This article illustrates how podcasts can enhance language learning by offering insights into five good practices shared from case studies. Read on to find out more.
Table of Contents
- What are podcasts?
- What are the key benefits in using podcasts for education?
- What then are the ways podcasts can enhance language learning?
- 1. Used as naturalistic input to develop listening in an authentic context
- 2. Used as modified and enhanced input to develop specific listening competences and strategies
- 3. Used to complement or support reading development while also developing the listening faculty
- 4. Used as part of an integrated approach to develop language skills and competences holistically
- 5. Used as part of a culturally responsive pedagogy
- Recommended Books and Conclusion
- References
Since the dawn of podcasts, the potential of its use in language education has been explored and researched – although the reach and take-up are not as pervasive as today. Increasingly, podcasts have become a popular tool in language education, providing students with a flexible and engaging way to learn languages. Podcasts can enhance language learning, and can potentially be implemented to reap surprising benefits in domains we may have given less thought.
The rapid growth of podcasts over the years is evident from a simple Google search. In 2004, a search using the keyword ‘podcast’ returned just around 6000 results. This number jumped to approximately 60 million in 2005. As of 2021, there are over 1.9 billion podcast-related search results available (Rime, Pike & Collins, 2022). Fuelled further by the pandemic and the ever-growing thirst for knowledge, the surge in number of podcast listeners and content creators around the world continues to uphold the popularity of this medium. If you have not yet started, this is indeed the prime time to start using podcasts as part of your language learning materials – regardless of whether you are the teacher or the student.
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What are podcasts?
The best academic definition of what a podcast is as follows:
“A podcast is a piece of episodical, downloadable or streamable, primarily spoken audio content, distributed via the internet, playable anywhere, at any time, produced by anyone who so wishes.”
Rime, Pike & Collins, 2022
For laypersons (which includes me – I do not investigate podcasts academically), podcasts are basically digital audio recordings that can be found online. Some of these recordings can be downloaded, though most are typically streamed today. There are many popular platforms and apps where you can find tons of podcasts – Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Castbox, etc.
Podcasts are typically recorded by either a single person or a few people. During the advent of podcasts, content creators may still be limited to established institutions and authority figures. Over the years, with the democratisation of content creation due to advances in the World Wide Web, content creators can range from esteemed experts (e.g. academic scholars, credible journalists, renowned thought leaders) to the average Joe – the grandma you just met this morning might just be a popular podcaster.
The content of podcasts can be as wide-ranging as you can imagine. From in-depth analysis of international affairs and macro-economic phenomena to sharing of essential oils and – sit back and be amazed – listening to a non-talking creator taking his walks in different terrains, our imagination is the only limit of what content can be created for podcasts.
What are the key benefits in using podcasts for education?
Using podcasts for education has become a popular way to engage learners. The key benefits are plentiful based on anecdotes over the web. Based on literature, however, they can be fundamentally summarised to the following key ones:
- Convenient and flexible access: As long as a learner has access to internet connection, he/she can generally access podcasts. In areas where internet connection can be scarce, podcasts can also be downloaded at strategic times and made accessible in a local device. In addition, learners who can only learn at a distance, such as during the pandemic, will still be able to access the learning materials. The convenience and accessibility of podcasts facilitates self-paced learning within the personal schedules of the learners.
- Personal manipulation of playback: Podcasts hardly exist as synchronous live recordings that can only be heard once. Most of the time, learners can control the speed at which they listen to the podcast (some who prefers a lower speed while some others going at 2x speed). Learners can also pause, play back and forth at will, and even replay the whole podcast should they wish to do so.
- Portability: With mobile technology more advanced these days, podcasts can be accessed from mobile devices and can be listened to while multi-tasking. In fact, many professionals do listen to podcasts on the commute. This also means that podcasts can exist in more spaces of the learners.
- Wide range of topics: As mentioned earlier, the rich variety of content from heavy academic topics to daily mundane areas make it easier for every learner to find their own cup of tea – content aligned with their interests and preferences.
