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This paper addresses the issue of the use of podcasts in teaching listening skills to university students. Podcasts as new technology tools aim to help English learners to increase listening comprehension, providing them with authentic and motivating materials. The authors describe didactic characteristics and taxonomy of podcasts; prove using podcasts as one of interactive means to support learning process in developing listening skills. The aims of listening competence formation to first-year students are defined. By the end of the first year students are to acquire Level B2 according to Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. This means that they can comprehend large statements; follow the reasoning on contemporary topics; understand news, programs and films in literary language. Podcasts have three levels of difficulty and provide a transition from Level B1 to B2 and therefore can be applied to develop listening skills to first-year students. The main stages of developing students’ listening skills are specified. In the pre-listening stage students are prepared to listen to the podcast using their background knowledge. The while-listening stage is aimed at listening for gist, listening for details, making inferences and summarizing. In the post-listening stage the listeners are taken beyond the podcast content and set tasks which contribute to integrating other language skills. Examples of exercises which correspond to these three stages are provided. The process of listening applies "top-down" and "bottom-up" strategies. The "top-down" strategy focuses on listeners’ background knowledge, which activates the listener's expectation of the podcast and helps predict its content. The text is the key point in the “bottom-up” strategy, the purpose of which is to decode the information coming from the bottom. This model explains how information that comes in the form of audio signals is transformed. A balanced approach to choosing "top-down” or “bottom-up” strategy within the stages improves the process of forming competencies in listening to first-year students Author Biographies Olena Davydenko, Nizhyn Mykola Gogol State University Hrafska str., 2, Nizhyn, Ukraine, 16600 PhD, Associate professor Department of the English Language and Methods

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