The Effects of Podcasts on the Development of Listening Skills

Abstract

The rapid development of modern technologies makesthe language teachers find ways of implementing them in the teaching and learning process. One of the ways is considered to be the use of podcasts in listening enhancement, introduced in this paper. The study reports on findings of research carried out in the department of computer graphic and web design at the vocational school in asmall town of Armenia. The participants were 13 students at intermediate levelof English language proficiency. The aim of the research was to investigate the effects of podcasts on the development of listening skills of Armenian EFL learners. The data for the related research questions were collectedvia pre and posttests and a questionnaire and were analyzed through the SPSS package.The analysis of the data, obtained from the tests showed that podcastsmayhave effect on the improvement of learners’ listening skills.The analysis of the data ofquestionnaire showed that the students of the experimental group appreciated their experience of using podcasts for the development of their listeningskills.