CreativeU, in her “Pod People” Invade Middle School: iPods Get Kids Speaking English post makes a few interesting comments on a New York Times article about a middle-school that uses iPods in ESL classrooms.

I think the key to the program is getting the lyrics down for the students. Watching Spanish TV with Spanish subtitles and Japanese TV with Japanese subtitles helped me a lot when I was learning those languages. But without those extra clues provided by the subtitles, I got lost very easily. Once I got lost, I didn’t get anything out of watching TV.