ALT 8: ALBA ANSÓ-MILLÁN LOOKS INTO THE DISCOURSE OF SCIENCE PODCASTS AND THEIR POTENTIAL FOR EFL

Alongside team members, Alba Ansó-Millán participated in the 8th edition of Applied Linguistics Today. The congress revolved around “Modern approaches to old and new challenges” in the field and was hosted at the Faculty of Philology (Belgrade). It was celebrated in late May 2025, from the 23rd to the 25th.

She delivered a paper entitled “Analysing the discourse of science podcasts and their use in the EFL classroom”, in which she reported on the findings from a corpus-based discursive analysis of strategies aimed at mitigating the complexity of scientific knowledge to broad digital audiences. To conclude, she also suggested possible ways of leveraging science podcasts in the L2 English classroom by introducing the idea for the teaching proposal which she is currently elaborating.

You can read her abstract below:

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Analysing the discourse of science podcasts and their use in the EFL classroom

The idea of research in an ivory tower is nowadays becoming a thing of the past (Bertemes et al., 2024), as science popularisation is increasingly finding new outlets online (Scotto di Carlo, 2014). In an era of information overload, our current society values attention as a “scarce commodity” (Hyland, 2023, p. 1). Against this background, and within the organic ecology of emerging dissemination practices, science podcasts are gaining momentum to cater to the needs of “the plugged-in smartphone generation” (Newman, 2019, p. 59). However, little research has yet been carried out into podcasts as a science dissemination practice and their potential for contemporary EFL teaching (Egorova, 2018; Ye, 2021; Liu & Jiang, 2024; Vuković-Stamatović & Čarapić, 2024).
This paper seeks to present an analysis of explanatory and engaging strategies utilised in science podcasts and their lexico-grammatical realisation. Based on the results, it then sets out to explore the use of this dissemination practice in the EFL classroom to raise rhetorical and linguistic awareness and foster scientific literacy. To do so, the analysis is undertaken in a corpus consisting of 8 episodes related to health and sustainability (SDG3 and SDG13) from two podcast channels: BBC Inside Science and Science Friday. Explanatory and engagement strategies leveraged by science podcasts are unpacked by drawing on previous research taxonomies (Carter-Thomas & Rowley-Jolivet, 2020; Bondi & Cacchiani 2021; Lorés, 2023; Mur-Dueñas, 2024). For their realisation, I will draw on Hyland’s (2005) interactional framework of metadiscourse. Results will look into the frequency of use and linguistic instantiation of specific explanatory strategies (e.g. elaboration, explicitation, analogy) and engagement strategies (e.g. rhetorical questions, directives, audience mentions). From the analysis, task-based proposals for the EFL classroom will be made. Ultimately, this study will shed some light on science podcast discourse and their pedagogic exploitation to develop students’ scientific and linguistic literacies.

References

Bertemes, Jean-Paul, Haan, Serge, & Hans, Dirk. (2024). 50 essentials on Science Communication. De Gruyter.
Bondi, Marina, & Cacchiani, Silvia. (2021). Knowledge communication and knowledge dissemination in a digital world. Journal of Pragmatics, 186, 117-123.
Carter-Thomas, Shirley, & Rowley-Jolivet, Elizabeth. (2020). Three minute thesis presentations: Recontextualisation strategies in doctoral research. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 48, 100897.
Egorova, Liudmila A. (2018). Popular science discourse development in the cyberspace. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 9(5), 79-83. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.9n.5p.79
Hyland, Ken. (2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse, Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173-191.
Hyland, Ken. (2023). Academic publishing and the attention economy. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 64, 101253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2023.101253
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Vuković-Stamatović, Milica, & Dragana Čarapić. (2024). Vocabulary profile, lexical density and speech rate in science podcasts: How appropriate are science podcasts for EAP and ESP listening? Ibérica, 47, 201-226. https://doi.org/10.17398/2340-2784.47.201
Ye, Yunping. (2021). From abstracts to “60-second science” podcasts: Reformulation of scientific discourse. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 53, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2021.101025