in only so much detail through audio, and to convey the message properly, audio might not be enough. Therefore, when making a podcast, the creator has to decide if audio is the best way to share that particular content. On the other hand, it could be argued that this is the most prominent advantage of the medium format. While videos, pictures or written text demand full attention from the consumer, audio podcasts let the listeners multitask – they can be listened to during other activities e.g. housework, commuting, exercising, cooking etc.

2.3.2 Enhanced podcasts These present a middle ground between video and audio podcasts – the essential part of enhanced podcasts is still the audio material, but it has an added layer for pictures, chapter bookmarks (these separate the episode into parts, often in regard to the pictures) or hyperlinks for directing to websites. The enhanced podcast format is very similar to a slideshow with commentary, the pictures are synchronised with the audio recording, so the listener sees exactly what the creator is talking about.

A good example can be The Martin Bailey Photography Podcast, which presents an interesting use of the functions of enhanced podcasts. The host produces a show focused on photography skills, technical side of the art form and creates “travelogues” with sets of photographs, to which he then provides a commentary and describes various techniques and camera settings, explaining the background to each picture.

Enhanced podcasts are not very popular in the podcasting community, mainly because the element of visual content restricts the listener’s ability to multitask. In addition, the software that was used the most for creation of enhanced podcasts, GarageBand, no longer supports their creation (Escobar, “R.I.P.”). There is other software for creating this type of podcast available online, but the format is widely viewed as obsolete and when producing a podcast, it might be worth to consider one of the other two options, either audio-only, or video podcast, if the visual content is important.

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2.3.3 Video podcasts Just like the audio type, video podcasts are files transferred automatically through syndicated feeds into a computer or a portable device. In this case, the files are in a video format, for example mp4. It is possible to use other video formats but mp4 is the most commonly used one, since it is supported by a wide variety of media players and has a relatively small file size and good video quality.

As was mentioned above, video demands more focus than audio, therefore listener will pay closer attention to the show. Additionally, this type of podcast is much less restricted; the video aspect gives the creator another layer for production of interesting material.

The essential equipment is not very different from that which is needed for audio podcasting. A video camera and software for editing video material are the most important additions to the audio equipment. The most notable disadvantage is the production time and the work behind it. Most present day smartphones have a decent camera, so capturing footage of reasonable quality is not as problematic as in the past, but editing video files takes considerably larger amount of time than editing audio.

It is common practice for some video podcasters to release the show in both the video and audio format. This can only work with specific content, e.g. talk-shows or speech presentations, where the video footage is not essential for understanding of the episodes. This widens the podcast’s reach of potential listeners.

Video podcasts are primarily made with material captured by a camcorder, but that is not the only way they can be produced. Screencasts are a subtype of video podcasts and while their form is in its essence identical to a video podcast, they differ in the type of the video. They are recordings of a computer screen with audio narration following what is happening on the screen. This type of podcast is for its obvious merits used mostly by creators of content related to information technology, software, web design or programming. The creator has the possibility of using a “face-cam”, a camera connected to the computer and recording their face, which then shows on the screen.

Recording screencasts is made possible by various screen capture programs, some of which are free to download (OBS Studio). Most of today’s mass produced laptop computers also have integrated webcams for an easy addition of the face-cam.

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2.4 Statistics

The Infinite Dial is an annual study held in the USA by Edison Research and Triton Digital and is focused on digital audio, podcast consumption, social media, mobile and smart speakers. The study is conducted in a manner of telephone survey, using random digit dialing techniques and covers both landlines and cell phones. The surveyed group consists of 2000 people aged 12 or above.

Infinite Dial 2018 shows that 64% of the American population are familiar with the term “podcasting”, which translates to approximately 180 million people. Over two thirds of those have listened to a podcast in their lifetime and around 25% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly. Almost 70% use a smartphone, tablet or another portable device to listen to podcasts, the rest uses their computer. Half of all listeners listen to podcasts at home and with the improved possibilities of listening to audio in a car (connecting a smartphone to the car through Bluetooth etc.) 22% play podcasts in their cars. Almost 20% of podcast listeners also speed the episodes up in order to listen to them faster.

It is not surprising that the older generation does not have a high percentage of monthly podcasts listeners. Meanwhile, the groups of people aged 12-24 and 25-54 have approximately the same percentage, 30% and 32% respectively. Podcast listeners are relatively level in terms of gender; the male group has slightly higher numbers than the female.

Weekly podcast listeners take up 17% of the American population which is almost 50 million people who listen to seven podcasts on average each week.

Since these are statistics for the USA, they cannot be seen as reflective of the whole world, mainly because of the language barrier – the majority of podcasts are in English and transcripts are provided only for a small percentage of them, so for lower level speakers of English, listening to podcasts can prove to be difficult.

Edison Research conducts another study called the Share of Ear, which maps the share of time an average USA citizen listens to various sources of audio content. According to the 2017 study, the time is dominated by listening to conventional radio, with its share of 54%, and the second and third place is shared by owned music (physical and digital copies) and streamed audio. Podcasts are represented with a share of only 2%.

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From the Google Trends service, we can see that the most interest in podcasts (searches per capita) shows Ireland, in the second place is Sweden and Norway is in the third. United States are in the fourth position (“Podcast”).

Josh Morgan, a podcaster and sociologist conducted a research derived from iTunes US, focusing on the statistics of podcasts in the iTunes directory and he released the data in June 2015. He divided podcasts into various categories according to their content and found out that the category with the highest number of shows was Christianity (almost 40,000 podcasts), the closest runner-up was Music (approximately 34,000 podcasts) and Comedy took the third place (with 14,200 shows).

It was measured that active podcasts make approximately 40% (with at least one new episode between January and June 2015), the rest being discontinued or finished podcasts. His research also recorded the boom in podcasting after 2014, showing a surge in created podcasts – nearly 30% of all podcasts started being produced in the interval between June 2014 and 2015. The length of podcast episodes in 2015 varied, the average episode had 40 minutes (“How Podcasts Have Changed”).

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3 Content varieties

While an outsider may view podcasts as a unified medium of few genres, the complete opposite is true. Podcasting is a heavily fragmented medium, with many different content forms, very often directed at niche groups of listeners with limited overlay between individual genres. Even though this may be perceived as a disadvantage from the point of view of a podcast creator, for consumers it means a wide spectrum of shows they can subscribe to.

In order to simplify the range of genres and to be able to provide insight into a variety of podcasts, I subdivided the medium into categories according to the nature of the content; however, some podcasts may represent multiple categories at once and some very specific shows might not fit into any of these categories.

Czech podcasts are very scarce on the internet; this is mainly due to a low level of awareness of the podcasting medium in Czech Republic. Nevertheless, I tried to add an example of a Czech podcast to each category, which proved to be difficult. In some categories, the only existing podcasts were old and inactive.

3.1 News and politics

One of the categories that could potentially become a substitute for the conventional radio broadcasting is reporting news and politics. There is a large number of news oriented podcast shows that put out episodes daily, twice daily or even hourly. The forms of the shows range from typical radio-style news reporting, to talk shows with political guests or commentaries on current political situations in specific countries or global affairs in both audio and video format.

It became common practice for already established radio broadcasting networks to adapt to the internet age by producing their own podcasts, one of the earliest broadcasting companies being BBC, creating podcasts since 2004. BBC offers a massively wide variety of shows with subject matter falling into many different categories and many of these shows are focused on news and politics.

BBC Global News Podcast is a good example of this category, providing a news show twice daily on weekdays and once daily on the weekend with 20 to 30 minute long episodes. The main focus of this podcast is on breaking global news. The show is

23 completed with added commentary by reporters in the countries related to the reported news and audio recordings of relevant speeches, statements and short interviews.

The Czech podcasting scene has its mirror image of BBC in Český rozhlas, only in a much smaller scale. Český rozhlas, as well as many other broadcasting networks, provides their own radio shows as podcasts after their airing. Even though they are not original podcast content, their shows form the core of the scene in Czech Republic. As an example, their show Svět ve 20 minutách gives the listener a 20 minutes long daily insight into news and current topics in politics on global scale. Podcasts from this radio network are not limited to news and politics, most of the network’s radio programmes are turned into podcasts and fall under most of the categories mentioned here.

3.2 Technology and IT

Technology oriented podcasts existed right from the beginning of the medium, since the evolution of podcasts is tightly connected to technology and the people creating the first podcasts were often programmers or technology enthusiasts. As with many of the other categories, some shows belonging into this one overlap with the other ones, in this case, there are shows that could count as news, educational or lifestyle podcasts.

The listener can choose from a range of shows focused on brand new technology as well as ancient technology, podcasts which work in a way of tutorials, showing people how to use technology or even helping them develop their own programs and write code. Some podcasts in this category are produced in the form of a talk show with guests – researchers, developers or even people with different experience with modern technology.

An interesting podcast about technology, which is accessible to a common listener, is Note to Self. It is not produced on a strict schedule but comes out approximately every week and an episode is usually around 25 minutes long. The host, Manoush Zomorodi, invites a guest every week, to talk about the effects of modern technology on the lives of the general population. The show is conducted in a relatively informal manner, with a conversational approach to the topic and light humour. It is easily digestible for a person with no particular passion for technology while staying very informative.

There are some intriguing tech-podcasts in the Czech scene, but many of them are discontinued or scarcely updated. I noticed that there is a considerable number of Czech podcasts focused on Apple products and software (both active and inactive), which could

24 be attributed to the fact that Apple still provides the easiest way for people to listen to podcasts. Apple technology users might be better acquainted with the medium and therefore more likely to try creating a podcast by themselves.

