Language Podcasts
My interest in language podcasts
I do not think language podcasts are of much value to learn a language. Why? When I started to create language learning materials, I thought of everything from podcasts to java games. Colorful cartons to video and speech technology. I did not choose to put podcasts in my programs because when talking about language learning I am talking about learning efficiency. I think language podcasts are for the people making the podcast to make money, not for people with a sincere interest in learning. I tried them and Podcasts are not efficient.
Podcast learning is not efficient
Language learning is all about efficiency. You do not want to take years to learn a language. You need to really get up to speed on vocabulary fast, then and only then, you can to start to watch or listen to your target language and get something out of it.
Learning words with podcasts
While the podcast learner is learning a few words and phrases in a nice little podcast, another language learner could learn scores of words faster with music, or mnemonics or flashcards, testing and retesting oneself. At the end of a month the Podcast person could know 100 words well though semi passive learning, while the mnemonic or flashcard learner could know 1000s. At which point the non Podcast learner could start watching real TV, and the Podcast guy would still be watching Podcasts.
Watching videos, YouTube, TV, PodCasts
Let me explain. To learn a language, you can watch TV in a foreign language or even get YouTube videos if you want multi media. This is all good. But you need to build a base. The reality is to learn a language you really need to learn 1000s of words fast before you will start understanding anything, and to learn this it has to be a very active process of testing and retesting. You want to be able to do this anywhere, in your car in the shower, when walking, you want to be immersed in the language. That is why audio learning is good. If you want to learn from your computer, which is great, flashcards, they are interactive. Then you can watch all the fun YouTube in a foreign language and actually get something out of it.
Podcasts by their nature are generally passive.
Podcasts for learning will give you a false sense
Podcasts for learning will lull you into a false sense of, I am learning just watching these videos. If you are a passive learner music is eons better.
Think about what I said. Do you want to take a month or two before you can understand people or years. Learning a language with Podcasts will be the latter.
2 responses to Language podcasts
Great blog, first of all,
and I really appreciate all the posts that you’ve written so far including this one, and I’d like to say that I have a slightly different opinion on this topic, because, although I agree with you on the general idea that the learner can spend the same time to learn more words or phrases rather than just passively listening to podcasts, that doesn’t make podcasts not worthy of studying with. 
Podcasts are just another format of distributing the lessons that can be offered in other ways as well 
And yes, studying with podcasts doesn’t and can’t take the greater portion of my entire studying time, but still the podcasts that I’m listening to keep me updated when I’m on the go. When I find it difficult to read books or try to download videos onto my portable media players everytime just to be able to study while commuting, audio/video podcasts are a great way for me to learn foreign languages including English because they are so easy to get 
Anyway, that’s just what I think. Hehe. Keep up the great work!!
Great post. I’ve been collecting language videos for quite some time and are trying to be the best collection of such videos on the Net.
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