Abdul rashid khan lecturer in English at Bahadur sub campus layyah

1. Abdul Rashid, Lecturer in English, BZU, Bahadur Sub
Campus layyah
Zahoor Hussain, Lecturer in English, BZU, Bahadur Sub
Campus Layyah

2.  The word podcasts is a neologism of
"broadcast" and "pod" from the success of the
iPod. Podcast is a type of digital media
consisting of an episodic series of audio files
subscribed to and downloaded through Web
syndication or streamed online to a computer
or mobile device.
 Podcasts offer a ‘real-life listening’ source
that allows all second language listeners to
benefit from it.

3.  Constantine (2007) considers that the usage
of podcasts in second language learning has
a significant importance. According to him
even at the beginning levels of language
learners, the global listening even can benefit
to the learners if they only listen from three
to five minutes a day.

4.  McMinn (2008) also points out that language
instructors can help learners to practice a foreign
language outside the classroom by encouraging
them to use podcasts to improve their language
skills. As the process of learning a language is
not confined to the settings of the classroom. So,
teachers instead of using the same materials to
enhance listeners’ performance over and over; in
contrast, can use the podcasts for improving the
listening of the students as podcasts present
fresh ideas and motivation.

5.  Language instructors are also required to
help listeners to comprehend authentic texts
as such material develop the interests of the
listeners; to do so, listening comprehension
skill needs to be developed by exposing
listeners to different discourses (Anderson &
Lynch, 1988; Kennedy & Trofimovich, 2008;
Pearson & Fielding, 1983; Rivers, 1966; Rost,
2002; Ur, 1984).

6.  Keeping in view the traditional method of
English language classrooms in Pakistan it is
observed that teachers use lecture method
thus marginalizing the listening skill in
language teaching classroom. As a result the
students even after completing their degree
of postgraduate level face the problems of
listening comprehension in English language.

7.  As Podcasts have the potential to help them
to improve their listening comprehension.
With podcasts, they can hear different voices
and discussion of different topics. Thus the
present study is aimed to trace out the
impact of podcasts on listening
comprehension on the students at
postgraduate level in District layyah.

8.  This study would be significant for the
students to improve their listening
comprehension.
 It would also be significant for teachers.
 It can also be of great value for the syllabus
designers so that they should introduce some
podcasts in different sections of syllabus.

9.  Participants
 A total population of forty students was divided
into two groups. In each group there were twenty
students.
 Material/ Podcasts
 There are two types of podcasts (A) audio
podcasts (like radio or recorded lecture series),
(B) video recordings. The selected video
recordings from Ted talks.com were
administered as podcasts in the classroom.

10.  Procedures
 The researcher has administered the selected Ted
talks as an intervention course for fifteen days.
Two Ted talks were listened daily.
 Setting
 Setting of this study was Bahadur sub campus
layyah, Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan.
 Instruments
 Worksheets for pre-test and post tests were used
as measuring instrument in this study.

11.  According to Schmidt‘s (2010) noticing
hypothesis, ―learner must attend to and
notice linguistic features of the input that
they are exposed to if those forms are to
become intake for learning (p. 724).The main
theoretical insights have been taken from
Schmidt (2010).

12.  The findings of this research, based on worksheet showed
that
 The participants were poor in listening comprehension.
 Before the administration of podcasts in the classroom the
students scored marks from 2 to 8 out of 10 marks.
 Before the administration of podcasts as intervention
course the students were not autonomous learner .
 Podcast can improve listening and speaking skills .
 Podcasts helped students to become autonomous learners
 Almost all of the participants seemed not to be interested
in taking charge of their own learning themselves.

13.  Abt, G. & Barry, T. (2009) A strategy for using podcasts for teaching and learning in the
 Biosciences, Centre for Bioscience, The Higher Education Academy, University of Leeds, Available at:
http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/projects/
 barry.aspx
 Anderson, A., & Lynch, T. (1988). Listening. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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