A Podcast for the Secondary Classroom...
"Traditional literacies and new literacies are interwoven." Vacca, et al. (2021)
Podcasts are beneficial to the secondary classroom as a form of new literacy because they are apart of multimodal literacy that always students the opportunities to use technology is this computer driven era.
I stumbled across the All Ears English Podcast and felt like this was, not only appropriate, but also beneficial to the high school emergent bilingual student. This podcast could definitely be utilized in an ESL classroom setting or even in a remedial English classroom for those student who struggle with language. Alas, the English language is not an easy language to understand due its syntax and then there is all of the non-literal language that is thrown about as well.
The episode that I am sharing (minus the ads of course!) highlights an example of non-literal language in the phrase "Jump On It". While those words immediately take me back to the 90s song "Apache" by Sugar Hill Gang, the podcast explains multiple meanings of the phrase "jump on it". Not only do they do a fantastic job of presenting this in easy to understand conversational English, they also help the listener understand words like convey and hover. I definitely recommend this podcast to those teaching students whose first language is not English to help them learn the idiosyncrasies of the language. It is perfect for students of a high school age range--it does not dumb down the language in a way that would be for a younger student. Instead it approaches language with a real world application.
Other episodes include those about why we say "like" so much and about the overuse of compound adjectives. All useful and entertaining.
These short episodes will keep student engaged because they are contemporary and short. Unlike most of the podcast that I saw, these stay around the 20 minute mark, allowing for just enough of a student's attention span to be used. Additionally, they reference pop culture and make the topics relevant to today's struggling English speaker.
References
KKaplan, M., (Executive Producer). (2013-Present). All Ears English [Audio podcast]. All Ears English. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQHrHloLYoE
V Vacca, R. T., Mraz, M., & Vacca, J. A. (2021). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum.
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