Podcasts in the Classroom

The podcast BBC World News for Children is an interesting podcast to incorporate in my ESL lessons. In Sri Lanka we learn British English and most of the teachers like me are nonnative speakers. So our students are at a great disadvantage as they don't get a chance to hear the native speaker accent in the classroom. Further in the classroom we as teachers speak at a slow pace to make sure students understand what we say. But in real life speech, let's say they communicate with a native speaker, they have to cope with the pace and accent alike and respond promptly.

I would use this podcast World New for Schools:26th April 2011  in class to expose students to the authentic speech of the native speakers. And plan a listening activity

And I will use the particular podcast   to improve their listening skills. I would design my lesson plan in such a way that students listen to this twice and at the end of or during the first hearing they write down two examples for each of Present perfect, and Past perfect tenses. In the second hearing they verify the accuracy of their answers. This would be an ideal example to teach listening for specific information while paying attention to tenses they have already studied in class.


 This activity is good for upper intermediate and advanced ESL students. It's quite difficult for teachers to design their own listening tasks but they can easily use podcasts like the one mentioned above for a variety of activities like cloze texts, scanning for specific details, vocabulary exercises, etc.

Bubblr and My ESL Activity

By using Bubblr I was able to create a lesson 'Let's make applesauce' for a target group of lower intermediate ESL students. The objective of this activity is to teach students how to give instructions in English clearly. This activity gives them the practice to describe steps involved in a sequence using language appropriately paying attention to cohesive devices.


This is an amazing tool that helps teachers kindle interest in ESL learners. Activities like these help students to learn the language in a very unconventional set up and at the same time motivate them more than ever before. This is a great tool for the teacher to come up with activities with a touch of originality.