Mobile phone podcasts for listening practice

If you asked me, what is the area in my teaching that I wish I should be doing more than I have been doing, my answer would likely be the teaching of Listening.

Teaching listening in Mozambique is challenging and, from conversations I have had with some colleagues, it seems to be a common challenge in other African countries too. Among other factors, one that we often mention is insufficiency of resources, especially in public schools.

Finding alternatives that will not mean having a series of meetings to convince the institution to buy, for example, a TV set, or a speaker, can be the answer sometimes. Mobile phones seem like a good option, and I am glad to be discovering some interesting tools that I feel that I could use in my context. One of those tools is the British Council’s LearnEnglish Podcast, a mobile application for listening practice (with affordances for reading and language content too). The app is an affiliate of the LearnEnglish website that I wrote about in this post some weeks ago.

The LearnEnglish Podcast app, available on Google Play and App Store, features a series of podcasts that involve conversations and other types of talk on a variety of topics, allowing for different language skills and content to be addressed.

General features

• Podcasts have four main components: talks in different scenarios; ‘lesson sections’; exercises; and 'rapport moments' (if I may call it so);
• Content is presented in a radio program fashion (which reminds me of when I was a regular BBC World Service listener in my English learning journey);
• ‘Programs’ are followed by a ‘lesson section’ that wraps up the main language used in the episode  and discusses some learning and studying strategies;
• In-app exercises are available throughout the podcasts, so the learner can access them at their preference;

                     

• The rapport happens throughout the podcasts where listeners are invited into the conversation and asked to follow up, by e-mail, to give suggestions, or to have their say on the matters discussed in the podcast.   

                    

A more detailed description of the features can be found here.  

Skills and language areas covered

• Listening
• Pronunciation
• Reading
• Spelling
• Vocabulary

Affordances

Episodes are different, but below I share some of the main pedagogical potential of the LearnEnglish podcasts. You can have a look at a sample episode here (link available through mobile app).

• Collaboration: in a sense, when listeners are asked to feedback on the podcasts by sending emails, they are participating and being included in the design of the course;         
• Authenticity: most talks are about real-life situations, and the ‘radio program’ format might sometimes be so entertaining that students forget they are on a language learning activity (I had this feeling when listening to some episodes);
• Learner training: In Episode 1, the ‘teacher’ in the language focus section talked about some vocabulary learning techniques, inviting learners to think about their learning and learning styles and encouraging them to explore the techniques which work best for them; 

• Culture: being authentic material, language content often comes with some facts about people and places, and things in general, making it, in my opinion, more enjoyable;
• Variety of accents: different accents are included, sometimes with a clue of where it might be from. I find this particularly important as it reduces the pressure from learners to speak in a single accent;
• Exposure, exposure, and more exposure: what I like most about the app is how much listening exposure students can get and the subsequent opportunities to practise reading, spelling, vocabulary, and pronunciation.

Classroom use ideas

Listening material

The podcasts are listening material on their own. The fact that they are downloadable allows the teacher to use then for a variety of activities:

• Students can be invited to do the activities in the podcast;
• The teacher can design their own activities using the talks as reference;
• With a Bluetooth speaker, the teacher can play the podcasts from their mobile in the classroom, if students cannot afford the app;
• If students can afford the app, the teacher can set self-study tasks.

Teaching tips

• The activities in the podcasts can be a source of inspiration for teachers to design their own activities. 

Things I wish were different…

• That some stereotypes were not perpetuated. For example, in one of the episodes  (link only available through mobile app) the following subtle stereotypes can be deduced from the talks: ‘women cannot tell their age’ ‘men love football’, ‘women are good for their looks’, ‘Africa as the face of poverty’;
• I wish Sharing options included more platforms;
• I wish there were no adds…but I guess this could be a little too much to ask from a free app;

                 

There are many podcasts on the app and I believe that every episode will have something interesting to a teacher depending on their needs and teaching circumstances. If you decide to have a try, please share  in the comments some of the things you find more interesting.

Also share any other mobile apps you know of, that are good for teaching.

Thank you for reading. :)

See you,

Cândida

Credits: images are screenshots of pages in the LearnEnglish Podcast app. 

TED, YouTube, and Teaching

Hello!

It has been a while since I last posted (I missed you!)

Work has kept me busy, and I did not get enough focus to write, but during this time away I learned about an interesting tool, TED-Ed. I thought TED was only about talks but it turns out they have a platform that helps teachers create lessons using YouTube videos, or TED talks for that matter. So, today’s post will be about how to use TED-Ed to create online lessons based on YouTube videos.

