ESL POD

ESLPodcast 12 - Dining at a Restaurant

A well designed podcast that could aid in teaching English as a Second Language is ESL POD.  A particular episode that could be used to reinforce the interactions and conversation typical of going to a restaurant is ESL PODCAST 12 -DINING AT A RESTAURANT.  What works out well with with this specific episode is that the spoken dialogue at a restaurant is accompanied by written from, making it easy to distribute to students to help them follow along.  As an educator, something that I like is that with this podcast students can first listen to see how much they understand.   After listening the first time, phrases and vocabulary that might prove difficult are analyzed and explained in detail.  

In addition to providing students with comprehension questions to go along with the listening activity, words could also be taken out of the written form and replaced with blanks for the students to fill in.  From my teaching experience, I have found it very difficult to find authentic listening tasks for a "restaurant" unit.  The material at ESL pod seems to be of very high quality, and for the most part, authentic.