The Use Of Podcasts In The Second Or Foreign Language Classroom

In recent years, podcasts have become both a technological and cultural phenomenon, with nearly as many podcasts to choose from as there are listeners. Increasingly, podcasts are becoming a larger part of many people’s daily lives. Podcasting has also made its way into the educational sphere, and this includes second language and foreign language (L2) classrooms as well. While there is ample anecdotal evidence that L2 teachers and learners are using podcasts for language learning purposes, there is still a relative lack of research showing how L2 teachers are using podcasts as part of their classroom instruction. With the goal of learning more about the ways L2 teachers are using podcasts in the classroom, an online survey was created and sent to second language and foreign language teachers in the U.S. and internationally. Using an online questionnaire, teachers are asked their opinions of podcasts as a tool in language acquisition, whether they use podcasts in their classes (and if not, why not) and how they integrate podcasts into their classroom instruction of the second or foreign languages they teach. Response from the questionnaire may spark a useful dialogue between language teachers, learners, researchers, curriculum designers and publishers about how this new and vast frontier of podcasting can assist L2 teachers and learners in the language acquisition process. In this presentation, preliminary findings of the survey will be presented and the pedagogical implications of the study will be discussed