One of the most mentionable Czech podcasts from the technology field is CZPodcast, hosted by a duo of programmers, tech-enthusiasts and entrepreneurs Roman Pichlík and Jiří Fabián. Their show consists of them usually being joined by a guest or multiple guests from Czech business or development fields and having a conversation with them, focused on their projects, lives or general technology talk. While the discourse is mostly informal, the content can be very difficult to understand for a non-programmer or a layman, which on the other hand suits the technology enthusiasts. The podcast is a nice example of the fact that it does not have to be accessible to everyone and still offer quality content.

3.3 Comedy

Comedy podcasts became very popular in the early days of podcasting and after the example set by Ricky Gervais in 2005, a lot of well-known comedians started producing their own shows. Many of these take the form of a talk show, some are just conversations between multiple hosts and others include invited guests. Various comedy podcasts work in a style of stand-up comedy, with multiple comedians performing their sets in front of a live audience. This category of podcasts often works well together with live touring.

Kevin Smith, an actor and director of cult movies like Clerks or Dogma, had a considerably large following on the internet during the end of the twentieth century and he created his first podcast in 2007 with his friend Scott Mosier called SModcast. Since then, Smith has started his own podcast network, hosting many different shows, some of which he presents himself, for example the Jay and Silent Bob Get Old podcast (Gross, ”Filmmaker”).

Smith started this podcast with one of his best friends Jason Mewes and named it after the characters they play in his movies. The main reason for the podcast’s creation was keeping Mewes sober and away from drugs, which he was heavily addicted to in the past. The show is recorded live with an audience and Smith and Mewes talk about their past and present, entertaining stories from the set of the movies and Mewes’ addiction. The content is very explicit, and the remarkable chemistry of the duo is the driving force of the unscripted

25 show, which is. There is no strict schedule due to the nature of the live recording; however, they usually produce one to four episodes a month, each lasting up to two hours.

It seems that not one comedy podcast currently exists in Czech Republic. Stand-up comedy, apart from the TV show Na Stojáka is not very widespread in our country, as well as improvisational comedy, with the exception of Partička. Some Czech podcasts do have humorous elements, but I could not find any that would focus more prominently on comedy.

3.4 Art and culture

Art is a very popular category for creators to base podcasts around. The selection of art and culture focused podcasts encompasses art of all forms - fine arts, photography, theatre, fashion, movies, music, literature, architecture etc. This category is truly rich in the number of various shows, ranging from interview based podcasts with artists and art experts to ones focused on history of art, important figures, pieces of art, literary classics, eras, functions of applied art, analysis of popular culture, television series and movies and many other topics. Listeners are bound to find at least one show that will suit their interest.

Some musical podcasts do not play the music they talk about, due to the fact that most of music is licenced and the creators would face copyright issues if they played it without getting permission or paying royalties. A podcast called NOT 97 is a show with three hosts plus one guest and each of them picks two songs to play on the show (with explicit permission from the artists). The songs have to be eight months old at the most and they have to be made by artists that have less than 10,000 followers on the internet. They have conversations about the music they picked, its backstory and the artist. This way the listener gets familiar with little known music producers or projects, and the musicians get a higher number of fans. So far they produced two seasons, seventeen episodes in total, releasing a hour long episode approximately twice monthly.

Liberatura is a radio show for book enthusiasts, originally broadcasted on Radio Wave, which is released in a form of a podcast after airing. It is produced weekly, with half-hour long ‘episodes’ with two hosts, Karolína Demelová and Jonáš Zbořil, who invite a guest from the field of modern Czech literature and talk with them about their books, whether it is prose or poetry, or about the current events in Czech literature or literature. When the guest is an author, they usually read an excerpt from their book. The transfer from a radio

26 to a podcast creates an option for people who enjoy the show, but do not have the time to listen at the precise moment when it’s airing.

3.5 Sports

Sport is a universally loved topic and that is reflected in the large number of podcasts that focus on sports, sport news, analyses of various games and matches, and reporting from sporting competitions. Some shows comment on sports in general, while other podcasts concentrate on specific sports - there are exclusively soccer based podcasts, ones about wrestling and many others.

The Big Podcast with Shaq is a show that combines sport news reporting and commentary with a comedic approach from one of the most famous basketball celebrities Shaquille O’Neil. The podcast he produces with his co-host John Kincade consists of weekly produced hour to hour-and-half long episodes where they talk about the recent basketball matches, changes in teams, O’Neil’s personal life or other celebrity gossip. The show is primarily aimed at basketball fans and enthusiasts and parts of it would be difficult to understand for someone who is not well acquainted with basketball. The tone of the show is relaxed and the voices of the hosts – Kincade’s commentator radio voice and Shaq’s bass - complement each other well, which translates into the quality of the podcast. It is an excellent example of the importance of a host with interesting or likable voice in what is largely a sound based medium.

