ABSTRACT
Dynamic teaching puts an emphasis on the active involvement of students in language learning. One of the ways to incorporate dynamic teaching into the classroom experience is to use technology. The majority of current students are so-called digital natives: they navigate through pages, apps, and services as easily as they do other habitual daily activities. Focusing on their favorite digital genres and formats can effectively motivate students to use the language. One of the digital genres that can target a few pedagogical aims simultaneously is podcasting. By the third year of Russian, students have a solid basis in the language. Advanced level courses are more effective and interesting to students when approached as a content-driven course with a project as the outcome. During their work on the project, students learn necessary advanced grammar and develop vocabulary by using content that aids them in building cross-cultural and social skills in context. Students also want to fine-tune their phonetics; therefore, the audio format of their final assessment – podcasting – is very engaging, especially when focusing the content on societal issues in the US and Russia. This chapter describes how students create a series of podcasts in Russian and learn through doing research on similarities and differences of some social issues in the US and Russia.
