Podcasts

I could use Englishcaster as a warm-up in my class. The website provides lots of songs in English and the songs are short and easy and they have repetition of phrases and lyrics. Especially, I could use Learn a Song as a tool to get my students used to the flow of English sounds. I could also use GenkiEnglish.com for the purpose of practice grammar. Songs in the website consist of grammatical features, such as conditional clauses and modal verbs. Since those podcasts give enjoyable English sources, it could be used to remove students’ negative feelings about learning English and to make learning more enjoyable.
Another podcast I could use in my class is Public Radio Podcasts which has so many varieties of podcasts. Among the podcasts, I could use “How to …” in my classroom. One of the reasons is the duration of each topic. It is a 6-minute lesson, so even I use the podcast during class time, it will not take so much time. Another reason is the content. What we can learn is very practical and pragmatic, such as how to express feelings of dislike and how to get back to a topic. The other reason is it consists of thorough explanations for every phrase and expression, which tells us nuance of different expressions. Therefore, my students will be able to learn something which they can use in the real world. If there is a common topic between a textbook and an expression in the podcast, I would use it as an additional and supportive source for the textbook. If expressions in the podcast cannot be found in the textbook, I would use it as a expression builder; students learn those useful phrases at the beginning of each lesson.