Podcasts as a resource for learning academic English: A lexical perspective

Abstract

As the demand for English for academic purposes (EAP) courses increases, efforts are being made to identify pedagogically useful resources for them. Academic podcasts may be helpful for EAP pedagogy, considering their ever-growing stockpile of authentic content covering a wealth of topics from various disciplines that is conveyed in diverse speech formats (e.g., narratives and discussions). Yet, the potential value of podcasts as EAP resources remains largely unexplored. This study addresses that issue by analyzing the lexical nature of the general, academic, and discipline-specific vocabulary in a 9.6-million-word corpus of academic podcasts. The results indicate that these podcasts contain a large amount of frequently used academic vocabulary, but are lexically less demanding than university lectures. As such, they may be especially suitable as learning materials for novice EAP students. The podcasts also contain many disciplinary vocabulary items that are rather infrequent in general English but are essential to discipline-specific speech. Together, these results indicate the strong potential value of academic podcasts to EAP pedagogy, as they create rich opportunities for students to encounter both core academic and discipline-specific vocabulary in use in authentic contexts. Pedagogical suggestions for the use of podcasts in EAP courses are also provided.