Practice Your English Through Podcasts

      Podcasts are digital medium consisting of an episodic series of audio or video, which allow users to freely download to their computers or mobile devices. According to wikipedia, “the word is a neologism and portmanteau derived from "broadcast" and "pod" from the success of the iPod, as audio podcasts are often listened to on portable media players.” But I prefer the explanation provided by Lee Lefever that “pod” is the abbreviation of personal on demand. Because it is true that users can choose their own podcasts based on their needs and interests, and most of them are charge free.

      Here, I would like to recommend ESL Pod.com to both teachers and students who want to find authentic English teaching or learning materials. The website will post a new podcast on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Each podcast is about 20 minutes including a conversation (both in slow pace and normal pace) with transcripts and detailed explanations. Furthermore, the topics are of very wide range. You can find what you need through tags such as entertainment, business, health, and daily life; or you can just directly select your demand in the search engine. 

      What I found might be useful in my future teaching is DescribingPeople’s Looks.  I really like this topic because description is a basic skill for both speaking and writing in many real-life situations. And the adjectives that can be used to describe people are also very basic and important for intermediate language learners. Moreover, since it is an audio, students can also improve their listening by repeatedly listen to the dialogue and explanations. Therefore, my teaching procedures are as the follow:

        1) Answer the questions after you hear the conversation twice in the slow pace: 
                 What have been described in the dialogue?                                                                      
                 What adjectives are used to describe each appearance? 
        2) Describe a person (family member, friend, or your favorite star) you are familiar with by          using the word you found in the dialogue
        3) Prepare and bring your product to the class and share with your classmates.

       To sum up, podcast is a useful tool to enlarge students’ amount of information of language. And the information always keeps in pace with the time. Teachers and students only need to down load the audio or video in their personal devices. Then they can enjoy the process of language learning at anytime and anywhere.