Podcasting and Vocabulary Learning in an EFL Context: a Mixed Methods Study


 The study investigated the impact of using podcasts as instructional tools on EFL learners’ vocabulary learning, and to evaluate their attitude towards listening to podcasts. A vocabulary pre-test was given to 60 male intermediate-level EFL learners which indicated that they were homogeneous regarding their vocabulary knowledge. The participants were divided into two groups; the experimental group were instructed by podcasts, but the control group continued with the routine instruction. The results revealed that the podcast group outperformed those in the control group in the post-test. To find out the students' attitudes towards podcasting, an 8-item Likert-type questionnaire was given to the participants in the podcasting group; through face-to-face interviews with 8 participants from the same group, a thematic analysis was conducted and four themes emerged: (1) vocabulary achievement, (2) learning by listening, (3) learner choice and flexibility, and (4) podcasts as useful instructional tools. The findings suggest that podcasts enhance learners’ vocabulary learning, thus emphasizing the pedagogical merits of podcasts on the enrichment of EFL classes. The results may provide implications for curriculum development and L2 vocabulary teaching and learning.

2. What are the participants' attitudes toward using listening podcasts?
3. What are the participants' viewpoints about using listening podcasts?

Methodology Participants
The participants of the study were 60 male intermediate EFL learners at a well-reputed Iranian language institute, i.e. Iran Language Institute (ILI), in Gonbad-e Kavus, Iran. Iran Language Institute (ILI) is a network of language institutes in most cities of Iran with predetermined syllabi for various levels of learners. The participants' level of English was not determined by pro ciency tests; rather, based on ILI placement test, intermediate level learners were included in the present study. Using a vocabulary pretest, the participants were divided into two classes: class A as the experimental group (n=30), and class B as the control group (n=30). Their bio-data were collected using a questionnaire (Appendix 1) at the beginning of the semester.

Design
Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to answer the research questions, and to explore their attitudes and viewpoints about podcast-based vocabulary expansion. Pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used to examine the impact of podcasting on Iranian EFL learners' vocabulary learning.
To triangulate the data, students' attitudes towards the effect of the program on their vocabulary learning were elicited using an 8-item Likert-type questionnaire. Moreover, their viewpoints about podcasting were elicited via semi-structured interviews with eight participants from the experimental group, up to the saturation point where the elicited data tended to become redundant. The interviews were transcribed and an inductive thematic analysis was utilized; the reported themes emerged from the data.

Instrumentation
In order to obtain the desired data, the data were collected through (1) a bio-data questionnaire (Appendix A), (2) a 20-item researcher-made vocabulary test (used as both a pre-test and post-test), (3) an 8-item Likert-type questionnaire (Appendix B) to elicit the participants' attitudes, with enough space for comments if they wished, and (4) oral interviews conducted to let them elaborate on their viewpoints about the impact of using podcasts. The second author conducted the interviews; participants were requested to choose to answer the questions either in English or Farsi (their L1). For the interviews, eight students (four students with higher vocabulary scores and four students with lower vocabulary scores) with varying vocabulary abilities from the experimental group participated in interviews, to cater for varying opinions. The interviews stopped at the point of data saturation.
The procedure A 20-item vocabulary test was initially given to both control and experimental groups as a pretest, to determine their vocabulary scores as the starting point.
The experimental group was instructed through listening to podcasts. In the control group, however, vocabulary was taught by routine instructional methods without podcasts, as practiced by the institute throughout years.
The classes met twice a week for 90 minutes, and the course continued for ve weeks. In ten successive sessions, podcast-based materials were introduced and taught to participants in the experimental group. Most of the earlier studies used or recommended podcasts as supplementary learning tools because the learners practiced listening to podcasts at home besides attending classes (Lord, 2008;Evans, 2008). However, Shahid and Ali (2017) believed that the role of the teacher is vital in using podcasts in teaching.in the present study; therefore, the podcasts were played and intensively practiced in the classroom, mostly to make sure that participants had listened to materials at least once. Listening to each podcast took about 15 minutes each session, followed by vocabulary exercises practiced for about 10 minutes on average. Then they were encouraged to carefully listen to podcasts several times at home.
Meanwhile, the control group was taught by the ILI routine techniques of teaching vocabulary, which is mostly considered to be a modi ed version of audiolingual methodology with a considerable focus on grammar and drills for teaching dialogs with meager intensive work on vocabulary expansion.
After the course ended, the participants were given the vocabulary post-test and the Likert-type questionnaire; also, individual interviews were conducted to explore the experimental group participants' attitudes and viewpoints about the podcasting module.

