This article aims to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of using news for teaching materials in EFL lessons. It also proposes some hints for making the most of its advantages and for dealing with its disadvantages. The data is based on the findings of a questionnaire conducted with 104 non-English major university students in 1997.

Newspaper In Education (NIE) in Japan:

The topic of NIE in Japan first appeared in a newspaper in 1989. It started as an experiment in 3 schools (elementary and middle schools) in Tokyo. In 1997, there were about 300. NIE in Japan is practiced in English lessons and other subjects. Newspapers written in Japanese are usually used in lessons other than English.

Why did NIE spread so widely? The answer can be found in feedback from the schools where NIE was practiced. This indicated learners can:

improve their reading comprehension;
promote self-study;
listen more intently to other people’s views and opinions;
express their own views and opinions;
increase their interest in what is going on in society and the world, broaden their point of view, and
have more opportunities to communicate about news and related matters at home and at school.

In addition, my own view is that teachers, through giving lessons using news, can nurture learners’ ability to think about good and bad content in the news, and how to convey it to the readers/listeners (i.e. media literacy).

News as Teaching Materials

Is the news a good resource for teaching materials in EFL lessons? Yes: it is authentic, up-to-date, available on a daily basis, and full of variety. Furthermore, it can offer students opportunities for developing a global worldview.

News on TV is already visual, so it automatically provides supplementary non-verbal information (i.e. background knowledge) for viewers. Newspapers have photographs that provide some background knowledge for readers. In addition, they can provide students with practice in the four skills and some additional learning, that is, an awareness of global issues. Grundy (1993) summarizes the arguments for using media succinctly.

Theoretical and Practical Considerations in Overcoming Inherent Difficulty

The English currently used in news is thought to be difficult, compared with English used in textbooks edited for EFL learners. In my questionnaire conducted before the lessons, about 90% of the students thought such English is difficult. In the questionnaire after the lessons, the rate dropped to 40%: they answered it was difficult but worth learning. The number of students who thought it is necessary to learn current English was as high as 84%.

Students usually face difficulties with a) vocabulary, b) written style/structure of an article, and c) unfamiliarity with the content/topic. Learners’ language level and interest are other problems. However, the difficulty in understanding current English is mainly due to readers’ lack of schematic applications. Therefore, language teachers should take both theoretical and practical considerations into account. Language teachers should keep in mind: a) input theory (Ellis: 1986; Krashen: 1987, Skehan: 1989, et al.); b) learners’ psychology (Hatch:1983, Moskowitz:1978, Stevick:1986, et al.); c) schema theory (Carrell and Eisterhold:1988; Kitao et al:1989); d) and a range of other considerations, such as the appropriateness of materials, levels and activities; learners’ awareness of global issues; and learners’ intuitive heuristics. (Grundy:1993; Kumaravadivelu: 1993; Poel, Yoshida, Azuma et al: 1998).

Practical Hints On How To Deal With News Materials In EFL Lessons

The following suggestions and activities are aimed at lowering learners’ anxiety and improving their acquaintance with news.

Vocabulary/grammar: Journalism has its own jargon and style. There is also a specific grammar for journalism, such as the use of the present instead of the past tense. Students gradually pick these up; but it might be better to teach specific grammar and vocabulary items in introductory lessons at earlier stages in the whole lesson series.

Speed/Length The speed at which English is spoken is one of the biggest problems in understanding the content for EFL learners. If it is too fast, students cannot understand, and some may give up. It is better to start with short news segments, such as weather forecasts, as an initial listening exercise for the students to get used to the speed at which the news is read. It is also good to learn sound reduction and liaison when the language is spoken.

In order to decide on the length and/or volume of news, we should pay attention to comprehensible input. It varies according to the learners’ language level and the detail of the content. For video materials, the questionnaire suggests that 12 minutes was appropriate. The story is divided into small portions, say, 3-4 minutes for each portion. The results show this to be the maximum time for learner concentration.

Format/Style The difficulty in understanding the contents of news lies in learners’ insufficient schema(ta) for understanding. Journalistic stories follow numerous formats, but one is fundamental: the "inverted pyramid". It is said that 90% of news follows this format. The summary lead is widely used on radio and TV. The structure of an article in a newspaper is visually clear. It is a top-down schema: the headline comes at the top, the lead next, and then the body.

