Technology and The teaching of listening skills:
The following slides by Paula hodgson outline some of the important ideas about teaching listening with technology:
Using technology to teach listening skills
One kind of technology that is ubiquitous today is PODCAST. Then, how we can use podcast for language teaching? and why are the potentilas that it offers for language teaching and learning.The following articles provide answers for the two questions:
So, what podcast actually is? Based on wikipedia, A podcast, or generically netcast, is an episodic series of digital audio or video files which a user can download and listen to. It is often available for subscription, so that new episodes are automatically downloaded via web syndication to the user’s own local computer, mobile application, or portable media player. It is very similar to, and may overlap with, Internet radio, though perhaps distinct in revolving around topics personalized exactly to listener preferences, plus podcasts are often able be streamed or downloaded on demand.
Podcast can be very beneficial media/tool to those who want to improve listening skill or even teaching listening. For teacher, podcast can be an essential tool to teach listening because podcast contains audio so if the teacher wants to give example such as conversation by native speaker, teacher can simply play the podcast for the students and they will listen to it directly. Besides that, podcast can also be used as a media for the students to have a conversation so they can easily improve both listening and speaking skill.
Below, is the example of an online discussion using podcast
Podcast created with soundcloud :
online discussion – culture differences