ESL Podcasts

I just listened to a 20 minute podcast entitled ESL Podcast 613- Being a First Time Parent  and thought how much I would like to share it with my students.  (I currently have 4 first-time pregnant women in my class and this past week one of my male students became a father for the first time.)  What I liked about the podcast was that it is designed for ESL learners.  It presents a phone dialogue between two adults: one who had a baby three weeks prior and the other who was a veteran parent.  The speakers speak clearly and slowly and introduce a variety of vocabulary.  After the dialogue is finished, another speaker goes over the scene and explains what is happening in the conversation.  He explains vocabulary by providing definitions and also using them in different contexts.  He also explain the idioms that the that the speakers employed which is very helpful for ESL students.  I liked this podcast because it offered my students vocabulary utilizing an interestingtopic that my students in which my students can relate.

EPals: A great way to learn about the world

I recently went on line to reaserach EPals and find out how I could use the site in my adult ESL classes.  I was very impressed with the website and the myriad of languages that students could use to communicate with each other.  I really thought that the different topics/ themes that the communication are designed to revolve around are academically sound(The Standards are addressed in each project) and also interesting. 

Students and teachers can choose to focus on topics like weather, natural habitats or maps.  Students can create projects, often in pairs or groups, and truly inform someone living in a different part of the world.  Although the website seems to be designed for K-12 learners, I think that I could use various projects that it presents with my adult learners.  One project is entitled Holidays and Festivals.  It has many links that provide information about how holidays are celebrated around the world.  Moreover, it introdues symbols and asks students to design their own.  Another project is Digital Storytelling that enables the user to create and post their own stories.  There is step by step directions as there are for all the projects.  I think that my students would really benefit from the Holidays and Festivals project as well as the Digital storytelling one as they can write in English but read in both English or their first language.  I do not think that they could correspond with students outside our classroom as the site is aimed at K-12 learners.