- •Introduction
- •1. General Approaches to Reading
- •Vocabulary and sentence structure
- •2. Characteristics of English newspaper style
- •3. Reading newspaper in the foreign language classroom
- •4. Practical tasks for teaching reading newspaper articles
- •1. Vocabulary focus:
- •2. Grammar focus
- •3. Checking general understanding (True/False test)
- •4. Communication activities
- •5. Revision of active vocabulary
- •Vocabulary focus
- •3. Grammar focus
- •4. Checking general understanding (multiple-choice test)
- •5. Communication activities
- •6. Translation exercise
- •Conclusions
- •References
- •Appendix
- •Vocabulary
- •Informal discussions
Informal discussions
A collection of pictures in newspapers could be a great resource to enhance the fluency of speaking through informal discussions, discussing various interpretations on the pictures, building up dialogues and enacting them in the class, debates etc.
Groups can create different stories on a picture given with a situation. The idea that there can be many stories, facilitates the learners’ use of English freely. The folk stories too can be used to device many speaking activities for learners to use English appropriately and accurately.
The teacher may read only the part of the story and encourage the learners to use their imagination to come up with possible ending for the story.
Learners interaction can be promoted through group activities by acting out the interesting parts of the story. Narrating stories not only displays the latent talents of students but also adds fun to the language class. More interest and enthusiasm can be generated in a class competition by awarding the best raconteur.
Sort dialogues can be formed and practised based on TV programmes, the weather forecast, sports diary and classified advertisements. Students can practise the interrogative form in producing short dialogues such as
What time is news on BBC?
Where will they play the second test match?
What is the weather like on the southern coast?
Weather reports can give learners valuable opportunities to practice giving advice and warning. Father tires to convince his son not to go out on the planned trip because of bad weather.
Grammar is always looked upon as an essential but seems to be a very boring part in both teaching and learning.
Finding materials other than the textbooks is the major problem confronting any teacher in teaching grammar. The teachers exploiting the high potentials of newspapers in classroom teaching consciously attempt to avoid boredom of teaching grammar. The headlines of newspapers can be effectively used to practise tense and voice of verbs. Weather forecast reports illustrate tenses of verbs and prepositions of place and time. Predictions of zodiac signs can be used to practise future tense and modal verbs. Classified advertisements provide authentic information for learners to use comparative and superlative forms of adjectives.
The test is an integrative testing instrument that measures overall language competence. Newspapers provide the teacher with several passages on different subject matters which can be adapted to use in tests.
The teacher can do a number of activities in the langauge class using newspapers and they bring variety to the lesson and remove the shackles of routine. Using newspapers will highlight the status of English by showing the usefulness of learning English as the global language which is used in all fields of work. The newspapers therefore play a key role in motivating the learners to learn English. Through my own experiences in teaching English, I have found that newspaper is a tremendous resource to teach English effectively and the possibilities for using it in the language class endless.