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Effects of podcast-making on college students’ English speaking skills in higher education

  • Cultural and Regional Perspectives
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Abstract

Podcasts have been widely used in various fields, and their applications in English as a foreign language (EFL) learning have been mainly to improve students’ listening ability. Relatively few studies have explored how engaging EFL students in making podcasts might help develop their speaking competence. This study therefore is an investigation of the effects of making podcasts on Taiwanese university students’ speaking progress and of their perceptions of podcast-making. Seventy-seven first-year non-English majors in a Taiwanese university participated in this six-week, mixed-methods study. Data included their pre-test and post-test TOEIC speaking scores, two podcast recordings, and reflective essays. The results of this study indicate that after making podcasts, and from their first to final podcasts, the students had better speaking fluency and accuracy in which they demonstrated some significant changes, such as having fewer pauses and mispronounced words. Also, they perceived both benefits and challenges in making podcasts. Pedagogical implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

The project is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan under the grant numbers 109-2511-H-224-006-MY3 and 110-2628-H-224-001-MY2

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Foreign Languages, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin, Taiwan

    H. C. Yeh, W. Y. Chang, H. Y. Chen & L. Heng

  2. College of Education, University of Canterbury, Canterbury, New Zealand

    L. Heng

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  1. H. C. Yeh
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  2. W. Y. Chang
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  3. H. Y. Chen
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  4. L. Heng
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Correspondence to W. Y. Chang.

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Yeh, H.C., Chang, W.Y., Chen, H.Y. et al. Effects of podcast-making on college students’ English speaking skills in higher education. Education Tech Research Dev 69, 2845–2867 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-021-10026-3

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