Integration of Adapted Podcasts and Digital Media into English Language Teaching for Primary School Children: Developing Creative Speech Skills
Abstract
The accelerating digitalization of education has heightened the need for instructional approaches that are developmentally appropriate for young learners and capable of supporting both linguistic growth and creative speech production. This study investigates the pedagogical potential of integrating adapted English-language podcasts and media-based tasks into primary English instruction to foster originality, contextual coherence, expressive flexibility, and emotional richness in learners’ productive speech. The research employed a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design implemented in intact classroom groups and involved 233 third- and fourth-grade students (experimental group, n = 116; control group, n = 117). Over one academic semester (January–May 2025), the experimental group participated in a structured programme embedded within regular lessons that combined short podcast episodes with dialogic and narrative tasks, while the control group followed the standard curriculum without podcast integration or comparable multimedia enrichment. Data analysis combined quantitative comparison of pre- and post-intervention speech outcomes with qualitative evaluation of learners’ oral and written products, supplemented by student and teacher feedback. The results showed statistically significant improvements in the experimental group across key indicators of creative speech performance. Qualitative evidence further indicated a shift toward more independent, personally meaningful language use, with learners demonstrating greater willingness to experiment with narrative transformation, evaluative retelling, and expressive variation. Taken together, the findings suggest that adapted podcasts, when systematically integrated into routine classroom practice, can serve as an effective and feasible tool for strengthening creative speech development in primary English language education and for enriching contemporary media pedagogy in digitally evolving learning environments.