Guests, Not Scripts: Building an English for Specific Purposes Podcast
Grace Davis, South Lake Tahoe, California, USA, EnGen – Language Upskilling Platform
Five years ago, while working as an English Language (EL) teacher for my own company, I started a podcast to help my learners feel more confident. English With Grace was built around the topics my learners asked about most, such as tips for clearer pronunciation, how to gain a real handle on idioms, and lowering anxiety before an IELTS or TOEFL exam. Nothing about that initial premise screamed “English for Specific Purposes,” but my students’ feedback has guided the whole direction of the show to fit their specific needs. When my students tell me which episodes they like most or which topics they wish there were more of, it's almost never the general fluency episodes they name. It's the episodes where a guest walks listeners through something specific they have to do using the English language, like how to navigate a job interview or translate ten years of work experience into college credit. This feedback led me to plan more episodes focusing on those desired skills my students were interested in.
While developing the podcast, I was hired as the Learning Experience Manager at EnGen, an online English learning platform that equips English learners with both language skills and workplace expectations. In this role, I currently lead an international team of over 20 EL instructors. As a result of this work, most of my week is spent thinking about how English can be used as a tool rather than a set of rules and exceptions to memorize. While considering the practicality of EnGen content, my podcast idea evolved into an unplanned extension of that same pursuit: exploring real-life skills one guest conversation at a time.
Rather than invite you to simply listen, I'm inviting you to help shape where the podcast goes next. For the coming year, I'm shifting English With Grace to align more closely with my students' needs and interests, moving from general-fluency content toward English for specific purposes, one occupation at a time. Here's how you can get involved.
Interviews as Authentic Needs Analysis
Every episode of my podcast is a conversation with a guest who has real expertise in the domain that episode covers. For example, an episode with Mike Oppenheim, an English Language teacher who specializes in idioms and metaphors; another episode with Lenora Edwards, a speech-language pathologist on pronunciation and accent; or an episode with a guest speaking on interviews and resumes, and many more. Guests are asked questions related to their expertise, bringing the real register, the real jargon, the real assumptions of their field. My job in the conversation is to keep interrupting. “Say that without the acronym,” “What would you actually tell someone to say in that moment?” “Can you explain that idiom for my listeners?”
That back-and-forth of a natural conversation does something a scripted lesson cannot. Podcasts surface the language demands of a domain in real time, in front of an audience, as content. Familiarized conversation brings value researchers have pointed to in podcast-style content more broadly. Beyond simple listening practice, podcasts expose learners to real, authentic language content and support building the strategic, autonomous study habits learners need to keep progressing outside of class (McBride, 2009), and the listening gains are not just theoretical: multiple studies of EFL learners using podcast tasks outside class have found measurable improvement in listening comprehension (Faramarzi, Tabrizi, & Chalak, 2019; Widodo & Gunawan, 2019).
What Listeners Actually Respond To
The clearest example of an episode that students bring up the most is the episode “Unlocking the Value of Credit for Prior Learning” with Frank Gerdeman. Frank is the director of ADVANCE, an adult education consortium in South Lake Tahoe, California. This episode delves into how work, military, and life experience can convert into college credit. Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) is a niche topic, but it hands adult learners and working students a concrete pathway to convey their past experiences to progress toward their next professional goals. In this episode, Frank details the CPL process, introduces relevant vocabulary, and provides an example for describing experiences using terms an admissions officer would recognize.
Additional interview centered episodes include “Top Job Interview Questions and How to Answer Them with Confidence,“ in which I speak with job search expert Alex Muff. Alex and I break down the most common interview questions and how to answer them without freezing. Despite being over an hour long this episode is still one my EnGen students name most often when I ask what they'd like to see more of. Nobody asked for a long episode. They named it because the content mapped out something that may be their next step or an option they didn't know existed.
Although my students enjoy the general fluency episodes, many learners I work with at EnGen and the EL learners many other communities serve are learning English for specific purposes or require language skills tailored to specific careers. The episodes tied to expanding their knowledge related to those specific purposes are the ones that end up mattering most and are the ones I hear about most from my students.
I didn't initially intend to design the show around specific purposes, but rather my audience pointed it out to me, and I followed their interests. This is consistent with existing research on learner engagement. Learners are more likely to stay engaged when they can see their effort returning concrete outcomes and when what they're practicing is tied to something they can picture themselves needing (Pittaway, 2004), meaning a general lesson on idioms invites less investment than an episode on how to answer “tell me about a weakness,” which asks learners to invest time in preparing for their next job interview.
The Future of English With Grace & Call For Guests
This coming year, I'm taking that pattern and building around it directly. One skill a teacher must develop is listening to students and pivoting after realizing what works. I'm listening to my students and plan to integrate these specific purposes more intentionally. English With Grace is shifting toward a sustained focus on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP), moving beyond general fluency content into episodes built around the real vocabulary, tasks, and expectations of specific occupations. The model is a subject-matter-expert interview: sitting down with someone doing a specific job and walking through the actual questions, terminology, and scenarios a learner entering that field needs to know, trade by trade, profession by profession. I am actively looking for guests, subject-matter experts in specific trades, and professions willing to walk through the real terminology and expectations of their field. ESP and EOP practitioners already work with occupation-specific English and want to bring that expertise to a wider audience.
If you are interested or know someone who may be interested, I'd love to have the conversation! Reach out to me at [email protected]. This is also simply an invitation to listen to English With Grace on your favorite podcast app or recommend it to your students. If you work with learners preparing for interviews, job searches, or workplace English more broadly, there's a good chance an upcoming episode is built to support your students through navigating those challenges.
References
Faramarzi, S., Tabrizi, H. H., & Chalak, A. (2019). The effect of vodcasting tasks on EFL listening comprehension progress in an online program. International Journal of Instruction, 12(1), 1263–1280.
McBride, K. (2009). Podcasts and second language learning. In L. B. Abraham & L. Williams (Eds.), Electronic discourse in language learning and language teaching (pp. 153–167). John Benjamins.
Pittaway, D. S. (2004). Investment and second language acquisition. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies: An International Journal, 1(4), 203–218.
Widodo, M. R., & Gunawan, A. (2019). Investigating the effect of using podcast on students' listening comprehension. Lingua, 15(2), 35–42
Grace Davis is the Learning Experience Manager at EnGen, an online English language learning platform. She hosts the podcast English With Grace, available wherever you get your podcasts, and serves as an English in Occupational Settings (EOS) Representative on the ESPIS Steering Committee and as the Social Services Representative on the board of the South Shore Transportation Management Association (SSTMA) in South Lake Tahoe, CA.