English seminar on reading comprehension strategies

Introduction:

A newspaper is a publication that is issued daily or weekly and includes local and international news stories, advertisements, announcements, opinions, cartoons, sports news and television listings. (Street, 2002). Nowadays, we are living in a period of rapid technological changes in mass communications. With that being said, Newspapers are still considered one of the most powerful sources of information and knowledge bank. The newspapers offer us a lot of wide range of knowledge and entertainment and are published in various languages. In addition, The newspapers are regarded as one of the most reliable, easily available, less expensive and effective sources when it comes to sharing information and knowledge. This paper deals with Using Newspapers in education and especially on non- native English speakers and how it can help students in learning the English language.

Many researches study has been conducted and found that Using newspapers in education programs can have a lot of advantages and can make a major contribution and positive impact on pupils growth ability and interests in reading and other skills. It has been found that newspapers provide a natural source of the varieties of written English that become increasingly important to students and valuable for language study as they progress and develop proficiency in the foreign language. Newspapers are also versatile which means they contain a variety of topics such as news, fashion, sport and others that appeal to almost everybody, thereby motivating students to learn and seek farther information. In addition, Newspapers report real-life events and are solid source of authentic materials. Its beneficial for students who are non-native English speakers to read these newspapers and learn the authentic language that the locals use thus it would be very helpful for those students who may go to live or work in that target language community and enhance their speaking and writing skills. Not to mention that Language and culture are also  linked, and the newspapers of a given target community reflect its culture through the language they contain, thus when learning through the use of newspapers students learn and be aware of the different cultures other than theirs.  

Furthermore, Reading newspapers help students develop reading, critical thinking, problem solving skills and discussion. Students can examine issues that are presented in the newspapers, talk and make judgments about it and whether it relates to them or not and they listen to their classmates’ opinion thus they form some kind of group discussion and promote both communication and critical thinking skills.

Unfortunately, some teachers are at a loss when it comes to using newspapers and think that newspapers consist of language that is difficult and complex for the students to understand ,especially beginners thus they think of it as a disadvantage to use newspapers in classroom. In addition to the fact that the adaption of the activities is time consuming; is it a hard task choosing and collecting short articles, weather forecast, advertisements, headlines, etc.

The purpose of the study is to examine the ways, strategies and techniques employed for developing students language skills and improve their English language using the English newspapers. In addition to developing affection and interest towards the use of English Language and express and exchange their ideas on a wide variety of issues.  

Literature review:

Newspapers in education is a concept dating back to the 17s when the Portland Eastern Herald published the following statement: “Much has been said and written on the utility of newspaper; but one principal advantage which might be derived from these publications has been neglected; we mean that of reading them in schools, and by the children in families.” Then came the 19s with The New York Times and the Milwaukee Journal sponsor programs that are dedicated to providing newspapers and curriculum aides to the classroom teacher. Nowadays about 900 newspaper companies provide newspapers to schools in their local areas. Researchers believe that newspapers bring great contribution to the students with enhancing both reading and writing development as well as bringing awareness to other cultures and issues presented in the newspaper.  

 A research study was conducted by Akcay,Kapici and Yager, (2017) to examine the use of  newspapers and magazines as tools for developing scientific literacy and for promoting the development of critical thinking skills through questioning and other methods. The findings reveal that newspapers may indeed contribute to students' conceptual understanding and may enable them to develop their thinking skills. In addition, daily newspapers can be used as sources of information, questions, new topics, issues and problems for school science teaching and learning in general.

Another research study was conducted by Sullivan( 2002) that explored the measurable success of having newspapers in classroom nationally. The findings showed that schools that use newspapers weekly or more scored an average of 10% higher on academic achievement tests. Which means that students who use newspapers score significantly higher on standardized tests than do students who do not. Sullivan summarizes his research by stating that newspaper in Education programs make a big difference in student performance.

According to Street, (2002),  he discuss why it makes sense for social studies educators in their classrooms to use newspapers as a learning method. He also presents information about the newspaper in education program and explains how teachers can get free newspapers for their classrooms and use them to benefit the students develop different skills and notify them that newspapers appeal to students for a variety of reasons.  Street states in his article, “the newspaper is a source of up-to-date and compelling information that teachers can use to teach current events". When doing his research he conducted that newspapers actually enhance the learning of the regular curriculum and is not only an added teaching responsibility. In addition to the fact that reading newspapers help students develop reading, critical thinking and problem solving skills. He then adds by saying  that newspapers supplement the traditional textbooks serving as “living textbooks”  from which students can learn the concepts and generalizations underlying the social study program. He then concludes his research claiming that the reading levels of newspapers are generally below those of college textbooks, thus making them “a less intimidating source of information” for struggling readers . He ends his article with providing 5 strategies for social studies teachers and teachers in general that are interested in using newspapers in their classrooms.

Other researchers such as Laureta, (2009) aim to investigate and give an overall view of the advantages that the usage of various mass media in the classroom is able to provide to students and teachers including newspapers, and to show in general how print media in particular help students and teachers improve their language skills by gathering, contrasting , analyzing and classifying information and concepts. The researcher provides newspapers based pre-activities and while-activities that engage students in enjoyable activities and encourage their further reading. These activities were carried out by Sanderson, (2010) and they include; Giving the students the material before the lesson, asking them to look for vocabulary as home work, explaining  key vocabulary in the materials, summarizing the newspaper item ,Asking the students to brainstorm what they know about the newspaper item and more.  

According to Tafani, (2009) Newspapers reflect the changes in the language and help students and teachers be up-to-date with these changes as well as letting them be aware that newspapers provide a wide range of various text types and language styles that make newspapers interesting and motivating for the students to work with. Newspapers report real-life events, and this arouses students’ curiosity. Newspapers are an invaluable source of authentic materials. The more students read, the more they want to explore.

Mittal, (2014) established her research on students in India claiming that learning another language apart from the mother tongue has always been important and challenging for non natives. Thus, she believes that for effective English Learning, newspaper can work as a major tool in learning because they offer a wide variety of information in every day of life and they help develop writing and listening skills. In addition to the fact that children and/or adults who regularly read a newspaper demonstrate significant gains in reading skills. Mittal states that there are several activities that can be done with newspapers such as, Daily’s new words from daily newspaper which will give them a room for daily reading of paper. Reading aloud any particular news in classroom one by one. Writing any given news in their  own way. Writing news just by changing tense, meaning or omitting particular word and other.

Practical part:

• Participants:

The subjects are eighth graders students studying  at Barta’a junior high school, in Israel. 2 females and 2 males. They are native Arabic speakers with English as their third language.  Their Abilities are between mixed and high levels.

• The procedure of the study:

The study was carried out over 5 private tutor sessions , each private session lasted for one hour. In each lesson I taught a different strategy and did a small evaluation on each one. Through these evaluations I can decide which strategy worked better on my students and which worked less.