The Effectiveness of Using Podcasts For Developping Learners’ Listening Skills

Abstract

Listening is one of the basic language skills in communication .However , students always find it difficult to understand listening and to enhance their level in this skill . The aim of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of using podcasts for developing learners listening skills. In order to reject or confirm the hypothesis that the implementation of using podcasting would bring on positive results, two intact groups: a control group (n=23) and an experimental group (n=37)were used in this study. This research work was carried out through the comparison of pre and post tests in addition to a questionnaire administrated to a sample of teachers(n=5)from different secondary schools (Elkantara , Birkhadem, kouba).The posttest indicated that the participants achieved statistically greater results .The findings obtained in this study show that the use of podcasting can help students develop their listening comprehension better than the use of traditional method used with the control group .Consequently, we suggest podcasts tobe applied and used while teaching listening in all levels in the Algerian context.