The Czech state television has been producing a sport podcast since 2016, called ČT Sport fokus, which is hosted usually by Ondřej Nováček, who is joined by up to three other commentators and editors of sport articles in discussions regarding various sports, events or athletes. The episodes usually concentrate on one sport, mostly ice-hockey and football, but on occasion even biathlon, cycling or basketball and this gives the listener an option to for example listen only to ice hockey discussions. The show delivers around seven episodes per month on no specific schedule, the episodes being usually an hour long.

3.6 Lifestyle

Family life, business, religion, food, alcohol, health, exercise, advices, traveling, sex, gardening, past time activities and hobbies, these are all topics that fit into the category of lifestyle podcasts. There are truly shows focused on every different aspect on life, whether it is knitting, yoga or beer tasting. The listener therefore has the privilege of choosing a

27 podcast that will help them with leading the life they want to. This category is a good example of the potential of multitasking, which is a major advantage of audio podcasts. For example, a person can cook a meal while they listen to a cooking talk show and learn more about the background of various cuisines or enjoy a number of interesting facts about ingredients from skilled chefs or food lovers.

One of the most widespread hobbies is video gaming and Player One Podcast is a very enthusiastic show made by four former video game journalists. They produce a weekly hour-and-half program, and they spend their time talking about all videogame related things as well as their personal lives, raising children and interesting information from the industry. This podcast shows that it is easier to produce long content when working in a team of three or more people with positive chemistry between them. The conversational nature of the podcast is made almost effortless when the podcasters themselves enjoy spending time together. As it often is with this type of talk show, the episodes are longer, up to three hours. Their show has been running for eleven years and has almost 600 episodes today.

An interesting nine-episode documentary podcast was created last year from the production of Radio Wave and it was actually the first original podcast made by Český Rozhlas (as mentioned above, their other podcasts are just already aired radio shows released in a podcast format) and presents an unusual form which borders with art. It is called Zhasni! and its sole focus is on sexuality and intimacy of young people. Each one of the nine episodes provides a close view of a different aspect of dating or sexuality, for example one documents a week long use of an online dating app, and another is a confession of a homosexual woman and her search for sexual identity. Each episode is twenty to thirty minutes long and is artfully edited and directed by a different person.

3.7 Educational

As it is with many YouTube channels or websites, internet constantly proves that it is a place of great knowledge and has so much to offer in terms of education. It is full of people that are eager to share their personal experience either with teaching or specific fields of study. Universities throughout the world offer courses over the internet on an enormous spectrum of subjects. Naturally, there is a significant number of podcast shows produced by university teachers, graduates, researchers, enthusiasts and educated people that provide helpful advice regarding teaching as well as raw information from the fields of science,

28 literature, psychology, history, language, engineering and more. The greatest advantage of this is the fact that most podcasts are available for free.

One of the largest names in internet education is TED, the non-profit community with a mission to spread ideas. The network has multiple podcast feeds, each focused on a different topic – education, business, science, technology, health, politics etc. - and even some general feeds like TED Talks Daily. They post at least one talk every weekday, ranging from five to twenty minutes and they provide them both in audio and video format, so the listener can decide what is the most comfortable for them. These talks cover inspiration, motivation, personal experience and altogether potentially world changing views and ideas. As is the usual nature of the TED Talks, each talk is given by a different person and if the listener does not enjoy one presenter or topic, they still might appreciate other talks.

The educational side of the Czech podcasting scene consists of a relatively small number of active podcasts, some focused on Czech language, others on personal growth. Science Café might be the most interesting one for the widest listener base. It is a world-wide project that concentrates on bringing scientists and university graduates into the non- formal environment of cafés, in this case throughout towns of Czech Republic, where they present a lecture and engage in a discussion with the audience. The live session is recorded and then released online as a video on YouTube and an audio podcast as well. The ‘episodes’ are released twice monthly and the length of the lecture is around ninety minutes and the topics vary with different presenters – chemistry, technology, history of music, biology, computer science and other thought-provoking subjects.

3.8 Storytelling

The way podcasting works – a person talking into a microphone and someone else listening to their words – almost encourages the creation of storytelling podcasts. It is probably safe to say that listening to someone tell a story, especially when the speaker’s voice matches the atmosphere of the story, is a completely different experience than just reading it. The vocal production can give the story another layer of emotion or intensity and the listener can visualise it much more vividly. There are many different genres of storytelling podcasts, some of the more popular ones are horror stories, true crime (for example the aforementioned popular phenomenon Serial), fictional stories or non-fictional

29 experiences from the lives of the authors, folklore and history. There are even podcasts with fairy tales for children.

