Website for practising listening skills

the web page that I choose is:

http://www.eslpod.com/

I like this site because I think it's very useful for teaching english and practicing listening skills in English, Apart from the audio, the site provide the transcription of the dialog.
First the dialog is heard very slow and then you hear it faster.

There are several topics like, for example: relationships, daily life, business, travel, shopping, etc. but one of the bad things is that if you want to have a guideline of each audio, you have to subscribe and pay, but anyway there are a lot of material you can use for free.

Despite this site is very good for listening activities it is not complete, let analize some important aspects to see disadvantages and drawbacks.

Interaction: I think that this site and this kind of listening activities don't allow much interaction between students.

Authentic audience: I think that this activities do encourage authentic audience, especially when the topics are of interest to the students.

Meaningful activities-student: i think that meaningful activities can be created from this recordings, trying to use topics that are interesting to the students and that are according to their level, abilities and age.

Exposure to variety of language: it doesn't give students exposure to different types of language

Right amount of time, feedback: this kind of tasks need a certain amount of time, so the teacher has to be able to consider the time for listening to the recording and also for the students to respond, feedback is also possible to be given after the listening

Motivating: this activities should be prepared taking into account the different interest of the students so i think they can be very motivated and it requires attention from the students to comprehen what is said

Student-centered: this kind of exercises can be student centered if they count with the technology to work by themselves, to manage the time and the activities.

Multimodality: i think i doesn't involve much multimodality, bacause it only emphasizes listening skills.

Comfortable enviroment: i depends on the student's ability because there may be student's that can feel frustrated when they don't understand what they hear.

Integrate skills: this page doesn't integrate the 4 skills, just the listening part

clear objective: there can be clear goals or objectives in this type of activities.

Autonomy: since the recordings are online, the students can work in an automous way, the can play the recording, go back, stop, etc, they ca also work from the computer lab or their houses if they have internet access, they can download the file and play it on the radio.

Appropiate personalities, styles, inteligence: this site doesn't give opportunity to work to all personalities, intelligences or styles, because there are some stdents thar are more viual or that need to see something written, so we have to find the way to integrate all different styles maybe with different activities to all preferences
All this said, i would say that thsi site is very helpful when you want your students to improve their listening skills, but this site fail in integrate reading, speaking and writing. Maybe a way to include speaking could be creating a group discussion about the recording.

Teacher support is needed in this kind of oral activities specially if the students don't have the transcripts of the audio, teachers can be helpful in clarifying concepts.

A way to use this page coul be

1st have your students to listen the recording and make some notes (repeat it if necessary)
2nd give them the opportunity to discuss and talk about the topic and what they understood
3rd give them the transcript of the podcast nad play the recording again.