- Autonomy of choice: Related to the earlier point, learners can exercise personal agency in choosing podcasts for their own consumption. This ensures a higher probability of commitment by learners to engage with the podcasts for a longer period.
- Enhancing academic engagement: Traditionally, academic research findings have been predominantly communicated in the written word and perhaps presented in a live environment. With the increasing availability of recorded lectures as podcasts, as well as expert academics hosting their own podcast shows (e.g. Freakonomics Radio Network of podcasts), academic research findings have found an alternative route to reach the masses, including the learners who used not to find reading academic papers interesting.
- Expansion of content engagement in other modes: Nowadays, podcasts are frequently connected to webpages that offer supplementary material. Extra information is given about the show, with links to related books and articles, and even further more podcasts. With these additional resources, learners can expand their understanding of a podcast as well as the topics presented within the podcast.
Somewhat not mentioned in research, but also a possible benefit in my opinion, is that podcasts as learning materials are generally cost-effective and can be accessed free or at low costs. This also remove barriers for their use in education, making them a viable option for educators who want to provide their students with access to a wealth of learning resources.
What then are the ways podcasts can enhance language learning?
Surprisingly, there are not as much peer-reviewed academic research as I have wished for, which deep-dive into the use of podcasts in language education – in contrast to other domains that I have encountered (it sure took me some effort to dig relevant articles). Notwithstanding such, many of the studies illustrated interesting case studies where the practitioners involved demonstrated how podcasts can enhance language learning, with a number focusing on the development of the listening faculty. From the review, I consolidated 5 key good practices that you can consider for your own language lessons.
1. Used as naturalistic input to develop listening in an authentic context
Unless positioned as learning materials for second/foreign language learners, most of the popular podcasts are often produced by proficient speakers for the general audience who are also proficient users of the language. Many podcast episodes offer unscripted dialogue between the expert speakers which helps students become familiar with different accents, idioms, and expressions – all essential components when it comes to mastering the language. In a nutshell, such podcasts become an abundant repository of NATURALISTIC INPUT to which learners can be exposed in activating language acquisition.
In “7 Types of Language Input that can facilitate Language Acquisition according to research”, I have shared how different types of language input is necessary to help our learners. In particular, NATURALISTIC INPUT refers to language input to which learners are exposed in the “real world”, where the language is usually unfiltered, meaning-focused and can be highly variable. NATURALISTIC INPUT within podcasts enables our learners to experience the target language in the real world in a safe zone: they can remain passive (though actively listening).
Through immersion in the NATURALISTIC INPUT from podcasts, learners experience more opportunities for incidental vocabulary acquisition and grammar patterns while also gaining implicit understanding of the target language’s culture (e.g. norms and practices in languaging). Accompanied with the wide range of content availability, learners are also exposed to different text types and different levels of difficulty.
With these affordances, podcasts provide an exciting outlet for language educators and learners alike who are looking to break away from artificial dialogues found in traditional textbooks and instructional materials. Language educators in the case studies have deployed podcasts to introduce NATURALISTIC INPUT into classrooms; as well as means to promote extensive listening in out-of-class settings, guided by self-directed principles.
However, some of the researchers have also cautioned on the use of podcasts with learners of beginning to intermediate proficiency. Unsurprisingly, such learners are generally not as ready to be exposed to continuous, relatively high-speed flows of speech commonly found in podcasts. Furthermore, the lexical demand may be overwhelming for these learners to stay engaged with the podcasts, rendering the learning experience “frustrating” (Alm, 2013). In other words, we need to be mindful of the Zone of Proximal Development for these learners or the “i+1 zone” to calibrate the NATURALISTIC INPUT to be comprehensible.
Other researchers have proposed conscious use of the pause and replay function (i.e. manipulation of playback) to problem-solve and notice new elements of the vocabulary and grammar structures. In addition, learners ought to be pre-taught key and high-frequency vocabulary found in podcasts to at least kickstart some moderate success in independent listening. Educators can also guide learners in the choice of appropriate podcasts that may be pitched more at their levels, or at least deal with topics that are highly familiar and accessible. Last but not least, learners can also leverage the use of transcripts (if available) to facilitate their understanding.