Aaron Mahnke created an exceptional podcast called Lore in 2015. It currently has over 80 episodes, each one an amazing half-hour long documentation of a different story from old folklore or relatively recent history, all of them bound together by their eerie and frightening nature. The podcast focuses on superstition, serial murderers, supernatural beings, inexplicable accidents and other stories that found their way into the archives all over the world. Lore became a great success and an instant classic and was included in the “Best of 2015” list released by Apple (McAlone, “Apple’s List”). Some of possible reasons behind the quickly acquired popularity are Mahnke’s entrancing voice and the fact that all of the stories told on Lore are non-fiction. In Mahnke’s words, “All of the material is from documented stories or historical events. Some are ancient and some are modern, but they are all factual in the sense that people reported these things and believed they were true.” (Locker, “Aaron Mahnke’s Lore”) This obviously gives the horror stories even more depth. Lore is also one of the podcasts that were adapted as a TV series, aired its first season in 2017 and a second season was announced this year (Mahnke, “Lore TV”).

In the Czech scene, it seems that this aspect of the medium is still not explored at all. There are some podcasts which touched upon the genre, notably a fairy tale filled feed for children called Pohádkář by the writer Luboš Pavel, who used the podcast for sharing his short stories and chapters from his books. The episodes of his show were around ten minutes long and relatively pleasant to listen to, with good audio quality and the author’s charismatic voice. However, the last episode was released in the early 2016 and the podcast has not been updated since. Another show worth mentioning is Stopy, fakta, tajemství…, which again is a radio show by Český rozhlas, published through a podcast feed, telling stories from the Czech history, using old documents to provide insight into interesting events and to uncover more information about important figures of Czech history.

3.9 Audio drama

This category is certainly very closely related to the previous one, but because of its unique form, it deserves its own chapter, mainly due to the fact that this is where the medium turns into an art form, even if it is not as widely accepted as for example literature or film making. Radio drama has a long and rich history, dating back approximately 100 years, to

30 the very first experiments with radio broadcasting. Maybe the most fascinating instance of audio drama was the infamous Orson Welles directed 1938 Halloween production of The War of the Worlds, adapted into the format of a radio play by Howard Koch, effectively blurring the line between reality and fiction. The major portion of the story is retold in the form of urgent news bulletins, which made some of the listeners believe that there was an actual invasion of aliens from Mars happening as the play was broadcasted. This resulted in panic among the population and even though the news sources at that time reported mass panic, suicides and loss of lives, in reality the impact was exaggerated. (Crook 112)

Even with just this one example, the artistic potential of audio drama is obvious and it is made clear that audio drama is far from being a lesser art form to cinematography, even with the general population being more visually oriented in terms of art and entertainment. In his book Radio drama: theory and practice, Tim Crook accurately points out that in spite of being viewed as a blind medium, it is not a fair description of radio drama, since it obviously stimulates listener’s mind and imagination, providing imagery original and personal to each listener. (54)

With old time radio dramas preceding the rise of podcasting, it was only a matter of time before someone created a podcast consisting only of fictional drama. Being an episodic content based medium, it offers an opportunity for creating series of original fictional stories and episodes ending with cliff-hangers to keep the audience deeply invested and impatiently waiting for a next episode. One of the first takes of producing audio drama through the podcast medium was The Red Panda Adventures series, a pulp fiction show about a Canadian superhero created by Gregg Taylor of the Decoder Ring Theatre. Originally written for radio but never broadcasted, Taylor started releasing the show as a podcast in October 2005, and a year later, he added a second episodic audio drama called Black Jack Justice, an homage to hard-boiled detective noir stories (“Decoder Ring Theatre”).

In 2012, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor created an independent audio drama podcast called Welcome to Night Vale. During the first year of its existence the show did not get a lot of traction, with only around 150,000 downloads per episode. This might seem like a large number; however, a year later the show suddenly became a viral sensation on the social network Tumblr and it gained 8.3 million downloads during July and August 2013 alone. Ever since then, the show stayed in the top 20 comedy podcasts of iTunes (it is in

31 the comedy category because iTunes does not have an audio drama category for podcasts) and is still one of the most popular audio drama podcasts (Bottomley 179).

Welcome to Night Vale is a specific type of audio drama, in the sense that it is produced as a radio show from a small American town of Night Vale, somewhere in the desert. The main voice the listener hears belongs to Cecil Baldwin, the host of Night Vale Community Radio. Cecil narrates the events happening in the town, which are completely surreal and unusual for any other town. The city council, as well as the radio management, is a lovecraftian monster, nobody, not even dogs, is allowed into The Dog Park in the middle of the city and the regular weather forecast is just a different song each episode. In spite all of this, Cecil’s soothing and calm voice makes the listener believe that all of this absolutely normal (Bottomley 180).

The podcast became a phenomenon known worldwide and the producers went on to publish two books with original stories, as well as transcripts of the podcast, they produced four more audio drama series so far and have been on multiple original episode tours all over the world. The success of WTNV, among other reasons, was why a large number of listeners started to seek more similar shows and a lot of independent drama podcast were created.

