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Tuesday, April 2, 2024

IT'S A POD-NOMENAL DAY 🎤

Hello and welcome back to my forest, forest dwellers! 🌱🌲

Today, we will discuss an underrated (in my opinion!) genre of media: podcasts.


 

Podcasts are digital, mostly audio (although video ones exist) files that are available for streaming and downloading online. (Wikipedia; Castos) Podcasts can be one episode, but most of them are episodic.

There are many podcast genres such as conversational podcasts, monologue podcasts, fictional podcasts (my favorite!) and more.

 Our assignment for this week included making a podcast. Me and my friend chose to do a fictional podcast. We were instructed to write a short story including some words and record it, then edit in sound effects like a real audio drama. We brainstormed and decided to write a horror-comedy about a clown in the forest! I guess I kind of spoiled you by saying it's comedic but, please feel free to give it a listen regardless:

 

We chose the Internet Archive to upload our podcast. The sound editing was done by my friend, Elif Duru Azaklı (Check her blog out!) 

I think the hardest part was shortening the story because we kept writing 😅 Unfortunately, it ended up being too long so we had to edit it. Aside from that though, we had fun making this podcast. My friend already knew some stuff about podcast making, but it was a new experience for me.

I think podcasts could be a magnificent tool in our field. Not only do they provide stimulation, they could be used to teach many things including pronounciation, grammar, discourse and so on. We can assign students podcast recording tasks (like we have been assigned 😁) to improve their digital audio literacy, creativity, speaking and listening skills, and so on. Or we can use educative podcasts as an extra material to improve proficiency. There are honestly a million ways we could use podcasts, especially because it is such a huge media genre. 

I would personally definitely use podcasts in English teaching to foster students' skills. I myself have learned a LOT from even podcasts I listened to for fun! I improved my pronounciation and listening skills. So, there is tons of benefits if we can use them effectively.

What do you think, forest dweller? Do you listen to podcasts? If yes, do you have any favorites? Feel free to tell me about your thoughts!🌱🍀🎶

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