O n f e r e n c e

podcast alternatives
, as the number of websites with audio and video materials 
relevant for academic purposes is really impressive. The ways of introducing them into an 
educational process described in methodological FLT literature are also different 
(Dudeney&Hockly, 2008, Sysoev & Evstigneev, 2009, Sysoev & Sysoeva, 2009, Kogan, 
2012, Nan & Mingfang, 2009, Artyushina & Sheypak, 2013). All these aspects can be 
fruitfully discussed by future language teachers during classes on Methodology of FLT. 
When at the beginning of autumn or spring term we suggest using podcasts for 

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2014 CALL Conference 
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be 
developing academic listening skills to Science or Engineering master students they begin 
to discuss the idea spontaneously.
The point is that some of them have already had first-hand experience of taking special 
on-line courses relevant to their major field of knowledge. They speak about the ratio of 
audio and reading materials in the courses, the difficulty of understanding the lecturer 
/speaker, the importance of note taking, the difference of listening to any program just 
for fun and for the purpose of sharing information with somebody else. As home-task 
for the next class we usually have students get familiarized with the structure and 
contents of 
academicearth.org
website 
–
one of our favorites 
–
and compare it with the 
educational sites they have known before. At the next class they report about the easier 
access to the academicearth.org website resources in comparison with the MIT open 
resources centre website, academic-like structure and content of the resource in 
comparison with more popular science TED website content, about the number of 
lectures in the courses of their interest, the average length of a lecture, the availability of 
subtitles, the lecturers’ accents, etc. As this aspect of the course is based on students’ 
listening to the fraction of the lecture of their choice at home with consequent sharing 
information with his/her group-mate in pair work, the freedom of choice and the variety 
of their scientific interests provide live information exchange during the term. At the final 
classroom discussion students willingly contribute with their comments on how valuable 
the information from the course was for them, on communicative skills of the lecturers 
and the ways they interact with the audience. 
Another practically inexhaustible task for discussion especially for students majoring in 
Humanities, Political sciences and the like is using websites of well-known newspapers. 
One thing is theoretical knowledge about the difference between the popular and quality 
newspapers in the UK or the different attitudes towards certain urgent issues of the 
British and American press. However, the chance to see the difference in practice results 
in more argumentative discussions including linguistic aspects. 
The introduction of simulation strategy