Effect of reconstructing Podcasts on Female Upper-Intermediate EFL Learners’ listening and Speaking Skills

The current study investigated the effect of reconstruction of podcasts on female upper-intermediate EFL learners’ speaking ability. To this end, 70 Iranian upper-intermediate EFL students at the same level of listening and speaking skills participated in this study. They were divided into two groups of 35. Both groups were asked to listen to offline selected podcasts. During the treatment, the experimental group listened to the topics of the podcast. After listening, participants retold what they were hearing about 3 or 4 minutes and the other participants listened or participated in the retelling activities. These podcasts were taught 30 minutes during 12 sessions of instruction in the class with the reconstruction strategy of listening and then speaking rules. Through these podcasts, students learned about the culture, intonation, pitch, stress, and other functions of the target language. The control group was taught via the conventional method of the institute working on the text -book of New Interchange units dealing with dialogues, discussions, questions, and answers, etc. At last, an achievement test was given to the experimental and control groups, which examined the reconstruction of the unseen podcast in both groups. The obtained results revealed that the reconstruction of podcasts instruction influenced the experimental group more than the control group definitely (p<0.05). It can be inferred that the use of the reconstruction podcasts in speaking skill can develop and enhance both fluency and accuracy of the EFL learners’ speaking skill.

Keywords:

Accuracy , Computer-Assisted Language Learning , Fluency , Reconstruction , Podcast , Speaking proficiency