The Future of Education

This case study, as part of a larger survey, has been conducting on first-year university students learning a foreign language. With an initial short questionnaire given to them at the beginning of the course, we wanted to detect what they considered most important in learning a foreign language. Our students wish to improve their communication skills and pronunciation, enrich their vocabulary in an alternative way and learn elements of the culture of the foreign language. For this reason, we have chosen to involve podcasts in our course, because they combine listening skills, analysis and evaluation of information, creative exchange of ideas in the foreign language, effective verbal communication, integrated speech and experiential learning that increase the motivation to produce high-quality learning tasks, according to their interests [1]. Furthermore, podcasts favor the personalization of learning process, they are a stimulus to promote dynamic interaction [2], to enhance students' special ability to pronounce the foreign language, and therefore to bring about listening comprehension and the oral discourse. The same content can be taught in a variety of ways [3] in and out of the classroom, which helps the learning process. Furthermore, podcasts are technological educational tool capable of increasing students' language skills and proficiency, as well as the likelihood that students will feel engaged and motivated [4]. From the various uses of podcasts, we chose in our case to use podcasts as a consolidation of the topics of the chapters that had been completed, as listening to authentic language to enrich speaking skills, vocabulary, pronunciation and as a trigger that will provoke reflection and written commentary on a specific topic and vocabulary, using the foreign language. Thus, the podcasts given to the university students were related to the lesson topic. The students listened to them and commented by writing in the foreign language. In a questionnaire we collected their perceptions of the pedagogical value of podcasts and their satisfaction with this educational tool. Our research prospect is to involve our students in creating their podcasts in the foreign language.