Journal Article Review 7 (CAR)

Citation: Shiri, Saeed. (2015). The Application of Podcasting as a Motivational Strategy to Iranian EFL Learners of English: A View toward Listening Comprehension. Australian International Academic Centre, 6(3), 155-165.

source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9QbV-yUMAA7W-A.jpg

In this occasion, I will review journal article related to motivation in acquiring the listening skill. Motivation is regarded to be a prominent aspect of psychology and language education. This is dealing with the students willing to keep continue their learning journey since there are several problems in the learning process. To obtain certain skill, the students should be able to pass all of the learning phases. They may be surrender in the middle of the learning process or lazy to follow the activity without their strong willing. Then, listening is one of challenging skill in learning language because the students are demanded to listen to the target language which may be unfamiliar to them. Therefore, having motivation while involving the listening learning process is required.

The author of this journal chose podcast as the material to increase the students’ motivation in learning listening. Podcast can be accessed through website or android application. However, the author applies podcast website to treat students’ motivation. It is one of the innovations in the field of computer-assistant language learning and mobile assistant language learning. A great opportunity for acquiring listening is offered on this website. This website uploads the authentic material which is spoken by the native speaker with various of talk content.  The material provides some important subject such as culture. So, the students are not easily bored. It is appropriate for extensive learning. Although there was no definition of extensive listening, I assumed that extensive listening is listening for pleasure like extensive reading since the students can choose their own recording in the podcast. Thus, the author considered that podcast can promote the cognitive aspects of motivation, integrate various influential theories, and make the students focus on situational factors relevant to classroom application.

Based on this article, the result of research is not fully success. In the first time, the students feel difficult to listen to podcast’s recording since the speakers in the recording are native speaker. However, most of the students felt excited to use podcast as the media to learn listening. They said that the content of the material is interesting. Furthermore, they think that learning listening material through native speaker recording is important so that they can apply it in the real life conversations. Podcast is also easy and practical to use in the classroom and outside the classroom. The students can study wherever they want to study because the recording can be downloaded and saved for a long time in their gadget. Nonetheless, this application is effective to be applied to the class for enhancing students’ motivation.

I think I will apply podcast application in my future listening because I guess the people will interact with their gadget more frequent in the future. The gadget is not only functioned, but it is very useful for acquiring listening learning. However, the transcription of the recording should be attached to the last page so that the students will know the information fully through the recording, not the transcription. I also need to make the students’ project using this recording since the duration of the recording is quite long. Therefore, they can divide the task and share their ideas about the information of the spoken text such as linguistic elements, the words pronunciation, or content of audio.