2. Used as modified and enhanced input to develop specific listening competences and strategies
Despite the best strategies and pre-teaching, if learners have not yet attained the level of minimum proficiency, general-audience podcasts may still be difficult to be used in unsupported independent listening tasks. Does that necessarily imply that extensive listening activities in out-of-class settings are out of bounds for beginning to intermediate learners?
Well, not so. Beyond general-audience podcasts, there are also quite a number of language learning podcasts – podcasts produced with language learners in mind – targeted at learners of different levels of proficiency (usually before the advanced stage). Such podcasts provide MODIFIED INPUT or language input that is altered for a particular purpose. The challenge, of course, is for educators to find suitable podcasts to promote such learning. Several such podcasts for EL learning can be found in this article “Utilizing Podcasts in Virtual EFL Instruction” (Hanks, 2022).
Adventurous educators or educators with the necessary expertise can also seek to produce your own original podcasts. Leverage on the community – within your own school or professional circles – to co-produce these podcasts. If you do not mind, you can also experiment with text-to-speech technologies as part of your production to design variability in accents to model authentic phonological variation with tailored content. These are the exact practices found in some of the case studies.
Notwithstanding these recommendations, will beginning and intermediate learners also benefit from exposure to NATURALISTIC INPUT? After all, I also mentioned that it is a key type of input to which all learners should have some exposure.
The general recommendation is for these podcasts (i.e. general-audience podcasts providing NATURALISTIC INPUT) to be introduced in classrooms, where the educator can further scaffold the learning with necessary pre-teaching relevant to the episode. In this sense, the educator can also support with INPUT ENHANCEMENT (thus providing ENHANCED INPUT).
INPUT ENHANCEMENT refers to all alterations of the language input to make targeted linguistic features more salient to the learners – the resultant input been ENHANCED INPUT. With a podcast, means and ways of enhancement in the classroom can be supported with the use of a transcript with altered textual features or playback manipulation (e.g. pausing at strategic junctures to bring attention to a certain grammatical structure, turning up the volume to highlight certain vocabulary words).
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3. Used to complement or support reading development while also developing the listening faculty
In my article on “Science of Reading: 9 Essential Insights for Reading Success”, I mentioned that reading scientists have generally converged on the understanding that reading – the route from decoding the written word to linguistic comprehension – is mainly achieved via two pathways: the PHONOLOGICALLY MEDIATED PATHWAY and the more DIRECT SEMANTIC PATHWAY.
The PHONOLOGICALLY MEDIATED PATHWAY basically refers to a mapping from orthography to phonology (e.g. print-to-sound), before mapping to semantic meaning (sound-to-meaning). When using this pathway, readers connect the letters/characters or graphemes they see to the sounds they represent (e.g. phonemes) to link up the representations of the words in both dimensions. After that, they then map it to the semantic meaning of the words to discern the exact word to which the print is referring (e.g. bear vs bare, hair vs hare).
The DIRECT SEMANTIC PATHWAY, in contrast, skips the mapping from orthography to phonology and moves directly from orthography to semantic meaning. In this sense, words become recognised upon “sight” – words become sight words, where the connection to the mental lexicon is direct.
Novice readers tend to employ the PHONOLOGICALLY MEDIATED PATHWAY in general. While expert readers have more capacity to utilise the DIRECT SEMANTIC PATHWAY, both pathways remain simultaneously used – though the degree may differ according to texts and languages. This insight from the Science of Reading reminds us that language development in the oracy domain can also have effect on the literacy domain.
How do podcasts enhance language learning in this sense? To strengthen and fortify the PHONOLOGICALLY MEDIATED PATHWAY, learners need to automatise the mapping of orthography to phonology. As mentioned earlier, most general-audience podcasts provide transcripts. Where podcasts do not offer transcripts, educators or learners can also make use of speech-to-text technologies on online platforms (e.g. Otter.ai) to convert podcast spoken texts to written texts.
