In this article, we will talk about how to learn English from newspaper. Newspapers have been an old source of learning languages because they contain a huge amount of content and they are cheaper to buy as well. I remember, when I was learning English, I used to buy a newspaper that could be sufficient for a month to collect new structures and vocabulary. The language of newspapers is based on a specific genre known as ‘News Register’. That means, you would see similar style of writing, i.e., there would be statements of people, some facts and figures, information about some important upcoming events or more importantly political debates. But still, a newspaper uses specific vocabulary that is used in our daily life. Moreover, it contains some vocabulary that is helpful for CSS and PMS aspirants. I would share some ways that can be used to utilize a newspaper for learning English.
Which English Newspaper is Good?
Writers from different regions of the world write for newspapers, I recommend international newspapers such as associated with BBC, CNN or Aljazeera etc. because they use standard varieties of English with modified structures based on approved grammatical categories. That means if you are particularly looking for advanced English, you need to go for English newspapers. I further recommend to read editorial section rather than news categories. Because, news contains similar robotic style but in editorial section, you would see how different writers express their feelings on different topics and you would understand what sort of feelings you have and what are the ways you can use to express those feelings. By start reading, you will be able to learn English from newspapers easily.
How to Understand English Newspaper?
Most of the people read English newspapers but they do not comprehend what the writer wants to say. There is a reason behind that, English learners read word to word while, language teachers recommend to read in phrases. For example, you need to find complete noun phrase and prepositional phrase structures and then understand accordingly. For example, who is performing an action, or who is receiving an action. ‘The ex-prime minister of the United States of America’ is a whole noun phrase and can perform as a subject or as an object. Once you start understanding little bit, you can move forward to the next step of learning English. If you start understanding newspaper language, you will easily learn Engish from newspaper.
How to Use Newspaper for Learning English?
If you are a second language learner of English, you may take help from your first language to learn it. For example, if you speak Arabic, you can buy two newspapers and use Arabic to English and English to Arabic translation techniques. In first step, you would translate from English to Urdu and in second step, you translate ‘YOUR WRITTEN TEXT’ in English. It can be Urdu to English, or Chinese to English, or Japanese to English or Hindi to English. Translating your own words will help you understand the language-context in deeper way. Secondly, while translating from English to your native language, you might have come across different English words which you store in your brain for short time and when you translate back, these English words will help you. Repeating this practice again and again will help you polish your writing structures. Another way is to use those structures in your daily life examples:
For instance, ‘the latest deal between Russia and America’ may be converted into ‘the latest conversation between John and David’ or ‘the latest agreement between my family and your boss’. The structure pattern is same but we changed the examples. This will really help you improve your grammatical structures.
#how to learn english from newspaper
Sajida Asif
Your point of view is very informative,