Introduction
What exactly is a podcast? Think of it as a radio show that you can listen to whenever and wherever you want. Unlike traditional radio, podcasts are available on the internet and cover an extensive array of topics. Thety can be in the form of audio or video episodes. Whether you're into science, storytelling, sport, history, music, or even pop culture, there's a podcast out there for everyone.
Today you will learn to make one yourself.
Task
Your task is to create a podcast about some topic of your interest. In order to do this, we will ask you to follow these steps:
- choose the topic of your podcast
- decide on a format of a podcast
- write a script of a podcast
- choose recording equipment
- record your podcast
Process
1) Choosing a topic
Find a topic of your interest or a topic you would like to explore. You may use mindmap in order to put down all the subtopics you wish to discuss.
To make a mindmap you may go th the following web-site: https://miro.com/mind-map/
2) Format of a podcast
What will your podcast be like and how will it be structured?
You may choose fiction, non-fiction, educational format. You can work alone and record a monologue or you can work in pairs and choose a format of interview or panel.
Read more about podcast format here: https://castos.com/podcast-format/
3) Write a script of a podcast
Take a look at the mindmap you made and write a script discussing every of the subtopics in detail.
Search in the internet to expolre the topic
Use online translator (https://translate.google.com/) if you find it hard to translate or online dictionary (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/)
4) Choose recording equipment and software
You may use your smartphone or computer microphone. Use recorder app on your phone or in case you wish to edit you recording you may use the following recording software:
- Audacity https://www.audacityteam.org/ (PC/MAC)
- Garageband https://www.apple.com/ca/mac/garageband/ (MAC)
5) Record your podcast
Here are some tips that may help you:
- make sure that no noise interupts you while recording a podcast
- be consistent with your mouth placement and your tone
- make a test recording to make sure that the quality of sound is good
Evaluation
| Topic development | 0-3 points |
| Structure of a podcast | 0-3 points |
| Vocabulary complexity | 0-3 points |
| Pronunciation | 0-3 points |
| Grammar usage | 0-3 points |
3 points: perfect performance or performance with unsignificant mistakes/errors which do not prevent listener from understanding the content
2 points: good performance which requires several corrections (1-2 types of mistakes)
1 point: weak performance (3-4 types of mistakes)
0 points: poor performance (more than 5 types of mistakes)
Conclusion
If you followed all the steps, you have probably complited the task and created a captivating podcast.
Doing this task you haven't only learnt new about a particular topic, but also worked on your language skills such as fluency, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary use and others.
We hope that you learned something new and had an exciting language practice.