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I’ve been listening to the latest SeoulPodcast where Joe Interviews Amanda. I’m about 30 minutes into a 153 minute podcast (don’t know if I’ll finish it) and it’s been all about hagwons, dodgy employers, the labor board and generally getting screwed in Korea.

If you are looking to hear from two expats who’ve been screwed by their employers this is the podcast for you. It’s not overly bitter, but it is definitely informative.

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The EFL Geek described a new KSL class online and I am in the process of giving it a try. Koreanclass101 is growing and currently has ‘newbie lessons’, beginner lessons and a little more (the audioblog seems geared toward stronger Korean ability). The site offers free podcasts and additional paid material. When you sign up, you get a free week of access to the premium material, including transcripts and review.

I am about to game the system. I don’t recommend this, but I will soon sign up with a second email address (doesn’t everyone have a handful of email accounts these days?) for a further week of free access to the full service. My trivial excuses are: 1) I’m doing this for you -helping give you a better account of the services offered, and 2) I was busy that week - it was a bad time to explore the content.

A more serious reason is that I have not yet found my true level in the material offered. Again, I was busy. Perhaps a level test is needed (is ‘level test’ a Konglish term -it rolls naturally off my tongue but I’m not sure). I would even accept a sort of eye test: “Can you read and understand this line?” “How about this line?” There’s not much point in cheating on a level test, after all.

I don’t mind, and probably need, review. I am not a ‘newbie’ but, well, false beginners are always hard to place.

Anyway, the podcasts are clear and stand alone well. The documentation prints out in good format, but I don’t really like PDF files. I would prefer a simple ‘.txt’ file that I could store in my phone’s ebook folder and read while listening on the bus. That would be handier than paper in my situation.

kwandongbrian inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Oct 30, 2007 at 12:55 PM
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Long term readers may recall that I started work on a podcast for Korean language learners but that it eventually fell through for a number of reasons. Well it looks like someone has gone ahead and completed the project almost exactly as I envisioned it. If you want to use podcasts to improve your Korean skills be sure to check out koreanclass101 - and don’t forget my long running Korean learning group blog 한국어 연습장 for writing practice.

KoreanClass101 offers the podcasts for free via RSS just like any other podcast. But if you want access to the learning center and pdf’s of transcripts/vocabulary etcetera that involves a paid membership. They do offer a 7 day trial membership which gives you access to all the features of a premium account. I haven’t yet signed up for the trial as I am too busy to take advantage of it fully. However at the end of the semester I will definitely be signing up and trying it out. After the trial you can expect a full review here or over at 한국어연습장.

If you try it before then feel free to use guest authoring to write a review here. Also added a poll about podcasts - vote now!

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ESL & Archie Comics is a blog that posts one Archie strip with accompanying audio and simple vocabulary explanations. currently the audio is set up for download only rather than an inline player, but the RSS feed has enclosures all set up to run like a regular podcast.

The author of the blog sent me an email.

Perhaps your students would enjoy my blog… ESL with Archie Comics… sort of a short (but hopefully sweet) ESL lesson for elementary and middle school kids (maybe even up to adults?). Anyway, I taught an ESL class this spring and have just learned about doing podcasting and thought it would be a neat extension for my students. If you can offer any helpful advice, I’d appreciate it.  (BTW I am working on fixing the audio player to be viewable in the same window rather than opening a new one.) http://www.eslarchie.wordpress.com

I responded suggesting that there might be problems with copyrights and found out that the author works with archie and if you check the mp3 address it’s actually on archie comics, so this is a legitimate comic resource for ESL/EFL learners. Go and enjoy.

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I recently purchased a new MP3 player and have started thinking about podcasting a little more. Today at work I had a couple of hours between classes and went looking for some EFL/ESL/ELT podcasts. I noticed that there were several targetting students but what I was really after were podcasts that were for teachers, specifically a reflective look at teaching. I guess somewhat like my blog or many of the blogs on my blogroll but audio oriented.

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Chinese Pod is a fantastic learning resource if you are learning Chinese. Honestly I would kill if there was a Korean site that did this. If anyone knows where I can find good Korean listening resources I would be very grateful. I also posted this in Lets Learn Korean.

Hat tip to Gord.

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Bee and Graham have both made announcements of the special Blogstreams Salon Session on Sunday June 19th at 21:00 GMT (that should technically be UTC Universal Time Coordinated).

I know that I previosly stated that I wasn’t going to podcast, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested or won’t change my mind in the future. I think podcasting for students has benefits, if you can get your students interested and involved. Not everyone has an mp3 player or wants to sit in front of the computer to listen to podcasts. Anyhow, if I can I will participate in thier chat. All I need to do now, is find the world clock so I can figure out what day/time that is in Korea. Thier abstract is in the extended entry.

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A while back regular readers may remember that I was getting interested in podcasting. I was even interested enough to purchase two domains which are now pointing at this site and create a podcasting category. However after considering it further I have decided against podcasting. I think that it involves too much work and time for what I would get out of it. Additionally I see some critical flaws in the whole idea.

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I’m incredibly busy these days which is nothing new. However there have been a number of great posts on other blogs that I have failed to comment on or mention here that have slipped by. I’ve managed to recall four of them.

Dan briefly talks about extensive reading and links to a page with a wealth of information on the subject. Extensive reading (and writing, and listening) is something I’m very interested in persuing as a student of Korean and finding ways to get my English students involved in as well.

Graham provides a series links and resources for EFL teachers interested in podcasting on his Podcasting ELT blog on the new yahoo 360 platform. One link of interest is the TEFL Podcasting Forum which is actually a blog and not a forum. Over at his original blog Graham posts an email response to one of his readers about blogging that is definatly worth reading.

Finally Gord writes about festival week at a Korean university. His post reflects on issues in university rules, expectations and student behavior in Korea as well.

update
A new blog that I just subscribed to recently by Adam titled Sarin Miso has a great post on language anxiety.

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In the last week or so I’ve been reading alot about podcasting, and wrote a bit on ESL podcasting which has a good number of comments with useful information. Over the weekend one of my RSS feeds, Help2go posted a comprehensive Podcasting Introduction with good explanations and links to other sites. If you are interested I would say this is a good starting point to learn about podcasting.

Also check out Grahams post about ESL podcasting (mini) explosion. Finally I created a new category here fo