Podcasting for language learning

The video Podcasting in Plain English mentioned that anyone can do podcating, subscribe other's podcast and download it onto a computer or portable devices. Students could listen to the podcast to learn a language when they are walking, waiting, eating or doing other things as many times as they want. There are so many educational podcasts in all kinds of websites. But personally I prefer iTunes. Nowadays Apple's products are so popular that many have downloaded iTunes. You can search for podcasts and probably you will find your desire ones.

 

I found lots of great episodes on iTunes. I listened to one called "ESL-Gerunds as Subjects" The learning objectives for advanced students, according to Maryland Content Standards for Adult ESL/ESOL, would be able to write a detailed paragraph with topic sentence, and know how to use gerunds. The episode is short and sweet. It gives some examples of writing topic sentences with gerunds as the subject. It explains clearly what gerund is and how to use it in a sentence. It also claims that there are other ways to express the same meaning, but using the simple form of the verb should be avoided. I could use the examples in the video to teach how to write a topic sentence. A topic sentence should be not too broad or too specific. And then I would let students to brainstorm some evidence to support the topic sentence. Besides of using a gerund as the subject, I would also teach using a gerund as the complement, or the object of a sentence. I would ask the students to use gerunds to write about their hobbies.