With transcripts, a podcast can be played accompanying the reading of the transcript, enabling more opportunities for orthography-to-phonology mapping to occur. This activity helps learners familiarise with the pronunciation of words and prosody of spoken languages while they focus on understanding what someone is saying.
Following the listening activity, a silent reading or reading aloud activity can also be implemented. With purposeful planning following a systematic approach, learners have potential in boosting comprehension and fluency in both written and spoken forms of communication in the target language.
Note that this process does not solely benefit the reading faculty. When learners get used to the structure of the podcasts (e.g. patterns, pauses, repetitions, transitions) and get better in predicting what comes next, the support of transcripts can be gradually removed (e.g removing certain sections/paragraphs before removing the whole written text). In that sense, the listening faculty is also enhanced.
4. Used as part of an integrated approach to develop language skills and competences holistically
I have hitherto presented podcasts as instructional materials that can be manipulated or used in purposeful ways to develop listening and reading skills. What if the whole process of podcasting is taken into consideration? This is the approach taken by some of the studies reviewed.
Mastering a language is like building a house. It requires different components of language, such as syntax and vocabulary, to come together in order to create something solid and lasting. An integrated approach implies the skilful fusion of multiple processes or resources in tandem to help learners develop their language skills and knowledge holistically.
Podcasting allows this to happen. Learners are guided to become podcasters (as individuals or in groups) in the target language on topics of interest or those relevant to the curriculum. In this process, the podcaster-learner has to conduct research, either by listening to other podcasts or reading extensively on the topic of choice, and draft the script (e.g. producing the transcript) to be used for the audio recording. In this process, learners engage the holistic use of their language skills.
The artefacts from the podcasting – essentially the podcasts generated – become instructional materials to be used in the language lessons where other learners can use as a listening resource. The educator can also facilitate a feedback session where the podcaster(s) can consolidate personal strengths and areas for improvement, which also acts as a teaching activity for the subsequent group.
Other than the language learning benefit, studies have also found this approach to be empowering for the learners as they somewhat become the directors of the content to be used and learned in the language classroom. Furthermore, student agency is very much exercised as they make decisions on many parts of the production.
Nevertheless, before adopting such an approach, educators need to be cognisant of the technical requirements and capacity of the learners. It might be more suitable for older learners and those with the access to relevant technologies. Otherwise, more intervention might be required for it to be successful.
5. Used as part of a culturally responsive pedagogy
One usually under-explored benefit of podcasts is the potential of the medium in supporting the implementation of a cultural responsive teaching approach. Culturally responsive teaching acknowledges students’ backgrounds, identities, customs, characteristics, experience, and perspectives while catering instruction to meet their needs. In other words, these factors are placed at the centre of lesson planning, materials design, and lesson enactment.
Typically, culturally responsive teaching speak to diversity and provide a larger space for different voices to be heard. I have mentioned earlier how the progress of the internet and technological tools have democratised the content creation within podcasts, providing space for a wider range of topics and content creators. This makes available a rich archive of possible choices in content that both teachers and learners can choose for consumption. As such, it helps foster understanding of different cultures and inclusion by giving students access to voices they may not have heard before.
Podcasting as an integrated approach further accentuates these possibilities, as learners become active agents in producing podcasts and have their voices heard through the choice of content to be shared with the class. It also encourages them to think critically about different perspectives. As educators strive for an inclusive environment that values cultural diversity and social justice, podcasting can become the cherry on top of the cake.
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Recommended Books and Conclusion
In summary, podcasts can enhance language learning as a great source of instructional materials. They are easily accessible and come in all shapes and sizes, ensuring there is something suited to every learner. With the adoption of the good practices mentioned in this article, learners should see improvements in their mastery of the language holistically. If there can be a cherry on top, learners may also be more sensitive to different cultural nuances.
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