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4 Use in education

It is common practice to innovate techniques of education, especially with regard for the fast evolution of technology. What was new fifteen years ago is now common in schools across the world, e.g. smartboards.

It is obvious just by observing the various categories and forms of podcasts, that there is great potential in utilizing the podcasting medium in the field of education. In English speaking countries, the general public is much more aware of the concept of podcasts than in the Czech Republic, and there are records of them being used in teaching already. There certainly are instances of their use which Czech schools and teachers can learn from and incorporate podcasts into lessons. By doing that, the students will also learn about podcasting itself, which will improve the general awareness of the medium and might help expand the Czech podcasting scene.

This chapter will focus on some of the multiple ways of how podcasting can affect learning in the sense of acquiring new information as well as how it can benefit the students of English and potentially other languages in terms of language acquisition.

4.1 Podcasts as teaching material

Podcasts as teaching material could be divided into two groups related to their source. Either the teacher can use podcasts already available on the internet, or they can create their own. In the second case, the audio, enhanced and video variety alike, provide the option of teaching a lecture without the need for a classroom. This form of teaching can highly benefit the students of distance education programs, but also enhance the intake of information provided in the conventional lessons.

Creating a podcast in the form of a lesson, just like for any other purpose, is relatively easy the difficult part is preparing the lesson itself. The preparation will consist of creating a lesson plan on the topic on hand. The individual tasks and parts of the lesson have to be created to accommodate the form of the presentation, so the teacher has to keep in mind that interaction between students will be non-existent or limited to emails (alternatively Skype calls). However, when we are talking about language teaching, students can still do listening, reading and writing exercises. For visual material, the teacher has to consider if it is enough to provide the visual material separately or create an enhanced or video podcast.

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Then, the lesson is presented and recorded by a microphone or alternatively a video camera. For a better sound it is a smart idea to use a pop filter to prevent the distracting sound of popped plosives. The footage can be used raw or edited in case there are unneeded parts or errors in the presentation and effects can potentially be added in the editing software. After editing, the file needs to be uploaded to a host site. Soundcloud provides free podcast hosting for beginners, but there are other alternatives, both free and paid. After it is uploaded, the teacher provides the RSS feed URL to the students and after subscribing to it through a podcatcher app, the students will automatically get a lesson sent to them when the teacher uploads it.

The teacher can also put up a camera or a microphone in the beginning of the lesson or a lecture and record their in-class presentation to provide a substitution for the students that missed the class due to illness or other reasons. Khe Foon Hew notes that during the studies on podcasts as supplementary material, there were no significant differences in performance between students that used the podcasts and students that only attended the lessons (345). He also says that according to the data collected in questionnaires after the studies, the majority of students stated that the availability of the podcasts would not affect their attendance. Only a small percentage of students used the lecture podcasts as a substitution for attending the class.

Khe Foon Hew describes four strategies of podcasts use as an addition to lessons presented in person. The first type is basically a duplication of the face-to-face lesson itself, providing the material and presentation of the already covered topic. This way the students can review the lesson and amend their notes or fill in the information they missed during the lesson. The second strategy uses the podcasting medium to provide additional relevant information to the presented lesson, not just what was already covered. In the third strategy, the podcast material again gives more information in addition to the lesson, but also serves as a middle step towards the next lesson, effectively tying together the topics of the preceding and following lesson. This way, students are prepared for the next lesson through the information provided in the podcast. The fourth strategy incorporates the work of students accomplished during the lessons and serves the purpose of giving future students material to work with and giving them an idea of what is expected from them. (338-339)

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4.2 Language acquisition through podcasts

What I attempt to do in this chapter is explain, why podcasts present a very valuable addition to the process of language acquisition outside of school, by drawing a parallel between podcast consumption and Stephen Krashen’s research on free voluntary reading, narrow listening and second language acquisition and its effects on students’ comprehension of the language.

I find podcasts very helpful to my comprehension of English. Listening to spoken word has undoubtedly improved my pronunciation and I have acquired a wide range of vocabulary related to a number of different topics and fields, not to mention actual information regarding said topics. This is because podcasts provide comprehensible authentic input. I already understand a large portion of the language used in the podcasts I listen to, but there are many aspects of English I am not confident with, which makes the podcasts beneficial to my language acquisition.

Krashen’s input hypothesis consists of multiple parts. Firstly, it relates to acquisition and not learning – this is why I am using the term ‘subject’ or Krashen’s designation ‘aquirer’ and not ‘learner’. Secondly, language acquisition, which is the step from stage i (the current level of subject’s language competence) to stage i+1 (level of language competence slightly above the subject’s current level), happens when the subject understands the input containing i+1 and is focused more on the message than the form. The context is important for acquisition. Thirdly, i+1 will be provided automatically when the communication is successful, input is understood and there is enough of it made accessible. And lastly, the production of language is not taught directly but will appear on its own when the subject is ready. (“Principles” 21-23)

Krashen states, that when achieving the subconscious language acquisition, several criteria have to be met for the optimal input.

