Podacasting has many great uses in second language classrooms. It is an easy way to introduce native French speech to the class. In order to ensure comprehension, I would use podcasts in a guided activity with the students with lots of modeling and support. The podcast that I found is from the website rfi.fr and it is under the category of Journal français facile. The announcers read various news stories from around the world. I would use this podcast in an upper level French class for listening practice. One of the activities that I could do with this particular podcast is to make a worksheet with questions pertaining to the content. For example, I could ask the students to provide three details on one of the stories they hear about a French-speaking country or a Spanish-speaking country. By giving them the ability to choose what they write about, the task becomes a bit less daunting. This podcast discusses events in Haiti, Brazil, and the Ivory Coast. Podcasts are also excellent for vocabulary study. Students may hear words that they are not familiar with, but can use the context to figure out the general topic of the story.
I think your students would find listening to such news reports quite motivating!
ReplyDeleteDr. Burgos