DEVELOPING FUTURE FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ READINESS TO USE PODCASTS FOR FOSTERING SCHOOL LEARNERS’ LISTENING COMPETENCE

Abstract

The article presents the results of a study on future foreign language teachers’ readiness to use the podcast methodically to foster school learners’ listening competence. The study defines this readiness as an integrated unity of motivational, cognitive, and activity-based components and proposes a set of diagnostic and practice-oriented tools to support its development. The study involved 56 first-cycle higher education students at the Military Institute of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, divided into a control group (n = 27) and an experimental group (n = 29). Assessment included an author-designed questionnaire, a test of methodological knowledge, and a practical lesson-design task. The intervention comprised audio-material analysis, podcast selection according to learners’ age and proficiency, pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening task design, adaptation, microteaching, peer assessment, and professional reflection. The experimental group showed a more pronounced positive trend: the proportion of participants at the high readiness level increased from 10.3% to 34.5%, while the low level decreased from 51.7% to 13.8%. The mean knowledge-test score increased from 10.2 to 16.4 points, compared with 10.4 to 11.8 points in the control group. An exact comparison of the final readiness-level distributions indicated a between-group difference (Fisher–Freeman–Halton exact test, p ≈0.029). However, because individual-level paired data and variability estimates were not available for all diagnostic measures, causal claims are interpreted with caution. The findings support the feasibility of further use and evaluation of podcast analysis, lesson modeling, microteaching, peer assessment, and reflection in foreign language teacher education.