First and the most important characteristic of optimal input is its comprehensibility. It is crucial to differentiate between comprehensible input and incomprehensible “noise”, which is input that is too difficult for the learner to understand. The “noise” leads to no acquisition because there is not enough language foundation to build upon. Therefore, to observe results, the input has to be provided with the language proficiency of the learner in mind. However, while the comprehension of the input is necessary, it is not sufficient on

35 itself. Even if the learner understands the input, there are situations in which there is no acquisition. This may be caused for example by the input not providing the i+1 aspect – simply not being challenging enough. (“Principles” 57-60)

Secondly, the optimal input has to be either interesting, relevant or both. Since the best way for language acquisition to work is when the learner forgets that he is learning from the input, it is important to provide such input, which will be interesting or relevant enough to minimize the learners focus on the form and maximize the focus on the message. (Krashen, “Principles” 60-61)

The third characteristic of optimal input is its lack of grammatical structure. This point is important for multiple reasons. For one, by focusing input on one structure it is assumed that every student in the class is on the same level of development of the language, which is very unlikely to be the case in any class. The i+1 is different for everyone, therefore the provided input has to include a range of structures to work for everyone. This is achieved by providing enough input and i+1 occurs naturally. Additionally, the power of acquisition lies in the least amount of conscious learning, therefore, if the input of one lesson is focused on one certain structure and a learner does not acquire the structure during the lesson, it would mean that the student will get stuck and the review lessons will not help him internalize the structure, since the they usually do not cover the full activities sequence meant for internalizing. Therefore, non-sequenced input is more beneficial for language acquisition, since it covers multiple rules over and over again. Furthermore, grammatical structure oriented lessons often result in uninteresting form, which would negate the second characteristic. And finally, the grammatically based approach works under the assumption that the order of acquisition is known, which is not necessarily true. (Krashen, “Principles 61-63)

The fourth and final characteristic of optimal input is that it is provided in sufficient quantity. It is not known whether there is a fixed amount which is enough, maybe also because of the different rates of acquisition for individual students, however there has to be enough to raise the level of the learner’s proficiency of the target language. (Krashen, “Principles” 64)

An important aspect of second language acquisition is the affective filter theory, which consists of three factors, motivation, self-confidence and anxiety. As far as the first factor, motivation, goes, it is said that performers that are more motivated usually do better in

36 second language acquisition. Secondly, the more self-confident and self-satisfied the subject is, the better they aquire. And lastly, the least amount of anxiety is the most beneficial for acquisition. When the subject’s affective filter is high, he receives less acquisition from the provided input compared to when the filter is low. (Krashen, “Principles” 29-30)

All of the above mentioned characteristics, factors and aspects are important for second language acquisition. Another Krashen’s paper, Explorations in Language Acquisition and Use, contains a whole chapter focused on research of free voluntary reading and its contribution to language acquisition. He notes its effect on increasing literacy, language development, reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar and writing, highlights the fact that it is a very enjoyable past time activity and mentions its potential in transition from elementary level to authentic usage of the language and transition in terms of language ability from “conversational” to “academic. (15) All of this is possible, because free reading is a nearly optimal form of comprehensible input, consumed in an environment with low affective filter.

Even though it falls into a different category of input, listening to podcasts shares many characteristics with free voluntary reading. For one, it is a past time activity that the listener voluntarily engages in, because it is enjoyable. Additionally, podcasts are sources of comprehensible input. What more, podcast also provide nearly optimal input. The variety of podcasts available online is enormous and almost anyone can find their own optimal difficulty of language. As far as relevancy and interest is concerned, podcasting covers both factors by the aforementioned variety of topics and genres and by the nature of podcasting itself – the serialization, continuous episode releases and the automation of downloading the fresh content. Podcast shows, with the exception of those focused on teaching a language, are not grammatically structured, they provide the language with more attention to the message than to the form, and therefore the listener focuses on the message also. And finally, the question of sufficient quantity in covered again by the fact, that there is over half a million active podcasts currently available through Apple Podcasts, some with tens or even hundreds of episodes. As has been said before, vast majority of the shows are free to download and listen to, and a majority of the population already owns the technology to consume them, so the accessibility of podcasts is not an issue.

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The difference between podcasts and books is, as is mentioned above, in the form of input – the way of consuming the content, one is through listening and the other is through reading. This will certainly reflect on the fields the acquirer improves in. With podcasts, the most improvement will be in listening and pronunciation rather than reading and writing. However, some fields of development will overlap in both activities, for example vocabulary and grammar.

