Шарапиденова. А

Нуржанова. Ж

магистрант кафедры теории и практики иностранных языков

Евразийский национальный университет им. Л.Н. Гумилева

Астана, Казахстан

Blogs and podcasts for improving communication skills

We live in a global world where communication demands have dramatically changed over the past decades and where EFL has acquired a central position. English has thus become a lingua franca that everyone needs to learn in order to communicate globally and this has been reflected in many educational systems around the world, where English has acquired the position of first foreign language.

iPod-Broadcast

The word derives from the words “iPod” and “broadcast”. Podcasts are basically radio programs that can be downloaded onto an MP3 player or listened to directly from your computer at any time. They are a great way of catching up on radio programs and practicing your listening skills. I often listen to podcasts whilst cooking, ironing, gardening or doing my nails! A lot of people listen to podcasts on their way to and back from work, at the gym, running, jogging, gardening and so on. The beauty of podcasts is that you can multi-task while improving your listening skills.

Why Learn with English Podcasts?

English language podcasts are an excellent way to learn English quickly.

You can listen to them anytime anywhere – at your desk or while you’re on the move. What better way to pass the time during a long commute than by immersing yourself in an entertaining podcast?

With a little dedication, English language podcasts will help you quickly improve your listening skills and proficiency. One perk (benefit) is that podcasts often have transcripts (a written version of the audio). This means that you can listen and read at the same time, or look at a transcript if one part of a podcast confuses you.

Podcasts in English (iTunes – website)

Variety is the spice of life and that’s exactly what these terrific podcasts give you – spoken English in an assortment of settings.  Who said language learning can’t be fun and exciting?

Podcasts in English.com is a comprehensive English language learning podcast series with programs for beginners, intermediates and upper intermediates. There are also podcasts for those who need to use business English. The short lessons are conducted entirely in English and feature conversations between two English language speakers. They cover a broad range of topics encompassing nearly every facet of life.  Some of the subjects you may hear being discussed are the Winter Olympics, horse riding experiences and Facebook. The podcasts are short, challenging and supported by transcripts, worksheets and vocabulary tasks.

Blogs and podcasts have been very positively valued in what respects the development of the students’ communicative skills. Podcasts can be used in the EFL classroom to improve students’ listening skills –students listen to podcast already available online– or to improve students’ oral production and pronunciation skills – students create their own podcast based on examples online. Giving a further step, Guzzo de Almeida (s.d.), Hung (2011) and Hsu, Wang and Comac (2008), for example, suggested linking blogs and podcasts to design meaningful projects for the students. The study was carried out in a public secondary school of Alcobendas (Madrid). We worked with a group of 19 students of 1st of Bachillerato1 enrolled in the subject Ampliación de Lengua Extranjera I –a subject that revolves around the development of oral skills according to its syllabus (BOCM [Official Gazette of the Region of Madrid] on the 29th July 2008). It should be noted that this school offers a bilingual program in German and that most students enrolled in this subject were part of this bilingual program – their first foreign language was German and not English. Nevertheless, these students had also been studying English during all this time as their second foreign language. The study was designed as a case study in order to see the effect of certain activities based on the use of authentic materials and ICTs – namely blogs and podcasts– in the development of students’ oral skills. The study was divided in three parts: (1) a pre-study analysis in which the proficiency (listening and speaking skills) of students was measured, (2) the development of a series of innovative activities based on blogs and podcasts (the treatment), (3) a post-study analysis to measure the proficiency after the treatment. Moreover, some relevant information about the students was collected after the treatment to correlate it with the study results –i.e. Marks, contact with the language outside the classroom, cultural level of the parents and other sociolinguistic information. The treatment consisted in the creation of a radio station located on a blog specifically designed for this purpose (https://radiostationginer.wordpress.com/). The students were asked to record four different types of radio programs (a news broadcast, a debate, a short story and a commercial) in each of the four sessions in which the treatment took place. Before creating the radio program, the students were provided with a series of authentic podcasts of the same genre they had to replicate and they were asked to listen to some of them in order to become familiar with the genre. Afterwards, they were asked to act them out –I.e. the news broadcast and the commercials– or to design some new ones –I.e. the storytelling broadcast and the debate–, recording them as a new podcast. These podcasts were later uploaded to the blog, where all students could have access to them and see what their classmates had done.

As we previously discussed, the main aim of this study was to see if there was an improvement in students’ oral skills after implementing a series of activities based on the use of authentic materials and ICTs.

Here are 3 easy ways to improve your English communication skills?

1. Listen to English Speaking Shows

Find an interesting TV show, radio show, or even podcast that you can listen to both at home and on the go. Spend as much of your downtime as possible listening to spoken English. ITunes offers a great variety of hour long podcasts that you can directly download to your mp3 player. Listening to spoken English will help you improve your improve your vocabulary, learn better sentence structure and make learning the correct pronunciation of difficult words even easier.

2. Start a Blog

Use your hobbies, field of study or career path to help you learn English. While you may have a solid foundation in reading, writing and speaking in English, there will be many words that are specific to your hobbies, studies or career that will not come up in everyday conversations or during your English classes. To master these interest specific words, try writing a regular blog about subjects related to your field of study, interests or career path. Even if you are just summarizing articles in English, you will quickly become familiar with the English translations of words that you are already familiar with in your native language.

3. Use Ginger’s English Personal Trainer
Ginger’s English Personal Trainer keeps track of the mistakes that you make while writing both in MS Office and online in your browser and uses these errors to determine which are your weakest areas of English. Ginger will present you with personalized lessons based on your weak areas to help you fix your problematic areas of English. 

For those of you who simply enjoy listening to spoken English and want to keep up with your English, I would recommend these following podcasts:

BBC Radio 4

I love Radio 4, especially their comedies and dramas. There are 150 podcasts that are easily available. Here are some of my favourites:

The Archers Omnibus – The Archers is the world’s longest running soap opera, offering essential drama from the heart of the country. The full week’s events are available every Sunday.

Drama of the Week – Every Friday you can enjoy an hour of the best storytelling.

Comedy of the Week – On Mondays you can catch up with a variety of comedians that will brighten your week.

TED Talks

“Ideas worth spreading”. This is TED’s motto and they have been sharing inspiring talks about a variety of topics since 1984. The length of the talks vary from 3 minutes to 18 minutes and transcripts are available.

British English

Luke’s English Podcast – Luke is a qualified English language teacher and stand-up comedian who provide an award-winning, engaging and entertaining podcast series. His intention is to “make you laugh while you learn” and he provides a rich mix of subject material.

For many of the podcasts Luke is the sole narrator, although real-life conversations sometimes occur. He has a warm, engaging voice that draws in the listener. His stories are fun and interesting. The English is spoken at normal speed and transcripts are available.

References:

1. http://2balla.net/pedagogika/tvorchestvo-kak-polozhitelnaja-motivacija-na-urokah-angliiskogo-jazyka-v-mladshih-klassah.html

2. http://www.creativeeducation.ru/credils-655-2.html

3. Пассов, Е.И. Урок иностранного языка в средней школе / Е.И. Пассов. – М., 1991. – 38 с

4. http://privetstudent.com/diplomnyye/pedagogika/page,3,1865-ispolzovanie-igrovyh-tehnologiy-dlya-formirovaniya-inoyazychnoy-kommunikativnoy-kompetencii-gimnazicheskih-klassov.html

5. http://studbooks.net/1954953/pedagogika/ispolzovanie_aktivnyh_metodov_obucheniya_starshem_etape