Learning Podcasts

Our exploration of online teaching tools continues this week with a focus on podcasting.  For those not in the know, podcasts are like radio shows (though they can also include video) that you can download to your computer or a mobile device.  What makes podcast shows different from radio shows is that they can be made by anybody with a microphone and an internet connection, and that you can listen to them anywhere - once you've downloaded the file, you can take it with you and enjoy it any time, any place.

I found a podcast that would be a wonderful supplement in my Spanish classroom called Español Podcast / Spanishpodcast (www.spanishpodcast.org).  As the name suggests, it's a podcast series in Spanish.  The show is targeted at Spanish L2 learners with an English-speaking background.  Episodes begin with a short introduction in English, which is then repeated in Spanish and followed in the same language by the rest of the show.  Each episode is centered on a particular topic, and is designed to facilitate learning of the vocabulary and other language features that pertain to that topic.  I listened to ¿Hay wifi?, which centers on a conversation a man named Bob has with a hotel receptionist regarding the hotel's wifi services.

The host, Mercedes, speaks clearly with a native Barcelonian accent and at an easy-to-follow pace.  Even better for learners, episodes also include a transcript so that listeners can read along while they listen to the words.  By including multimodal input (text and audio), Spanishpodcast allows simultaneous visual and aural learning.  These two input styles reinforce each other, so that students who may struggle with one or the other on its own instead find spoken language paired with text, encouraging deeper understanding of Spanish as they engage more fully and experience the connectedness of these two aspects of the same language.