PODCAST -IN TEFL

My take on podcast is very positive, I think this could be  an amazing and  fun way of teaching and discovering new things. It will surely be beneficial in teaching TEFL.Christopher Shamburg the author of the ISTE book and advocate of podcasting talks about  the benefits of podcasts in one of his interviews. He believes that podcast is a way to effective teaching engaging students in an interesting fun authentic activities, asides that it will teach students considering legal and ethical way of fair use of other people's material. It teaches students certain skills of using media. The only disadvantage he sees is the copy right. I think it also will enhance the creativity in students' performance.


ESLEFLpodcastingActivities_Mehring.pdf Provides a step by step tutorial for teachers about how to create their own podcast and use it in their teaching practice, also provides activities that can be used in teaching which seem to be fun and very attractive. The activities seem to be  doable, really I think I could do it, except there are some challenges i have to overcome myself the technical part of it, the audacity, part I am not sure if I understand how it will work. I need to do it all by myself in order to give an objective answer as to how can I use it in my class. Besides the technical part there are other possible challenges, if we are talking about an Armenian school, the  lack of equipment and of course the time.  If the teachers understand how to use it and realize the benefits of it I think they can make some changes. Another challenge that I see is the short class  time,this should be taught in at least two hour classes if not more. Despite the fact that more people have access to the internet or are familiar with some tech devices, still there are many who don't have any access or know how to use them. So this can create a problem for children to comprehend all the technical parts during the class.
I am a big fan of podcasts and used them myself to improve my pronunciation. When I become comfortable with technical parts of implementing this tool, I can  see myself using this tool in my teaching and can already imagine the excitement of students and their  eagerness to be in my class.  So only positive feedback on Podcast.


PODCASTING: AN EFFECTIVE TOOL FOR HONING LANGUAGE
STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION?


The University of South Carolina has done a research on podcasting as a tool to  examine the effects of using it to improve pronunciation in second language learning. The participants in this study were  12 students learning German and 10 learners of French. The project lasted 16 weeks.
Frankly, I am really surprised to see that results were  not showing a drastic difference in improvement of pronunciation accent  or comprehensibility.

One of the possible explanations as to why there was no noticeable improvement
in their pronunciation in terms of accentedness and comprehensibility is that 16 weeks is a very short term to engage students in task and get their interest.
Another possible explanation regarding the comprehensibility is "the lack of significant differences from pre-to post-test is due to a ceiling effect. Most of the participants were already completely or mostly comprehensible at the beginning of the semester. "

According to the data analysis students pronunciation didn't improve significantly, however they all stated they enjoyed the process of it. It was fun, creative, engaging. There were a lot of benefits acknowledged by the students. They liked the creative part of it, some found  feedbacks very helpful, some stated it really helped them improve their accents.
So a lot of positive feedback on the podcast.