ESL Podcasts

http://dianewallis.podomatic.com
This website is hosted by an Adult ESL teacher based in San Fransisco. After searching through many different podcasts I found that this one looked more welcoming and student-friendly. The use of class pictures and simple sentence structures makes this a great site for beginners. The topics and the pace of speech for the lessons are very appropriate for this language level. I also found the lessons and accompanying questions to be authentic and meaningful. The questions can be assigned as homework for students to record their own oral responses to. However, there are a few ways this site can be improved to increase the ease of use. It was a bit hard downloading the podcasts. The PLAY link did not work for me. I ended up clicking on RSS Feed and downloading the AIFF files.

http://www.china232.com
Hosted by two Canadian brothers, this site contains nearly 100 podcasts for intermediate to advanced level ESL students. By infusing humor into each lesson the brothers provide a relaxed atmosphere for learning conversational English. After listening to and evaluating podcast #94 "Making Decisions", I found the lessons to be suitable for high-school to adult level students. The topics range from dealing with issues at work to very specific emotional issues such as "Feeling Cooped Up". The conversations would be a great way to build prior knowledge before an in-class discussion. To enhance this site, the key vocabulary for each lesson can be highlighted and explained before each lesson. In addition, there should be a focus on proper pronounciation.

http://www.betteratenglish.com
This site provides some good podcasts about American culture, slang, idioms, and business English. This site is geared towards intermediate to advanced level students and the lessons are sorted by language level, category and topic. With each podcast you can download an Ebook, A PDF transcript with in-depth explanations of key vocabulary words used in the text. These transcripts can be used for extension assignments. For ex: students can be asked to highlight the parts of speech or use the vocabulary words in their own sentences. In the podcast that I listened to, an American woman named Lori carried a conversation with a British man named Michael. They spoke about "Weird American Foods". They used mainly colloquial language with a large emphasis on idioms and polysemous words. To enhance this site, the polysemous words in the podcasts could be used across different lessons to show the different meanings.