The potential of podcasts for the development and improvement of the oral comprehension ability in English learning

Abstract

Podcasts have increasingly become a digital resource to learning, given its nature of being an informational genre. This study aimed to investigate the potential of podcasts for the development and improvement of the oral comprehension ability in English. More specifically, we sought to verify the performance of students when using podcasts for the development and improvement of the oral comprehension ability in English; and to analyze the students' perception regarding the development of oral comprehension in English by listening to podcasts. For that, a set of activities focused on listening was applied to six students of English as a foreign language. The data were collected through written responses to the activities done by the participants. The results of the analysis show that there was a significant development of the oral comprehension ability throughout the process of carrying out the proposed activities. The results also show the positive perception of the participants about the potential of using podcasts as a possibility of getting used to the English language spoken by native and non-native speakers in different contexts around the world.