Results
The participants were 60 male EFL learners whose bio-data (i.e. age, gender, and their past learning experiences) were collected through a questionnaire at the beginning of the semester. Their age ranged between 16 and 22 years old; none of the participants had the experience of podcast-based vocabulary expansion. They had all practiced vocabulary using traditional methods in previous classes. Below, we will present the results in two sections: quantitative and qualitative.

The quantitative section
To ascertain the normality of distribution of the data, one-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was run. The p values for the pretest scores of the control and experimental groups were .33 and .24, respectively. Since the p-values were above .05, a parametric test was used to analyze data (see appendix C).
The null hypothesis was that "using podcasts does not signi cantly affect students' vocabulary learning". In order to test this hypothesis, the independent samples t-test was run using SPSS 13 to see whether the experimental group outperformed the control group in the vocabulary pre-test. shows that the mean scores of the control and experimental groups (12.13 and 12.07, respectively) were not signi cantly different (p > 0.05) (see Table 3.2). Table 3.2., the p value of .95 is greater than .05, showing that the difference between the means is not statistically signi cant. In other words, the groups were homogeneous in terms of their vocabulary ability at the beginning of the study. .76976

As shown in
However, in the post-test, the independent samples t-test showed that the mean score of the experimental group (16.67) was greater than that of the control group (14.10) ( Table 3.3). Also, Table 3.4 indicates that the p-value of .314 is much lower than .05, implying that the difference between the obtained means is statistically signi cant. Therefore, the null hypothesis which stated that "using podcast does not signi cantly affect students' vocabulary learning" is rejected.
In other words, podcasts affected the participants' vocabulary learning. The qualitative section The Likert-type questionnaire The participants' attitudes towards podcast-based vocabulary expansion were elicited via a researcher-made 8-item questionnaire. When the instruction was over, 30 participants in the experimental group were given the questionnaire, and were asked to tick the Likert choices; they expressed their attitudes as follows: strongly agree, agree, no idea, disagree or strongly disagree. In addition to Likert-type statements, the questionnaire allowed some space for respondents to provide open-ended comments, if they wished to add any comments. They were also assured of the con dentiality of their views and personal information. The responses were entered into Excel for analysis and reporting the percentage. The analysis of the eight items are presented below one by one. Comments: Some students noted that there were other aspects of language which they needed to spend more time on. One student said he had little problem with vocabulary; therefore, he needed to spend most of his time practicing other skills. One student commented that the course was useful in integrating podcasts, and from then on, he had started listening more to podcasts to practice vocabulary in future. Comments: Six students commented on this statement. While, one of them wrote: "I started well rst, but after just two minutes I couldn't focus on the content. It's so hard to understand everything", some others believed that they had no or few problems when listening to podcasts. Comments: There were six short comments on this statement. All of them implied that they sometimes had problems understanding the content of the materials.

