Skip to main content

PLE Podcast Reviews

Podcast #1 - 5-Minute Spanish by David Nance

https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/5-minute-spanish/id487338699?mt=10
- I found this podcast relatively engaging.  His use of the whiteboard to provide visual cues to go along with his oral explanation and pronunciations was useful and helpful.  I found his explanations easy to understand, even as one who has little experience (that I remember at this point) with the language.  The only real negative is that the first "episode" sort of jumps right into the topic without preamble, which makes it a bit tricky to catch on with what the focus is right away.


Podcast #2 - ESL POD

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/english-as-second-language-esl-podcast-learn-english/id75908431?mt=2

This podcast is put out by eslpod.com and has hundreds of lessons available for free.  I found the content to be well organized and easily accessible.  The speaker was engaging and his pacing was appropriate for the audience.  I particularly enjoyed the "cultural cafe" lessons, which introduced the listener to an important public figure or place and provided the background information and historical facts necessary to understand its significance.  I would highly recommend this podcast series to people seriously interested in learning American English as a second language.

Podcast #3 - Learn English - English Lessons from ILAC

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/learn-english-english-lessons-from-ilac/id893583547?mt=2

This podcast was by far and away the most entertaining, engaging and obviously professionally produced podcast of those I sampled.  The podcast episode I listened to made use of modern music and pop culture references to teach slang words. The speaker has the classic "announcer voice," which I suppose added a level of "coolness" to the whole thing.  All of that said, I'm not sure this podcast would be appropriate for use in the public edu setting except for perhaps at the high school level.  It's simply not sanitized enough for younger students.  However, it would most certainly be an excellent supplement to more formal learning for any ESL student old enough to appreciate and handle to format and pop references.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Google Alert Week in Review #1

This week I read about a pretty wide variety of things. I began the week with an article on a public library in Edmonton, CA that held a festival to connect local authors and readers.  The main thrust of the program was to empower people to tell their own stories, and one way this was done was through an introduction to digital storytelling. I found myself nodding in agreement as I read this piece, since I know digital storytelling to be an incredibly powerful means of expression that can open up students who are reluctant to write by broadening their perspective on what storytelling and "writing" is really all about. Another piece that popped up in my alert digest was a press release from the "Digital Narrative Alliance" promoting the upcoming Narrative Summit in the SF Bay area.  The goal of this group is to discuss, "di gital storytelling and methods for implementing change through evolving channels for distracted audiences."  I found this line interest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Google Alert Week in Review #8

I was intrigued by an article that came across in my Google alerts this week entitled, " Best language apps to help travellers click with locals" .  I'm often intrigued by the ways in which people attempt to learn various topics "in the real world" (language of course being one of them) as opposed to how they have been traditionally  approached in school.  I find that even tech-based teaching tools aimed at the same end goal (say, learning a new language) often vary in interesting ways based on whether or not they've been designed for the traditional educational setting or not.  Since I explored a new app being billed as a strong classroom language learning tool last week (Mondly) I thought this list might provide some interesting contrast. However, after reading the article I found that only the first app on the list, which I explain below, is solely designed for outside-of-the-classroom use, while the others are squarely at home inside the classroom.   T...
1 comment
Read more