TeachingEnglish

Topical news stories are a great source of teaching material. This article presents different ways to exploit news reports in the classroom and focuses on raising the level of involvement and participation that the students have in the lesson.

• Selection criteria

• Before reading

• First reading

• Second reading

• Language focus

• Follow up

• Sources

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Selection criteria
It is important that you choose your news article wisely. You should consider the following criteria.

• Appropriacy of topic
  Will your students be interested in the topic? Will it be upsetting for some students? Is it suitable for the age group?

• Length
  Be careful to avoid articles that are particularly long. Reading a news report in a second language is demanding, and if the article is too long it will discourage students. If the news report is lengthy, do not be afraid of editing. The style of news articles often means that entire paragraphs can be omitted without affecting the overall sense of the piece.

• Language content
  Besides the general interest in the topic, this may well be the most important selection criteria. Does the article contain a useful lexical set (crime, money)? Are there some good grammar exponents (past perfect, reported speech) or interesting syntax and sentence style? These will provide the basis of your language work on the text, how can the language be exploited?

• Generative?
  Can you think of a good way to follow up the basic textual work? Does the topic lend itself to discussion or role play? Can you practise the language further?

• Task suitability
  When working with authentic material there are issues concerning the authenticity of the tasks. The most authentic task is for students to simply read the article. Although we usually look to exploit the text a little more in the classroom, it is important to keep tasks as realistic as possible.

Before reading
There are many things to do before students begin reading to generate interest, build confidence and to facilitate comprehension.

Introduction exercises
These are used to raise awareness of the topic, activate knowledge and current language. The following activities could be used.

• Discussion questionnaire
  • Students discuss questions related to the topic

• Quiz
  • This can test their knowledge of the topic or people/places featured in the article

• Pictures
  • Describing or discussing pictures that relate to the topic

Pre-reading Activities
These are activities that are directly related to the text, rather than the topic in general

• Students predict the story from the headline
  • The students may need dictionaries and you should be careful of puns and double meanings. Students should work in pairs, and feed back ideas to the board/teacher.

• Students predict the story from a picture accompanying the article

• Predict vocabulary
  • Once students know the topic of the article, they predict words that they think they will read. Again, feed back these predictions to the board. As students read, they should tick the words they find. Which pair predicted the most words?

• Vocabulary selection/sort
  
  • In this activity, the students are given a group of words, some of which are from the article, others are not. The students decide which ones are from the article. Obviously, they need to know the topic of the article.

• Sentence selection
  • This is the same as vocabulary selection, but students sort sentences instead.

First reading
The first reading activities should avoid a large number of detailed questions. By the end of the reading the students should be able to give a brief summary of what the article is about, what the main points are.

• Check pre-reading ideas (story/vocabulary prediction)

• Ask one or two questions for general understanding
  • These questions should focus on the main point of the article

• Put the text in order
  • Students are given the article which has been cut into sections. Working with a partner they have to reassemble the article. Be sure to make sensible cuts, so that either the sense of the piece or the language syntax can be used to put the story in order. News texts can often be put in several possible orders, so be careful - utilise dependent prepositions, pronouns and clauses.

• Gap fill
  • Remove lexis or clauses from the text. Students try to put the words in the correct places

Second reading
The second reading should lead to a detailed understanding of the article.

• Ask more detailed comprehension questions
  • True or false
  • Choose the best answer, a, b or c
  • Which paragraph says…
  • What do these numbers refer to?
  • What do these people think?

• Information Transfer
  • Students complete a table or chart with information from the article

• Make questions
  • Students read the article and write comprehension questions for other students to answer. This is best done in pairs.

Language focus
This is the time to exploit the article for its language content. News articles are rich sources of vocabulary, and also provide good grammar exponents.  

Vocabulary

• Lexical sets
  • An article may provide vocabulary associated with particular topics - money, crime, politics. Students either search the article for members of a given lexical set, or you could provide them with a sorting activity which uses words from the text.

• Deducing meaning from context
  • This is a key skill for students to develop. Either ask students to give definitions of certain words or you could give them choices or a matching exercise (match the word to a definition) students can then check their ideas with a dictionary (if there is time)

• Student 'News Language Notebooks'
  • News articles often use vocabulary that may be referred to as journalese, and the students' understanding of this register needs to be developed.

Grammar
Often a news article provides good examples of grammar - for example the past perfect. In this case, asking students to put particular events in chronological order leads to further work on this verb form.

Sentence structure/style
Draw students attention to well-crafted sentences, or ask them to find sentences that they think are good or interesting examples.

Follow up
There are lots of opportunities to extend the work done on the article, and to use a different skill such as speaking or writing. This gives students a chance to use the language they have learnt from the text.

• Role play based on text
  • e.g. an interview with a protagonist from the story

• Discussion of topic/ideas/argument of the text

• Design something / task
  • e.g. following an article on a new housing initiative, students plan a dream house

• Research project
  • e.g. following an article about Homelessness in UK, what is the situation in the students' own country

• Writing
  • e.g. the next day's story, someone involved in the news event writing to a friend

• Debate

• Comparison activities
  • A topical story will appear in several different places, and comparing how different sources deal with the news event can be very revealing. This could focus on content/style/critical analysis of reporters' attitudes/politics
    • A comparison with the same subject in the students' own press
    • A comparison with radio or TV reports on the same event
    • A comparison between different newspapers e.g. a quality paper and a popular paper.

Sources

• Newspapers and current affairs magazines
  • English language newspapers are available worldwide. Most papers also provide an online service

• Internet
  • BBC Learning English www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/index.shtml
    
    • This site has three new news stories a week of different types - General news, business news and music news. The stories are provided with glossaries and you can listen to the news story as well - this is very helpful if the language is not familiar to you.
  • This web site
    • Lesson plans with news articles are available in the download section

• Radio
  • The BBC World Service
    • www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/ has schedule and frequency listings

• TV
  • BBC World
  • Satellite TV