I
INTRODUCTION
Technology development has an outstanding effect on the society. It changes the way people communicate and interact with each other on personal and global scales. Technology provides tools for science development, communication, education and entertainment. Nowadays, people can keep in touch with others miles away, or even in the other part of the world, through information, communication and technology (ICT) devices. People use email and websites for business, search engines to find any information they need, social networking sites to connect to other people, games to download or to play online, music contents (audio or video) to download or to listen online.
Due to the advance of technology, language as a means of communication is also passed through from one to others in society on those technology devices. Terms like ‘upload’ and ‘download’ aren’t that odd anymore to many people, even small children know how to download their favourite song and play it on their mobile phones. And there are now a vast amount of virtual places providing contents to download, including educational contents and language learning contents.
All those can bring changes to the language learning methods, considering that there is a change where language is used among society. Teachers and students of English as Foreign Language, like in our country where the problem of lacking native speaker’s exposure always occurs, can make use of the podcasts that other people submit in the language learning content providers in the virtual world to enhance their language exposure. And nowadays it has been an innovation of providing language teaching and learning media to be used in or outside the classroom.
II
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this writing is to introduce an innovative storage of language (especially English) teaching and learning materials to English teachers that have not started to use podcasts as teaching media.
III
LITERATURE REVIEW
PODCASTING
Podcast in dictionary.com is defined as digital audio file of a broadcast that can be automatically downloaded from the internet to an audio player. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as a program as of music or talk made available in digital format for automatic download over the internet.
The term is derived originally from ‘iPod’, first introduced in 2002 by Apple, though it isn’t directly associated with Apple. Like the term ‘broadcast’ or ‘telecast’, podcast can refer to the content itself or the method by which content is syndicated. The term is first used by former MTV VJ Adam Curry. The former podcasts were only in the form of MP3 files, which can be put and played with iPod, as the name came from, but then it develops. Now podcasts are whichever contents that the publishers attach on to a site to listen, to watch or to download. It can be in the format of MP3, WAV or other audio types, and also video files (FLV is one of the common ones to find in YouTube). Podcasts may contain music, speeches, films, conversations and almost anything recordable.
Podcasting uses an XML-based technology called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). The podcast publisher describes his/her content in an auto generated file called RSS Feed that includes title, date, description and the links to the file (MP3 or other audio and video file). Nowadays people don’t have to know what RSS is or other terms are to get to use the podcast. Podcast providers are massive, either free or paid. Podcasting has been a common issue in technology development, and it is already wide spread.
PODCASTS AS LANGUAGE LEARNING MEDIA
A brain cell makes countless complex connections from the auditory centers of brain to speech centers and also to the area that deal with abstract concepts like grammar, comprehension, etc. In learning a language, learners need constant exposure to it so their brains can grow the connections and adjust to all variations of usage (Katarzyna and Mark, 1999). The more exposures to the language, the more language acquisition the students get. To depend on the teacher to be the only source of the target language exposures barely isn’t enough. Students can get the exposures from the teacher only in a very limited time and space, in the classroom or on the certain class schedule.
Professor Sail Al Ansari of King Saud University states that the result of his study on Language Exposure (2001) shows that any kind of exposure either extracurricular or sheltered curricular have significant association with the students’ performance on language learning.
To boost the attainment of the target language exposures to the students, some media like records or videos and so forth can come in handy. Those media are stored mostly in the digital form now, instead of taped like people used in the past. Any exposures to the language will do to the language acquisition, including speeches, conversations, songs and even games.
IV
ANALYSIS
Podcasting is an idea of creating a better learning environment wherever the students are. The podcasts can be given by the teacher or provided somewhere else to download. There are huge amount of options where the podcasts can be taken from or how to use it to get the most out of the language exposures. If we hit the search button after typing down podcast in the search tab, there will be lots of results showing up. The kind of podcasts that we are talking here is the ones that we can use for language learning. There are many download sources, starting from general categorized sources to the specific TEFL / TESL content download providers.
Students who love music can get their iPods or mobile phones filled up with English songs and listen to them wherever they go. Students can also sing along when the script or lyrics is provided. They can also have recorded speeches or conversations on their phones or computers to play and listen, usually come in various levels and topics. Even films can be a media too. The students only need to enjoy the films in English, and set the subtitles in English too. So it will be like listening while reading the transcription and visualizing how those people say it, in this case, the native speakers.
Podcast is flexible, boundless to time and place. It can be downloaded and used anytime and anywhere with any supporting devices, such as computers, iPods, phones, or other players. Users have the absolute freedom to choose and decide when or where they want to play (or study) the podcasts. They can play it over and over again until they think it is clear enough or comprehended enough without any feeling of fear or embarrassed that they will probably have if they ask the teacher to repeat more and more in the classroom.
Students can have a virtual teacher whenever they need their teacher. And this is also one of the solutions to the common problem in English language learning where so many schools in our country do not have teachers who are native speakers of English. Through listening to the podcasts, students can learn how to pronounce or to speak English since the native speakers’ voices in the podcast can be used as the models to the correct pronunciation with exact natively tones, stresses and intonations, even any specific language accents, that the students can’t experience from their real teacher. In addition, it can substitute the presence of native speakers in the classroom that are sometimes hard to be able to be invited to join the class when the lesson is in progress.
In our national curriculum, it does say something about introducing technology to students, especially for the prospective international schools that have been an issue in our education system lately. But not all schools have enough supporting facilities and not enough number of teachers who can set in the technology to the lessons that they teach.
In the recent mailing lists that I’ve been joining in with other teachers all over the world, some of the teachers explain how they evaluate students’ performance by means of podcasting. If they teach the subject “Speaking” in the university, especially the major of TEFL/TESL, it will be a waste of time sitting in the classroom to watch the students speak one by one. They do it in a different way. The students are obliged to record their speech in the form of a podcast to be submitted via a website or email. It’s really an idea to save a lot of time. Then the teacher can sit down at home listening to them while having the afternoon tea or watching the kids walking the dogs around the park.
Podcasting isn’t complicated at all, but it appears that we have to deal with the technology competence of teachers in our country. Older teachers who have been teaching for over ten or twenty years may be old in age and remain untouched by the technology development. Some of them may not be able to even use a computer, especially in the areas that are far away from cities, where education hasn’t totally successful reaching most people’s consideration in life. We can’t just instantly make them to use podcasting, for they may not even have any idea about it. Not to mention some people who are technophobia, it makes it even worse.
If it comes to downloading or taking contents from somewhere on the internet, it requires network connection. In some areas in our country, sometimes the network signal is low or there’s no network at all. Dial up connections can’t be performed in the area where there’s no cable phone network. GPRS or data stream connections can’t be performed in the area where there isn’t any mobile network. Sometimes the internet is down or unstable, so it makes it hard to download or upload anything.
Podcasting needs devices, such as the downloader and the player, so users have to spend their money on these devices first before starting to use it for study. They have to have computers (with the flash player), iphones or smart phones to download, as low end mobile phones won’t work. They will also need some more devices to do the recording. All those devices are not as cheap as a book and a pen. For some people who already have them, it doesn’t matter, but for those who have to buy them, it could be a problem. Our country in general hasn’t get over the economic problem, so many people will choose to cut down all the expenses.
V
SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Technology is developed to make our lives easier, to help us in everything. Podcasting is an alternative to provide more media and more help to language learning process. It requires spending money on some devices though, and the devices needed are not those of cheap ones. However, our society should not be primitive while other countries are becoming more and more modern and advanced in technology. Technology devices may be expensive, but they are worth the money that we spend on them.
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