ELT Blogs and Podcasts

Web blog is useful to create interest about language learning because writing on blog is very new for students and it attracts them a lot even more then discussion in class. To provide extra reading and writing practice for students. To encourage shy students to participate. To increase the sense of community in class because this blog can help foster a feeling of community between the members of my class specially if learners are sharing information about themselves and are responding to what other students are writing.
But before all these purposes my main purpose of creating my own blog was my course ‘Computer
Assisted Language Learning’. It’s new for me also and it is very interesting as well for my students.


Podcasting tools enable to create our own listening activities and texts which suit our students and these can be specifically developed around syllabus content and course book.

It is true that podcast can help extremely to improve one’s speaking and listening skills. Specially in my case I can strongly say that it is very helpful for me and my students as well to improve speaking and listening skills.

Podcasting:

The term podcasting is vary new to me, and the idea of using a computer to create digital audio for speaking and listening tasks for students is not very easy for me.

What is podcasting?

The word podcast is a combination of the two words iPod and broadcast. Podcasting has been compared to radio broadcasting because it usually has a single producer (or group of people producing it) and the audio transmission is sent to lots of listeners. What’s different about podcasting is that, unlike radio, the person listening doesn’t have to listen to it at the time of broadcasting. Instead of a radio transmitter, a podcast is stored on the web as a digital sound file and this sound file can then be transferred to any computer or digital device, such as an iPod or MP3 player. The listeners can then choose when they listen.

How podcasting will help in language learning class?

•      Podcasting tools enable to create our own listening activities and texts which suit our students and these can be specifically developed around syllabus content and course book. 
•      Podcasting tools give students the opportunity to create audio texts that they can share with each other or the online world. This act of creation gives students the opportunity to use language freely and creatively, and to listen to, self evaluate and improve their performance. 
•     It’s often hard to listen to students in a crowded classroom and really assess how well they are speaking – but once they have recorded podcasts, I can listen to them and really assess their abilities and understand where they need help. 
•     Being able to listen to themselves encourages students to reflect on and try to improve their own performance, so students are often more willing to push for greater accuracy.
•      Creating a podcast, or a series of podcasts, can be extremely motivating for students and creates an authentic purpose for using their language skills.

So it is true that podcast can help extremely to improve one’s speaking and listening skills. Specially in my case I can strongly say that it is very helpful for me and my students as well to improve speaking and listening skills.