TED-Ed has a simple interface, with a simple structure, containing four main buttons: Discover, Create, Get Involved and Support. 

The Discover bottom is a repository of lessons and ideas from other creator; Create is the space where, as a teacher you can create your own lessons. Get involved allows users to create ted talks and Support is more about the commercial part.

For the purposes of this post, I am going to focus on the Create section where lessons are created. Lessons can happen within the application, where students type in their answers and comments, or it can be used as an aid in a live online or face-to-face lesson.

Before you start creating, first you will need to register. For this you can either create an account or, you can log in using your Google or Facebook account. Once signed in, there is a form where you specify the type of user you will be, in this case teacher and more specific information will be asked, relating to level and subject areas in which you teach.

Creating a lesson

It might be helpful that you have your notes about your lesson before starting, i.e., the lesson outline including the steps, activities, and the video you plan to use. With that in place, and once your sign in has been validated, you can start creating your lessons by following the steps described below.

1. By clicking on ‘Create’, you will get the window below where you can either type in a key word to let the site search for videos, or you can type in or paste link to the YouTube video you want to use.  
   
   
   
2. After you type in a YouTube URL, you will get the result displayed and you can then continue building your lesson, by clicking on the video. From now on I will be showing screenshots of a lesson I built while learning to use platform. The lesson is designed for a teacher training class, and is available at  https://ed.ted.com/on/Y8MFDnTL.  
   
   
   
   When you click on the video, you get the window below, with a short description of the video and a ‘Continue’ button.  
   

3. When you click ‘Continue’ you get the page seen in the image below, where the stages of the lesson are represented in the headings, ‘Lesson title’, ‘Let’s Begin’, ‘Think’, ‘Dig Deeper’, ‘Discuss’, and ‘And Finally…’. You only need to fill in those spaces, based on how you planned the lesson, where Let’s Begin would be the start and ‘And Finally…’ the end. 
   
   
   

4. You are now ready to publish. But first you might want to check that everything is fine before doing it, and for that you click on the ‘More’ button and you will be able to see the list below. 
   
   
   
   
   
   I should also mention that you have the option to crop a video, in case you will not need the whole of it in your lesson. 
   
   
   
5. After making sure that it is ready, you then click on the publish button (see first picture in number 5 above), which take you to the window below showing different sharing options, including e-mail, social media, or link text. 
   
   
   
6. After sharing, you can go back to the main page, and you will be able to see the lesson listed. 
   
   
   
   
   Below is what the lesson front page looks like when opened. We can see lesson title, the introduction, and the lesson stages on the right-hand side through which participants can navigate. 
   

Affordances

• Flexibility: students can join at the time they find most convenient, choose the parts to which they want to pay attention, using the divide they have available.
• Autonomy: students work independently either individually or in groups, to reflect on the video content
• Digital skills: the use of video and the tools engages students into practising their digital skills
• Listening practice: by watching a video, students are exposed to language in use
• Writing and speaking practice: students practise writing and speaking when reacting to or building upon ideas from video content.
• Authenticity: you tube videos are a great way of exposing students to language in use in daily life, in a variety of contexts

Advantages

• TED-Ed is very practical for blended learning, as lessons can be prepared in advance or and students can access them at their convenience;
• I particularly like the design. Simple and organized in lesson plan style where at each stage you see the lesson unfolding;
• Students do not need to create an account, especially if you do not plan to use it frequently.
• Videos can be cropped allowing you to choose the parts that are mot useful to your lesson;
• User friendly, both PC and mobile phone compatible. See the screenshots below for an illustration of mobile version views. 
  
  
  
  
  

Things I would have wanted to see…

• The fixed layout does not allow for different lessons formats. While there is nothing wrong with the order of activities, I would have loved to see the tool allow for repositioning of activities. For example, in the sample lesson above, I do now want students to watch the video right away as the first activity, but unfortunately, I could not move it to the position I wanted, which would have to be after the ‘Think’ stage; 

• I wish there was a space where, if one chose to have a synchronous lesson, one could schedule the lesson for a specific time.

Despite the drawbacks I mentioned, TED-Ed is a tool I would recommend.

 

Thank you for reading. 😊

See you,

Cândida

Credits: All images in this post are screenshots of my activity as an individual user on TED-Ed, at https://ed.ted.com/educator