The Use of Input Sources in the ESL Classroom

I imagine in earlier days teaching ESL was all done in basically the same way. But with the technological advances in recent years ESL teaching and learning has become much easier. Take for example podcasts, which are digital media files that are made available for download via web syndication. If you have a computer or MP3 player you can download these files and play them back whenever you feel like it. You can subscribe through an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) and get new files whenever they become available. Somtimes podcasts are short 3-5 minutes or they could last as long as one hour. My first experience with podcasts was through Itunes where I picked up music files, for free, and loaded them on my hard drive. One day I went looking for a podcast concerning learning Tagalog and found quite a few which I have subscribed to. I now have a free source of language teaching available whenever I have the time to study. Likewise, I can download them to my Ipod and listen while I’m jogging or working out at the gym. Just recently I searched on Itunes for TESOL and ESL files and returned 19 results of subscriptions for TESOL and 150 files for ESL. Most of these are free and yours to use in your teaching of ESL.

Other input sources that I’ve studied about are music and video. Music or songs are probably one of the easiest and most popular sources available and one that I surely will use. Just about everyone loves music and no matter what age there is some way you can use music in the classroom. Take for example lyrics to songs, you can teach  rhythm  patterns or rhyming words  in class and how they work in the English language. And with the popularity of English songs worldwide many of the students will be familiar with the words to the songs. Young people will usually spend more time with the songs than they do studying material from the classroom.

As far as videos go, they follow many of the same things you would do with music or podcasts. As a teacher you could record DVD’s and play them for the class or record something off of TV or even show a movie. The advantage of using video in the classroom is that the students can observe someone who speaks English as their first language conversing or livng in their own environment. I plan on using these and other input sources as I teach children and possibly adults in my career as a teacher.