ONLY FOR MAESTRO

Imagine you’re in English class and your teacher starts the timer for the dreaded 15 minutes of silent reading. While reading, you find your mind wandering, disengaged from the book. You look around to find other students scrolling on their phone, sleeping, or staring blankly at the page in front of them. The teacher tells you to close your books as the timer goes off; you realize you only read about a page in 15 minutes. Similarly, it was students like these that caused Michael Godsey, a high school English teacher, to explore a better way to engage his students. He turned to podcasts and transcripts to solve this problem, in which he wrote about his experience using this in the piece, “The Value of Using Podcasts in Class,” which was published by The Atlantic. He hopes to appeal to other English teachers so that they can engage their students as well. In his class, he found that listening to podcasts, while simultaneously following along with a transcript, could encourage students to read more. Types of evidence Godsey uses in his argument are: personal experiences, comparison and contrast, narration, and other teachers’ experiences. I will evaluate two claims made in Godsey’s argument—an effective and an ineffective claim—and look at their impact on his overall argument.

Do you ever wonder what students are doing in class when the teacher is talking? Most students procrastinate and do their work last minute like listening to a podcast the class before it’s due. One could assume what another person is listening to on their headphones, focused or not. Michael Godsey’s “The Value Of Using Podcast In Class” is trying to argue that students should use podcasts as a learning tool while they are listening to their teacher. He gives readers a clear understanding of how podcasts are a great tool by using scientific evidence and effective claims. His audiences teachers and educators who are unaware of this ideology. His goal is to create an environment where students can listen to their arguments. He truly believes his podcasts are a great tool for students. Nevertheless, I will be guiding you through the text to show you how and why he uses his claims effectively to prove why podcasts should be used in class.