At my school, we have had the tradition of broadcasting an Eigo Radio Show once a month! During my Prefecture's SDC Conference, I talked about Eigo Radio and a lot of my ALT friends have started the tradition at their school! I wanted to share this really neat listening practice for your students, in hopes that your school may be interested in letting you start your own Eigo Radio Show!
How it works:
Once a month, I play an Eigo Radio Broadcast during school lunch. (If your school doesn't have a broadcast system, you could play the Eigo Radio at the beginning of each of your classes).
Normally, my co-host (a JTE) and I, will talk together about a special topic, relating to a holiday, what is currently going on in the school (Sports Festival, Graduation, etc), or a special topic that my JTE would like to talk about.
The broadcast is normally anywhere from 5-8mins.
After the broadcast, students can go to the English Board where they may fill out a quiz relating to the month's edition of Eigo Radio! After about 3 weeks, I then pick random completed quizzes (my students submit the quiz in a box so I just stick my hand in and pull a few out) and those winners receive prizes! Prizes range from notepads, to folders, to small toys or gadgets (pretty much anything I can find at Seria or Daiso that I think the students will enjoy).
It's been really fun recording the Eigo Radio Show this year! The students love it, especially when I ask a teacher to be a Special Guest! (I normally ask non-English teachers to be a special guest and the students get a kick out of hearing them speak English.) It also motivates them to try and speak more since they hear teachers who normally don't speak English communicating with me using no Japanese!
In the attached files, I will add the PPT I used during my SDC conference. It includes more details on how to get started, how to write the script, edit the audio, etc. I'll also attach some examples of scripts, quizzes, and prizes for you all to see as well!
I hope that if you can present this information to your school and show how a school has been successfully doing Eigo Radio for over 8 years now, that they might think it could be something beneficial for them to help you get started! If you have any questions or want more examples, please don't hesitate to message me!
I hope you have fun creating an Eigo Radio Show for your students! :D
Sorry there are a lot of files! I have even more, but I just wanted to add a few examples of each part of the Eigo Radio Show to give you all some ideas! I hope this helps and if you all want to see more files, please let me know! :D
This is very, very good. I will bring this up at my city's next ALT meeting as a suggestion for all the ALTs to implement in the upcoming year.
oh man I'd love to do something like this!!! thank you for all these materials, I'll bring it up to my JTEs and hope for the best!
Thank you for this idea, this sounds really fun.
Thank you so much everyone! I'm glad everyone is interested and I hope you can implement Eigo Radio at your own schools! If you ever have any questions feel free to ask! :D
My school is tiny but I also want to try this as well! Especially with the new school year starting. Great job!
@Halvar I hope you can try it out! My one friend has a school with under 100 students in total, but they all really love it! I hope it works out for you! :D
Hey! Does anyone have a recommendation for a free audio app to use? I tried wavepad but in order for me to have the recording as a mp3, I need to pay for it (unless I'm missing a step?). Any help would be greatly appreciated!
@deedeek What I normally do is download the finished recording from WavePad as an m4a and then I use a free m4a to mp3 converter online! I normally use this website to convert: https://cloudconvert.com/m4a-to-mp3
If that doesn't work, I'm not sure of other audio apps, but I'm sure there is a ton out there!
How does it usually work with writing the script. Do you interview the teachers more casually beforehand and then write it up in simple English later for recording?
@FullMetalAlba Once I pick my special guest and get their permission to participate, I ask if there is a certain topic they want to talk about! Once we decide a topic, I write a script in English, highlight their parts and hand it to them! If they have any questions they ask me. Even my teachers who don't speak much English can at least read it, so it has been fine! I'll help them with pronunciation, and I always make sure to use easy English so that my kids can understand and enjoy this listening practice! :D
My teachers are much more willing to participate when I write the script myself. If it's extra work for them or an extra meeting most of them would say they don't have the time. So I suggest just writing the script and handing it to them! It makes them much more willing to participate lmao
@Domdijock Ah thanks that makes a lot of sense:) I spoke with my JTEs and they seem keen to pair it with ESS and the broadcasting club. They're going to do a brief interview in Japanese and then write a script that I can clean up for them. Thanks for the idea, can see that you've put a lot of work into this!
@FullMetalAlba Of course! I'm so glad that they are into the idea! I hope that you enjoy doing it, I always look forward to it every month! :D
This has been a tradition at my school actually for at least 10 years with whoever is the ALT at my school, so I figured if it's been going on this long successfully, others could adopt this idea into their own schools as well! Let me know how it goes! I hope you, your JTEs, and your students enjoy! :D