The verbal interview analysis
To explore the participants' real perceptions of the impact of podcasting on Iranian EFL learners, four students with low vocabulary scores and four with high vocabulary scores were interviewed. The length of the interviews varied between ve and ten minutes depending on the interviewees' willingness and eagerness to talk. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically, by which the following themes emerged from the data: (1) vocabulary achievement, (2) learning by listening, (3) learner choice and exibility, and (4) podcast as a useful instructional tool, which will be explained below.
Theme one: Vocabulary achievement In the interviews, the students expressed their ideas about their improvement in vocabulary expansion. Unanimously, they reported higher gains in vocabulary scores. They also believed that they had been empowered in learning new vocabulary items more effectively and had developed sharp ears for spoken language; one said, "I am sure from now on I would have no problem listening to different listening materials if they are not much above my level, knowing the vocabulary and expressions." Some of them stressed that they had gained more con dence in listening to longer stretches of speech such as stories or lectures. One student said, "The podcasting program helped me to willingly listen more by giving me more con dence and motivation in comprehending and by forcing me to do a lot of listening practice to improve my vocabulary." Although almost all participants felt that the podcasting experience helped them improve their vocabulary comprehension, they believed that they still needed more practice to achieve real pro ciency.
Theme two: Learning by listening Some interviewees believed that the process of 'learning by listening' was an advantage compared to reading textbooks. In this regard, one of them said, "To sit down and to read is very challenging; you have to be stuck in one place for a long time. But audio materials are not like that. It is easier to learn when we listen, especially when you understand everything." Another participant said, "I think it is the best way to improve our pronunciation. We can listen to words and we can check the pronunciation of all words, in this way, I can check or learn pronunciations of a lot of words because everything is so fast and I don't need to check them in my dictionary." Another participant focused on the fact that listening to podcasts gives them an effortless and relaxed option to access ample information in general -all they had to do was to listen; he further added, "It was so great that how easy it was for me to access information on various topics, just listen to it and learn a lot of cultural notes and different hints on English usage. Actually no pain, all the gain!" As previously mentioned in section 3.1, none of participants had experience of using podcasts for learning. But they agreed that podcasting was such a new phenomenon for them. One of the interviewees pointed out that learning with podcasts represented a new and attractive experience, "That is a very fresh experience. In fact, I'd never heard of podcast before this class, I didn't even know what podcast was." Theme three: Learner choice and exibility Many interviewees expressed that podcasts were exible and convenient because the learners could listen to them at a convenient place, time and at a pace of their choice. The following comment re ects the potentiality of podcasts on different occasions, "It looked for me as if listening to music. Listening to music is my favorite hobby. I have a lot of small free times which I can't do anything else, so I used to listen to music. But now I can also like to listen to podcasts." A similar idea came from another participant, "I sometimes listened to podcasts when working with my computer." Similarly, a participant added, "I can listen to podcasts every time I like or I am free such as when I am on the bus or in the car and I can't do anything else. So, it is very good to learn English in such times. Because I have to learn English very soon." Theme four: Podcasts as useful instructional tools The last major theme emerging from the data was the participants' opinion about the auxiliary contribution of podcasts as instructional tools for extracurricular learning. One of them said, "Podcasting provides me an additional exposure to learn English. I think I need to practice more and more." Another learner added, "There is a lot to vocabulary and I should do a lot of listening to become better in vocabulary comprehension. With using podcasts I can practice vocabulary at home." Having experienced the podcasting project, the learners were aware of its advantages and disadvantages. As for the advantages of the program, one of the students commented that podcasts had made him somehow independent in terms of listening and vocabulary learning. Some of them found podcasting useful for speaking ability too, because they were able to pause after each sentence and repeat the same as a model. Interestingly, they preferred using new technology to traditional methods of vocabulary, since in this type of learning they can feel the presence of an amazing educational technology; one said, "I am tired of using my cell phone for just messaging and listening to music. Now, I have another application for it. I am happy to use it for my English learning".
However, some participants preferred to point to disadvantages too. Almost half of the interviewees said that some podcasts were lengthy and not interesting enough. Even one participant regarded 'making students listen to podcasts more than once' as a useless activity. One of the participants said, "they [podcasts] were so easy, so it was very boring job to listen to them more than once. I think they are useless when they are very easy". Another disadvantage they highlighted was the lack of pictures and videos to accompany the audio les. One learner rightly criticized that podcasts are just one-way learning objects with no interactional possibilities, and added, "we cannot interact with les, we must just listen to them, and when we have questions, we cannot ask them. But, when we listened to them in class that was no problem."

Discussion
The present study was conducted to investigate the impact of using podcasts as instructional tools on EFL learners' vocabulary learning, and to evaluate their attitude towards listening to podcasts. The results showed that 'listening to podcasts' improved the learners' vocabulary scores in the experimental group. Therefore, podcasts could be used in language classes, on the one hand, to help teachers and learners with improving auditory skills and vocabulary  (2007), the participants of the present study welcomed podcasts in their classes and stated that podcasts were bene cial learning tools for them, and they were enabled to learn through listening to podcasts. Another possibility of podcasts usage is for teachers to adopt them as means of communicating with students (Elekaei, Tabrizi & Chalak, 2020).

Conclusions
Based on the results, 'listening to podcasts' can improve EFL learners' vocabulary scores; use of podcasts in language classes helps teachers with improving auditory skills and vocabulary instruction, and leads to higher vocabulary scores and positive attitudes. However, the retention of vocabulary gain is an aspect raised by researchers (e.g. Elekaei, Tabrizi & Chalak, 2020) which requires special attention. Also, most EFL learners may start practicing with podcasting experience due to positive feelings, attitudes and viewpoints. This study bears implications for teaching and curriculum development in EFL contexts. First, podcasts should be given due attention because of their auditory advantages speci cally learning vocabulary by listening practice. Second, EFL teachers are recommended to integrate podcasting exercises in their classes. Third, EFL learners might nd a chance to practice becoming more responsible and autonomous in improving their vocabulary. However, the limitations or perceived disadvantages of podcasting for learners who do not feel at home with it should be re-considered before its integration into the course syllabus. Finally, a larger sample size in future studies, with a wider scope of gender and pro ciency levels, may help clarify the points we have not been able to consider.