Krashen talks about the benefit of listening in another paper called The Case for Narrow Listening, where he builds on the hypothesis of narrow reading. By narrow reading it is meant that the acquirer focuses on either a series of books by the same author, or on literature concerning one topic. He mentions that the reason why narrow reading is more beneficial than reading a wide variety of excerpts from different literature, is because narrow reading helps making sure that the input is comprehensible, since the reader can reflect on the previously acquired context, which helps understand the current text. (97)

Similarly, narrow listening is an extension of this concept. By listening to audio material focused on one topic or produced in a serial manner (like the book series), the audio input becomes more comprehensible. Krashen mentions that this technique will prove to be useful to acquirers, who do not understand the language well enough to comprehend casual conversation, and supplies his own experience with acquiring Spanish by asking different native speakers to talk about one topic he was interested in. The interest in the topic, as well as previously gathered knowledge of it in English helped him understand a large portion of the native speakers’ opinion. He later improves the technique by recording their short speeches, playing the recordings in his own free time (e.g. when driving) and switching topics after they become comprehensible. He then notes, that he enjoyed listening to certain recordings multiple times and found himself understanding slightly more each time. He compares this to the behaviour of a child that wants to hear the same story over and over again, because it acquires more every time. Krashen also comments on the fact that he found some people, as well as topics, to be more comprehensible and interesting than others. (“The Case” 97-98)

Knowing this, podcasts seem as a perfect way to utilize this technique for multiple reasons. There is an enormous number of podcast shows focusing on an enormous number of topics, so when one becomes comprehensible enough, it is very easy to just find another podcast directed at another topic. Each episode of a show usually covers a slightly different

38 thing, but still in the boundaries of one topic, and they are easy to replay, so the acquirer can move forward or pay more attention to one episode. Additionally, they are made to be listened to on the move (driving or commuting) or during another activity (as long as it is not too attention-splitting), so in contrast to reading, multitasking is encouraged. Downloading podcasts is also much easier than interviewing random native speakers.

In his pleasure hypothesis, Krashen offers that “those activities that are good for language acquisition are usua1ly perceived by acquirers as pleasant, while those activities that are not good for language acquisition are not consistently perceived as pleasant, and are, in fact, often perceived to be painful.” (“The Pleasure Hypothesis”, 299) He also mentions reading out loud (in addition to free reading) and the fact that children enjoy being read to, to which he provides evidence in the form of positive experience with storytelling by teachers.

The concept of flow was introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and it is essentially a state of deep but effortless immersion into an activity, when a level of challenge is met with equal or near to equal level of skill (Carl, “Flow” 11). Krashen uses the flow concept as evidence to his statement that comprehensible input (specifically free reading outside of school) is pleasant. He says that a pleasure reader engages in the state of flow when reading, and feels immersed into the activity. (“The Pleasure Hypothesis”, 309)

Podcasts fit this characteristic very well, from my personal experience they present an extremely immersive way of consuming spoken word content and the listener experiences the state of flow when listening to them, especially in calm situations, for example before sleep.

Podcasts are not widely known in Czech Republic, so the majority of students will not come in contact with them on their own, but this could be changed by motivating students of English to find some podcasts and listen to them in their free time. The obvious way to do that is presenting some recommendations in-class. With shows having 25 to 45 minute long episodes, it might be too time consuming to play a whole episode during a lesson. However, I think that an excerpt from a carefully chosen show in combination with providing information on how to actually find and listen to podcasts has high potential to spark interest in the students. I also think that audio dramas and storytelling podcasts are the best genre to make someone interested in the medium. They are often carefully written to be as gripping and stimulating as possible, so even a five or ten minute long beginning

39 of an episode makes a person want to finish it and go straight to another episode. In relation to books, Krashen talks about the impact of one positive reading experience, essentially stating that in some cases, all it took for children to get interested in reading for pleasure was one positive experience or one specific book they read (“Explorations” 24- 25). I am confident that it is very similar with podcasts, as my personal interest in the medium also evolved from one positive experience which led me to further exploration.

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5. Conclusion

The aim of this thesis was to explore the history, evolution, forms, content, spread and potential usefulness of the relatively new medium of podcasting. Since its creation, it has proven itself to be a medium that enables creative people produce quality content, which is provided comfortably and effortlessly to the listeners through automation. Podcasting is still predominantly an English language based medium, which offers the possibility of using it as a valuable and extensive source of comprehensible input for language acquisition for students of English as a second language as well as foreign language.

It would be meaningful to introduce podcasts to the general population as it is not only beneficial to students of English, but is also a free and enjoyable past time activity with an enormous and still expanding amount of variations and options in terms of shows, that could be perceived as an alternative or addition to watching television, listening to music or radio and reading books, among other activities. In the fast pace of present day lives, the multitasking aspect of podcasts would certainly be appreciated as an advantage.

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