ESL Podcast Investigation

Podcast #1

http://www.eslpod.com/website/#
Specifically: English Café #144

This podcast seems great for high school or adult intermediate to advanced level English Language Learners. This podcast is one of many that looks like it’s posted regularly. The things I liked about this podcast are as followed: 1) This particular “episode” was dealing with the topics of Saturday Night Live and Howard Stern. Embedded in these cultural topics was practice with the 5 W’s and different ways to say “good job.” 2) The speaker of the podcast spoke slowly and annunciated well. Though his speech was slower than an average speaker, he modeled good fluency. Also, he didn’t dumb down his speech. Instead, he gave explanations to the words that may be considered tier 2 or tier 3 words. For example, here are some of the words and how he briefly explained them: Celebrity: famous person, Cast: people who are acting, Comedy: funny show. Overall, I think this seemed like a great, informative podcast for ELLs that combines both American culture and grammatical and language focused practices.
(you may also purchase a learning guide that accompanies each podcast episode)

Podcast #2

http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/2008-07-06-voa3.cfm

This is another great ESL podcast that doesn’t seem to “dumb down” material, but provides numerous modifications. I love that this embraces culture and the arts, a meaningful and creative topic. This site includes clips of news that, again like the first podcast, includes speakers who speak at a slower pace and modify their vocabulary for a lower level speaker. What I liked about this podcast was that it seemed truly like a radio show or NPR show. It included music and two different speakers (male and female). Also, the website provided a script of the podcast so that you can have your students read along (the same page also includes pictures of the paintings this particular podcast is discussing). Again, this would be great for adult or high school intermediate to advance leveled ELLs.

Podcast #3

http://www.ugoeigo.com/2006/03/25/phonetics-sounds-lesson-1-b-p/
(Podcast created by William Tad Morgan)

This is actually a video podcast that seems great for any age and any level of student who needs practice with phonics. It would be a great website for homework or practice at home especially if students don’t have people at home to model English or correct English pronunciation. This first lesson I watched/listened to compared the b and p sounds. As well as listening to the man speak, you can watch a type of slide show that provides a script of what he says. Also when he shows the sounds, you actually watch a video of his mouth so that you can copy what he is doing. The only thing I didn’t like about this podcast was that, besides the video of how your mouth should be, the podcast provides no other assistance to his narrative. He doesn’t provide explanation to the script leading up to how to pronounce each sound. Overall, I would use it for practice in a lab or homework practice.