Job Discussion Forums

[kowlooner]

Hi all,

I'm interested in hearing what others do with newspaper articles in the classroom. What sort of questions do you ask and activities do you do to encourage discussion or dialog generation? Assume adult students, but ideas for teenage groups are also welcome.

You may wish to provide additional details: types of articles, length, time used in class, ages, even language used. Whatever you feel necessary in explaining your method.

I'll start. I'm in Hong Kong, and sometimes I will cut out and laminate somewhat short articles from local Chinese newspapers. They tend to be about small crimes or general human interest pieces. Nothing terribly heavy.

Each student (these are small classes of 3 to 5) gets a different article. Whichever student goes first says what the story is about but without giving away the content ("It's about a boy" etc.). The other students must ask questions to get enough details from the article to be able to retell the story. I use Chinese articles because they can quickly scan and get the story without using too much reading time (just a minute or so) so that most of the class time can be used for their English Q&A practice.

This seems to work better with adults at intermediate levels and above. By the way, I do read Chinese so I do know what stories I'm selecting so I can avoid overly gory or inappropriate articles.

The response I have had has generally been quite positive (with adults). It provides them with a topic, offers good Q&A practice, helps in developing vocabulary, and often gives them something to discuss after the Q&A.

Okay, your turn! Again, how do you use news articles (or magazine articles, or short stories, or your own written creations) to generate discussion? Do you use them to create role-play scenarios, and if so what kind? What types of leading questions do you ask?

Thanks! I'm looking forward to hearing your various approaches!

[dajiang]

Hiya,

well I've used some short articles from the Beijing Today magazine a few times. These were short news items, all on one page, and all on different topics. So I put the topics of all these articles on the board and groups of three could choose one of them. (I mostly taught classes of about 12/15 ss)

Then each group'd go over the article, look up difficult words, and prepare a short presentation on it. One student would paraphrase the article in his/her own words, another would give an opinion on the article and then the 3rd would answer any questions coming from the rest of the class.

Another great source for stimulating discussion is the 'oddly enough' section in Yahoo news. Every now and then I'll check it, and save the more appropriate articles for classroom use. The language sometimes has to be adapted to suit lower levels, but the topics are always interesting.

Then of course the classifieds in papers are good materials.
Trying to decipher what they're about, perhaps cutting them out and putting them under the right headers.

Regards,
Dajiang

[Alex42]

I always go to http://guardian.co.uk and find something topical and/or cultural (the Pope, foxhunting ban, etc). Then I edit the article down to a more manageable length if necessary.* Quite often I find two articles with opposing views on a subject, which is great for stimulating discussion.


*being sure to also remove any words whose meanings I don�t fully understand.

[vochinch]

Have you ever been to the Breaking News English web site? It has a new article every day which is adapted into a ready-to-print lesson plan. Each lesson includes a warm up, pre-reading ideas, while-reading activities, post-reading ideas, and homework section. You can even print them out in doc or pdf format.
I have used these articles many times in my adult ESL classes here in Chicago, and the students really like them. I usually go through and edit some of the discussion questions or the story itself to more closely match the level I happen to be teaching that day. Also, not all of the activities are useful, so I usually only get through a few of them before the 90-minute lesson ends.

If interested, here is the link:

http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/

This web site is especially useful if you are asked to substitute at the last minute. Enjoy!

[been_there]

You can also to a newspaper treasure hunt:

Divide students into groups and give each group a list of things they have to find in the newspaper:
1. a picture of a famous singer
2. a word with two "N"'s in it
3. a story about someone who died
4. the name of a country in Africa
5. a happy story

etc.

they have to cut the word/picture out and paste it on either a big piece of paper or the back of the treasure hunt list. You can give different point values to the items, or just make the winners whichever group finishes first.

.

[kowlooner]

Hi all,

Thanks for your thoughts! Some great ideas there. I'd done some stuff with the Oddly Enough news before (not a bad source at all!). I like DJ's putting article topics on the board and letting students choose which few to do. The splitting up of responsibility (one to paraphrase, one to give an opinion, one to answer questions from other students) looks like a good practice too.

BT's "treasure hunt" looks interesting too, though I have to ask whether it can lead to one student doing all the work while the other just sits around. If so, how do you deal with that?

I hadn't seen the Breaking News English site before! Thanks for a great heads-up on that one! Not only is it good for quick and dirty lessons (in a rush, not enough time to prepare something new) but the structure of his lessons is easy enough to apply to local community news stories.

Now again something for me to share. I'm pretty sure you've been to the site before, but in case not, onestopenglish offers weekly lessons based on Guardian articles. So Alex, since you're already using the Guardian, perhaps you could find some additional inspiration there! Have to register, but it's free.