Presenter: Vu Thanh Loan, MA (Ms.)
Affiliation: FPT University Hanoi, Vietnam
Chosen format: Presentation
Abstract:
The research investigates the use of podcasts in teaching English, specifically listening skills for first-year students at BTEC FPT British College in Hanoi, Vietnam. Previously, teaching listening skills at BTEC was carried out in the traditional way with simple listening materials in the textbooks used. Most instructors only need to guide students to practice listening to the audio files integrated in the book. However, the majority of students‘ scores in the listening skill section were quite low, not meeting the goals set by the lecturer for students. Not only that, students are quite sluggish in learning to listen. Many students find it difficult to learn listening and think that it is difficult to get a high score with this skill. Therefore, the author decided to test a new method of using podcasts integrated in listening lessons to change students‘ lessons. The objective of the study is to evaluate whether a new method applied in teaching listening skills can bring effective teaching in classroom lessons or not. The effectiveness here is initially based on the student’s response and whether their motivation to learn has increased compared to traditional teaching or not. The study was conducted on a class size of 25 students. The reason why the author only conducted research on a small group of students is because this is an innovative pilot method, the number of first-year students at BTEC FPT is not too large and spans many different levels. The study only wants to carry out a sample on 1 class at the highest level to assess whether the students‘ acceptance of the new method is really effective or not. A pre-test, post-test and questionnaires were used to collect data over a period of approximately 6 weeks. The results show that students mostly prefer listening to podcasts than listening to traditional tapes. Students have an improvement in concentration in the listening test, and are more motivated to learn than the method previously used by the instructor. Lecturers reflect that it takes more time to prepare documents than to directly use the audio available in the book. The students again said that they find listening more attractive to them, especially podcasts with good, soothing music, which helps them find learning much more relaxing. Therefore, the research results have encouraged teachers to use this way for listening lessons more often because it brings positive results in learning listening skills, even though teachers may work a little harder than usual.
Keywords: podcasts, listening skills, BTEC FPT
Biography:
Full name: Vu Thanh Loan, MA (Ms.)
Date of birth: 27/06/1991
Nationality: Vietnamese
Ocupation: English Lecturer
Affiliation: FPT University, Hanoi, Vietnam
Experience:
- English lecturer at FPT University and alliances such as: University of Greenwich Vietnam, BTEC FPT British College from 2016 – now
- MIE Expert (The Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert from 2020-2022)
- Inspiring Ambassador of UNESCO Vietnam in the campaign “Keeping girls in the picture”
Presentation slides: