Podcasts as Literary Texts

The slides below represent a study that I conducted with two high school ELA teachers, Ms. Ashley Bible (TN) and Ms. Emily Ward (FL). We hypothesized that long-form podcasts might sometimes serve as effective replacements for literary texts as units of study--that podcasts are, in essence, a kind of text. Our work highlights that long-form podcasts (fiction and nonfiction) contain many of the conventions of literary texts and are thus useful for teaching storytelling and literary conventions (e.g., foreshadowing; metaphor and analogy; character development; ethos, logos, and pathos; irony; symbolism; etc.). At the same time, long-form podcasts have the potential to engage students in ways that differ from literary texts due to their use of different voices/actors playing different characters, the use of sound effects, and creative and professional editing. Students in the study--and especially reluctant readers--were more engaged in learning about and discussing literary conventions when the "text" itself was in the podcast audio format.