Useful Podcast in ESL Classroom

The broadcast that I chose are  ESLPodcast 12 - Dining at a Restaurant I and ESLPodcast 13 - Dining at a Restaurant II from ESL Podcast Blog.

Those two broadcast are all about how to dining at a restaurant in the United States. Both episodes involve dining vocabularies, basic procedure of dining at restaurants, the rules of how to make order, etc.  

Language is a communicative tool that mostly used in people’s daily life. Dining at a restaurant is the most happened situation that L2 learners will face. In the United States, Some students may think that typical American foods are only hamburgers, hot dogs and French fries due to stereotypes, but in fact the American cuisine is much more international than that. Both episodes that I chose illustrate an Italian restaurant in a very nice part of Beverly Hills. By learning both episodes, It will be useful for L2 learners to get familiar with how to ordering in the USA, and what are the rules and talks in restaurants. For example, when people go out to eat in the United States, people will often need to wait to be seated. Sometimes a host or a hostess will put people’s name on a list if the restaurant is busy. Then after waiting some time, people’s name will be called, and people will be brought to a table.

There are also some cultural rules about how to ordering towards western culture such as the menu order: drinks, appetizers, main courses, and desserts. Teaching students about basic rules at restaurant in the US will help international student to know more about dining culture at a restaurant in the United States.

Besides getting familiar with the knowledge of western dining culture, the vocabularies from both episodes are useful for L2 learners to use in their real dining situation such as ‘treat’, ‘hostess’, ‘spot’, ‘check’, ‘split’,etc. All the vocabularies are explained clearly in the broadcast by illustrating sample sentences. Therefore, L2 learners will be taught about how to use those new vocabularies into practice.