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Planning Tools

The ABC of Learning Priorities

One effect of perceiving the audience as Listener-learner is that it establishes priorities for learning. A critical implication of the Listener-learner paradigm for health radio producers is how we use radio in the learning process. Radio is an oral medium, therefore …

… communication stimuli …	(verbal or non-verbal signs which have meaning in a given context and which generate meaning either intentionally or unintentionally)
… communication content …	(what is said)
… and communication structure and treatment …	(the way it is said through the assembling and constructing of messages appropriate to the context: for whom?, when?, where? and for what purpose?)

… must be oral-centric (for the ear) and not visual-centric (in literary forms for the eye).

We can define the ABC of Learning Priorities as:

• The organisation of communicational stimuli that frame learning and oral discourse in ways specific to the radio medium, Listener-learner communication and learning systems, and that structure the movement from hearing to listener-learning.

Radio has sometimes been described as wallpaper or background. If so, the ABC of Learning Priorities frame the picture (the health-promoting radio program), setting it apart from the wallpaper.

The ABC of Learning Priorities