Name: Rafsya Rachmani
SID: 1900637
Class: 3B1 – English Language Education
THE USE OF PODCASTS IN EXTENSIVE LISTENING AND ITS EFFECT ON THE
STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL
Listening skill is one of the four language skills. Listening is still considered difficult
as the students do not get enough time to understand and implement this English spoken
language. Giordano (2017, p. 429) stated that “the EFL students often do not have enough
exposure to listening input.” The focus of instruction is often on reading, writing, and
speaking when the research concerning listening is still limited. In the classroom, the students
were only given very limited time for the lesson. However, listening skill is said to be
successful if it is determined by various factors. One of them is the use of the material as well
as the media to present the materials. One of the materials in listening is called Extensive
Listening.
Renandya and Farrell (2010, p. 56) explained extensive listening as ‘’all types of
listening activities that allow learners to receive a lot of comprehensible and enjoyable
listening input.’’ Extensive listening is usually done at the outside the classroom (from TV,
radio, internet, etc.) The students can use it as many and whenever as they want. Extensive
listening supports students in choosing the topics or materials depending on their interests. In
extensive listening, rather than focusing on grammar rules, the students are expected to have
a full understanding of the content as a whole. One of the hard challenges of Extensive
Listening is to find the proper media for students to use. Therefore, there is no suitable
material yet that can be used for teaching extensive listening in English.
In this current era, both the students and the teachers need to take benefit of all things
that can revitalize the teaching and learning process. One of them is by utilizing web 2.0
technology, like blogging, social networking, and podcasting. The students are given chances
to gain several language expressions from web 2.0 technology that they can freely download
or use anywhere and anytime. One of them is by using Podcasts. This can be traced back to
Alm’s (2013) study when he found out that accessing podcasts, especially on personal
devices, appeared to be in line with students’ general use of these tools for entertainment
nowadays. Further, through using Podcasts, the student will know how the language is
spoken in the real-world contexts to help inscreasing their listening fluency. It also helps the
students to have a better range of vocabulary as well as other language elements.
Now, there are millions of podcasts can be found all around the web. The podcasting
technology sustains language learners to listen to audio based on their personal choice, and
further, they can control it with the pause and replay button (Alm, 2013). The topics
presented in the Podcasts mostly carry the latest topics that are currently trending in the
society that will make the students gain more acknowledgment. The students will also get
some valuable advice. Besides, it will entertain the students since the Podcasts are usually
comprising of the talk that engages us more with the host.
In this case, the students can discuss with other students about the podcast that they
are listened to. The students can also give the topic’s suggestions for the next meetings in the
class. They can try to self-record themselves to obtain important information from the
podcast. In the end, the students will write some learning journals to explain their experiences
during listening to podcasts.
Based on the explanation above, a conclusion can be drawn about the use of Podcasts
in Extensive Listening. Podcasts will be the most proper material to be used by the students
in Extensive Listening since the students will have the chance to improve their cognitive
skills as well as self-learning skills.
References:
Alm, A (2013) Extensive listening 2.0 with foreign language podcasts, Innovation in
Language Learning and Teaching, 7(3), 266-280, doi: 10.1080/17501229.2013.836207.
Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2013.836207
Giordano, M. J. (2017). Extensive listening using student-generated podcasts. In P. Clements,
A. Krause, & H. Brown (Eds.), Transformation in language education. Tokyo: JALT.
429-435. Retrieved from https://jalt-publications.org/sites/default/files/pdfarticle/jalt2016-pcp-056.pdf
Renandya, W., & Farrell, T. (2010). Teacher, the tape is too fast! Extensive listening in ELT.
ELT Journal, 65(1), 52-59. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccq015