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Edulang
Many students wish to improve their listening comprehension skills by tuning in to radio news broadcasts. However the speed of delivery and the difficulty of authentic material (e.g. the lexical load) can be overwhelming. Audioster could help. This new computer program provides a sequence of web-based, practical exercises to accompany news clips from VOA (Voice of America). Each clip is about two minutes long, a manageable length.
Audioster is part of a series of computer programmes which includes Gramster and Vocabster. One striking feature of the series is that some of the "bells and whistles" associated with multimedia packages are eschewed in favour of a fairly spartan interface. This has the major advantage of being relatively intuitive, given that most students in today's wired world are fairly au fait with a windows-type programme. However, it does mean that the material can sometimes appear rather flat, with learners needing to read pure text straight from the screen.
Audioster consists of a number of topics, selected from recent audio news broadcasts. Typical areas covered are political and environmental issues. Before starting, the students can first read a pedagogical rationale which contains many salient points, such as learning tips about improving listening and the way grammar is divided into facts, patterns and choices.
Learners work their way through and logically-ordered and pedagogical sound sequence of tasks. Firstly, pre-listening tasks sensitise students to both the language and ideas contained in the extract.
Figure 1: pre-listening task
A typical while-listening tasks typically is a short series of true / false questions. Post-listening tasks engage students in further language practice. I thought that the "word search" activity is especially enjoyable!
Fig. 2 Word search
"Listen and read": a number of tasks involve students writing down the exact words used in selected sentences. Needless to say, this is quite punishing. It could be criticised for encouraging students to have as an aim 100% understanding, which is frequently unattainable and dissimilar to real life where we frequently do not catch everything. Audioster offers feedback in a novel way, by displaying text in different colours to inform students how accurate they are. This is an intriguing and potentially motivating feature.
The final task in the sequence is called "listen and look" offering students the chance to listen to and read simultaneously a transcript of the complete recording. Students invariably enjoy this and find it useful. The programme's features include the ubiquitous "drag and drop", multiple choice exercises and gap-fills. These fulfil their function of providing solid practice. Additional features include a brief glossary of the key words in each news extract.
The material is regularly updated and topical. The audio quality is fine. There will be occasional controversial or sensitive issues which students may wish to avoid, but this par for the course with authentic news materials. Audioster is well worth investigating and may well encourage students to do more listening, acquire relevant vocabulary and gain confidence in this difficult skill. It is available from Edulang.
For more information see: http://english.edulang.com
February 2005