The aim of this study is to explore what impact creating podcasts have in improving speaking skills and metacognition skills of students in the EFL classroom. Students face difficulty in expressing their ideas clearly and fluently while speaking due to anxiety, lack of enough grammatical and lexical knowledge and long processing time in face to face conversation . Moreover, the only place where students have the opportunity to speak in English is in the EFL classroom. This means that they may not have enough practice to develop their language skill and specifically, speaking skill. By development of technology, Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and its subdivision Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) students will be able to take language learning beyond the classroom walls. Moreover, Podcast is a digital tool that is accessible without limiting itself to the place and time. Fluency is one of the aspects of speaking that can hinder communication. Scott Thornbury in his book “how to teach speaking” suggests that some conditions have an important role in the degree of fluency of speakers. These conditions are divided into three different categories such as cognitive, affective and performance factors. Cognitive factors include: Familiarity with the topic, familiarity with the interlocutor and processing demands. In this experiment students make podcasts about topics based on school curriculum, after receiving adequate knowledge in the classroom. Students create and share podcasts in the comfort of their home using smartphones in a group of three people. This enables them to prepare their speech in advance and practice it several times before making a podcast. Which consequently reduces the processing time and when they internalize required grammar and vocabulary. Affective factors include self consciousness, that is to say when students are under spotlight they may feel anxious and stressed which will lead them to make mistakes while speaking. Since students record their voice alone or along with their teammates, they will feel more comfortable and relaxed. Performance factors include: planning and rehearsal time, discourse control and mode. Real time speaking  demands a great deal of processing time  for speakers who are new to the language,  so students lose their fluency during speaking. On the other hand, if they intend to compensate for fluency, they might lose accuracy. When students  conduct research on the topic, write a script, plan the procedure of their podcast, practice it several times, and recreate the podcast many times, their performance will improve. In addition to that,  to make a podcast students have to analyze, and evaluate their written text, and design a plan for the podcast. This will raise awareness of students' incompetencies. In contrast to the traditional methods of teaching and learning, when all students are dependant on a teacher to acquire knowledge, podcast making is a learner-centered method. In other words, creating a desirable podcast in the team depends on the individual works of teammates. Thus it will enhance students’ critical thinking since they have to evaluate their own work to make a better-quality podcast. This method improves students’ self-regulation and autonomy because podcasting enables students to notice and understand their own language inefficiencies and so try to overcome them on their own. 

This action research adopted a mixed method approach by deploying tools such as pre/post tests, an online survey, informal interviews, experimental and control groups. The topics were based on school curriculum and included stereotypes, sport, hobbies, natural disasters and charity. Each student's pretest and posttest were audio recorded and a score was given on the scales of 1 to 6 according to a criteria card including factors such as development and coherence, pronunciation and fluency, grammar and vocabulary. Pretest/post test questions were chosen based on school curriculum topics. Overall 24 students were involved in this study, 12 of which were in the experimental group and the other 12 belonged to the control group. The research lasted 10 weeks. Each two weeks a topic was given to students, they had to include a certain grammatical structure such as present perfect, second conditional, gerund/infinitive in their speech when making the podcast and use 10 new words about the topic. They also had to use one idiom. A telegram channel was created where students uploaded their podcasts. To create the podcast a rubric was given to students which included categories such as delivery, format, main content and technical production. At the end of the experiment, students took an online survey . They had to choose from a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest and 1 the lowest score This included questions such as “how effective was making podcasts in improving grammar?” “how effective was podcasting in using passive voice in speech?”, “how efficiently did podcasting help you to learn the present perfect/conditionals/gerund & infinitive?” How effective was making podcasts in learning new vocabulary? “how did it improve pronunciation?” “how effective was it in improving critical thinking” “how effective podcasting was to notice your grammatical problems”. Open ended and Yes/no questions were in the questionnaire as well: “give one example of one grammatical structure you’ve learned to use correctly through podcasting” “did making podcasts have an effect on summative assessment marks?” “How did it improve your motivation to learn the language?” “What is your overall opinion about this experience”. At the end of the experiment a post speaking test was taken with the same questions and criteria as in the pretest to re-evaluate the students speaking skills. Both pre/post tests were audio recorded. Students were informally interviewed.

When recording audio of pre-test and post-test were compared it was noticeable that students used more complex vocabulary and grammatical structure while speaking in the posttest. Additionally, Students were more confident in expressing their ideas clearly and without long pauses. Improvement in speaking overall was especially visible among students who had previously performed poorly; During pretest they gave only simple utterances with long pauses, not being able to deliver their ideas. However, in the posttest they were more fluent, confident and could express their ideas using complex grammar such as conditionals, present perfect and with enough vocabulary to deliver meaning. For example, while two of them had scored 2 out of 6 in the pretest, they scored 4 and 5 out of 6 in the post test. However, in the control group students who performed poorly in speaking did not show any noticeable improvement. Moreover, on average all students in the experimental group received 1- 1.5 higher in the post test. 36.4% told that their speaking accuracy has improved, and 36.4% said that their fluency has enhanced. 27.3% of students stated that their vocabulary knowledge has increased. According to the survey, students believed that making podcasts improved their grammatical knowledge. They learned structures such as conditionals, perfect tense, infinitive/ gerund. Nevertheless, They stated that podcasting had a greater effect in learning new vocabulary; on average about 30 new words. They also acknowledged that their fluency and motivation have improved. All of the students mentioned that podcasting had the biggest impact on enhancing their critical thinking skills, for example noticing their own grammatical mistakes and correcting them, trying to create more interesting content about their next topic. In the interview students mentioned that they learned new idioms, and they had better fluency.

Mohamad Reza Farangi. et al., The Effects of Podcasting on EFL Upper-Intermediate Learners’ Speaking Skills. CALL-EJ, 16(2), 1-18 Abdous, M., Camarena, M.M., & Facer, B.R. (2009). MALL technology: Use of academic podcasting in the foreign language classroom. ReCALL, 21(1), 76–95 Maggie Brennan Juana and Deniz Palak. (2011) Podcasting as a Means of Improving Spanish Speaking Skills in the Foreign Language Classroom: An Action Research Study. Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher research. 13[1], 1- 18 Thornbury. S. (2005) How to teach speaking. Pearson Education ESL