In The News

Chan Wanduragala

Osaka Jogakuin Junior College

<chanw@wilmina.ac.jp>

QUICK GUIDE

Key Words:Fluency, vocabulary building, current events
Learner English Level: False beginner to advanced
Learner Maturity Level: Junior college, university
Preparation Time: 15 to 30 minutes
Activity Time: 15 to 30 minutes (depending on class size)
Materials: Recent newspapers (optional)

The media is an invaluable resource for language learning. Current news stories are interesting, informative, and often exciting, especially for a news fanatic like myself. At Osaka Jogakuin, where I presently teach, news is an important and integral part of the second-year curriculum with a course devoted to current events. This activity enables students to communicate meaningfully about timely news events. Preparation time before class is negligible, requiring students merely to listen to the news on TV or skim the newspaper either in English or Japanese. These days, many students also have access to news through their mobile telephones.

The primary objectives of this activity are to develop fluency, build vocabulary, and increase students' knowledge of current affairs for further discussion and debate.

Procedure

• Step 1: Students work in pairs or groups of three and make a list of recent news stories.
• Step 2: Each pair/group selects one story from their list to present to the class.
• Step 3: The students prepare to present the story, obtaining as much information as possible from their partner or group members. As a starting point, they are directed to work on the who, what, why, when, and how questions. Here is an example of a dialog that was created:
  

  A: Let's do the China Olympics story.
  B: That is your story.
  C: OK. About Olympic bid for 2008. Yes. China will get Olympic games in 2008.
  A: What is bid?
  B: Choose I think.
  A: OK. Then when did it happen?
  C: It was on Saturday NHK news so it was last week. Chinese people were so happy and many people dancing in Beijing streets. And many fireworks.
  A: OK, so who decided China?
  C: Olympic organization I think.

  While students are preparing, the teacher should circulate and help with difficult vocabulary. If students are unable to come up with news stories by themselves, the teacher can offer suggestions, and perhaps a few facts to help them along. It has proved useful to take in the day's newspaper and students can also be encouraged to bring in copies. They should not, however, spend too much time on directly quoting or translating the newspaper.
• Step 4: The student pairs or groups take turns presenting the news story to the class. The students in the audience must think of questions to ask the presenters. The teacher should also think of some questions as well as take notes of new or interesting vocabulary, and points for error correction if necessary.

Presentation options

• Option 1
  One student from the presenting pair/group relates as much of the news story as possible, while the other members add any information that may have been omitted.
• Option 2
  Students from the pair or group take turns saying one sentence of the news story, until they run out of information.
• Option 3
  At the beginner level, students may not be able to speak in complete sentences. If this is the case, you could choose just one story from the class and write it up on the board as students provide the facts. Once you have the whole story written up on the board, students can take turns reading the story aloud, sentence by sentence. Gradually erase parts of the sentences and ask students to repeat the sentences, adding the missing words. Eventually students are left with only one keyword per sentence.
• Option 4
  At intermediate to advanced levels, the groups could roleplay a news station such as NHK or CNN. One student could play the part of the anchorperson, and the others could be reporters reporting live from various locations.

Follow-up activities

In addition to Q/A sessions, vocabulary building is a useful follow-up activity. Students should be encouraged to guess word meanings from context. Synonyms, antonyms, and different word forms can be elicited, given, and explained.