MOD 6: Twitter Podcast

The use of Podcasts, or "personal on demand broadcast," is another very useful if not essential tool for ESL teachers in our modern world. This can also be an excellent form of professional development no matter the profession. Podcasts may be used as a virtual log of performance summaries by a teacher highlighting positive and negative consequences of applied teaching methods in real-time. The accumulated log can serve as a longitudinal study of progress on the part of the teacher and students and with the option of allowing others access to it the individual's efforts may serve to benefit peers worldwide.

The podcast I followed was "How much speaker, how much learner?" by Alan Palmer. The podcast discusses the inherent differences related to being both language speakers and language learners. The topic of the podcast serves to highlight the fact that language acquisition is a life-long process even for native speakers. The podcast may also be related to learner motivation and morale issues. The author stresses that by thinking of yourself or evaluating and labeling yourself as a speaker/learner by percentages this may raise the level of pride on the learner's part when examining just how much of the target language they have acquired.