Podcasts — Teacher's Guide

The student selects an episode on Podcasts, presses play, and listens to two hosts speak Norwegian about a single topic for six to nine minutes. Below the player, the entire conversation is available as text, allowing the student to listen, read along, or do both. Each episode also includes exercises.

How it works

The overview displays the episodes as cards with their level, topic, and duration in minutes. Above the cards, you will find All levels, All topics, and the search bar Search podcasts. Your selections are added to the URL, so a filtered view can be copied and shared—for example, only the A2 episodes.

Inside an episode, the player features a play button, two skip buttons—10 seconds back and 10 seconds forward—and a speed indicator that starts at 1.0x. The speed can be decreased to 0.5 and increased up to 2.0, and the timeline is clickable. On a computer, the spacebar toggles play/pause, and the arrow keys skip ten seconds in either direction, allowing the student to replay a section without taking their eyes off the text.

Below the player is the transcript. Rather than a script with names preceding each line, the conversation is rewritten into coherent paragraphs under headings such as "Uncultivated and cultivated land" or "Brief summary," some accompanied by an image. The text does not scroll automatically with the audio, so the student navigates independently using the headings and skip buttons.

At the bottom is the Vocabulary list: the challenging words from the episode, each with an explanation in simple Norwegian and a link to the Dictionary. The same words are highlighted within the text. If the student is logged in, she can also click on any word in the transcript to see a translation into her native language, hear its pronunciation, and access the dictionary entry.

The exercises

Each episode includes around eight exercises located in two places. Before you listen appears above the transcript—a warm-up activity where the student matches words from the episode with their definitions. The remaining exercises are located below the vocabulary list under the heading Exercises.

Each exercise is presented as a row that the student clicks to open. Only one is open at a time, and once answered, the next one opens automatically. A completed row retains its checkmark and score, allowing a returning student to see what she did last—and what her answers were.

There are seven types of exercises:

• Listen closely — a question about a specific part of the episode, featuring a Listen from 2:50 button that jumps directly to that timestamp in the audio.
• Choose the correct answer and True or false — testing comprehension of what was just heard.
• Put in the correct order — arranging key points from the episode in the sequence they were mentioned.
• Fill in the word — a sentence from the transcript with one missing word.
• Words from the episode — matching a word to its definition; this serves as the warm-up.
• Write a response — writing a few sentences in her own words, assessed by Språki on content rather than spelling.

Grading takes place on the server, not in the browser. This means the answer key is not embedded in the page, responses are saved, and the student’s work counts toward her Progress. The transcript is never locked behind the exercises: anyone who simply wants to read can do so.

The exercises require a login. The episode, audio, and transcript are accessible to everyone, but without an account, the student can only see that the exercises exist. This is intentional—responses need a place to be saved.

Who it is for

The currently published content includes 17 episodes across levels A1, A2, and B1, with an emphasis on A2 and B1. The topics are practical: visiting the doctor, kindergarten, employment contracts and wages, the tax return, waste sorting, the right to roam, and the 17th of May (Constitution Day).

Consider the level indicator more as a reading level than a listening level. An A2 episode is written using A2 vocabulary, but it proceeds at a normal conversational pace, and six minutes of continuous speech is a lot. A student who feels confident at the level below can manage the episode with the text in front of her. At the A1 level, the episodes work best as reading practice with accompanying audio, rather than pure listening practice.

Use Listening when you need short texts graded starting from A0, complete with images for the simplest levels. Språki Chat episodes are longer and move at a natural pace. Both options include exercises that are graded and tracked, so the choice comes down to how long and challenging the text should be—not whether activities are available to complete.

Suggestions for working with the podcasts

1. Assign the episode as audio-only homework. Send the link to one episode, ask the students to listen to it twice without the text, and begin the next lesson by discussing what they understood.
2. Have them complete Before you listen prior to pressing play. Learning six words in advance significantly changes how much they understand during the first few minutes.
3. Reverse the order for weaker students. Let them read the transcript first and review the Vocabulary list together as a class, then play the audio afterward. This allows them to recognize the words rather than scramble to decipher them.
4. Use the Listen closely exercises to guide targeted re-listening. The button skips to the exact section the question refers to, helping the student practice focused listening rather than replaying the entire audio.
5. Differentiate within the same episode using speed and text: some students listen at 1.0x without text, while others listen at 0.7x with the text open. Everyone will have heard the same content when you discuss it afterward.
6. Use Write a response as a springboard for classroom discussions. It is the only exercise that does not have a single correct answer.
7. Turn the vocabulary list into the students' own active vocabulary. Words from a single episode can easily become a list in Vocabulary lists, which they can then review in Practice.
8. Use the episode as a starting point for further activities. Topics like visiting the doctor or understanding an employment contract make natural prompts for a roleplay in Conversation or a short text in Writing.

Good to know

• Time counts toward listening practice. The minutes a logged-in student spends on an episode are added to the listening tracker in Progress alongside the Listening module.
• Pages are public; exercises are not. An episode link works without logging in, making it easy to include in a lesson plan or display on a large screen. Logging in is required for the exercises and for the instant translation feature when clicking on a word.
• Answers can be retried. A student can attempt an exercise as many times as she likes; only the best attempt is saved.
• The content is AI-generated. The page states this explicitly above the transcript: "Voices, text, and images in Språki Chat are generated using artificial intelligence. The content may contain errors." Verify facts, numbers, and deadlines against primary sources if using an episode as an absolute reference.
• The podcasts are available in Norwegian. Students who have selected a different target language will see a notification explaining this instead of an inaccessible library.

See also

• Listening — short, graded listening texts with exercises and scores.
• Dictionary — where words from the text can be looked up.
• How students practice listening — an overview of the listening interfaces in Språki.