There is a similar pattern in broadcasting. A comparison of the journalism format with a story or novel is recommended to clearly learn its structure. A short story or a novel follows the format of an upright pyramid. The base comes at the bottom. Teachers should tell students who are used to reading or listening to tales, stories and novels to have different approaches to journalistic stories written in a different style.

Activating Lessons

The following are some other examples for utilizing a variety of activities and activating learner participation.

1. Lowering learners’ affective filter and soliciting their active participation in activities
After listening to weather forecasts, a task of listening to a piece of news independently is effective. This activity aims a) to get rid of students’ fear of listening to news, and b) to increase students’ active participation in the classroom activities. The task for students is to collect news. They record 2-3 minutes of news on tape either from radio or television, or another source. They listen to, dictate and transcribe it and add some exercises (cloze type and/or questions). One or two students at a time present their news to the class. I assist them in completing their script, or give them some advice.

On the day of the presentation, they begin their presentation by stating their reason for their news choice. The typical reasons they give are that the news is easy to listen to and the members of the class will be interested in it. The first presentation is usually shorter, but when students get used to a broadcasting news style, they choose news of longer content.

In the questionnaire, the students’ reaction to the task of this news presentation was: "like it" 77%, "like and don’t like it" 19%, "don’t like it" 3%. The reasons for the positive reaction to the presentation were: a) good for improving their English (language ability, increase of interest and confidence and satisfaction in doing something important/ rewarding) 51%, b) the news itself (interest in the choice of news by classmates and interest in what is going on in the world) 20%, c) chance of presentation 6%. On the other hand, the negative reaction was due to errors in script/dislike of the presentation: 3%.

The students chose domestic news (54%) and international news (45%) for the news topics. For domestic news the top three were sports (winter sports in Nagano), politics and science (a Japanese astronaut was on board). For international news, political news came first, then disasters (earthquakes in Iran and China, fires in Indonesia, etc.).

2. Active participation through article writing
This is the application of the journalism format (i.e. inverted pyramid) to article writing. It is good for journalistic writing as well as for awareness of English writing style. They learn that the conclusion comes first, followed by details, e.g. data, explanations and confirmation. In addition, they learn how to write clearly and precisely. The topic of the article in this activity was the university festival because it occurred at the same time. I emphasized that they should write this article from the point of view of a reporter and that the writing style was not subjective way but objective. Even though the emphasis was placed on an objective writing, some still wrote their articles subjectively at first. This is because they were quite used to writing an "I" centered story. They rewrote 2-3 times before completion. While doing rewriting and editing, they corrected their writing by themselves and in pairs. The final correction was made by the teacher.

Integration of skills using TV/video:

This activity is the combination of listening/watching with writing in the summary writing activity. There is a broadcast entitled "ABC News in English" on one of the Broadcast Satellites. Each piece of news lasts 4-5 minutes, which is cut into 3 portions. There is input on vocabulary and expressions after each portion. Some additional explanation of unfamiliar vocabulary or knowledge may be necessary for better understanding. Their summary has feedback with moderate corrections and/or comments in the next lesson. In the following lesson, they watch the same news again and rewrite their summary. By using this procedure, students nurture their vocabulary, grammar and syntax by themselves. This activity seeks the students’ internalization and integration of these skills. Their reaction to this activity (in an essay-type questionnaire) was that it is difficult but effective for their listening and writing.

Other suggestions for activating student participation

a) Visualization: This is an exercise for the visualization of verbal information. The activity is to illustrate a typical gangster in a video documentary of a mother fighting to save her daughter from gangs. The illustration reveals how well they understand the information and their interpretation of the content.

b) Personalization: It is good to give students opportunities to express their opinions and views on what they read/watch. The material was from a video documentary about the problem of child labor in Asian countries. At the end of the lesson, I invited students’ reaction to the documentary and their evaluation of the content of the lessons (in an essay-type questionnaire). The result of the questionnaire indicates that, of all the activities (e.g. fill-in, multiple choice, matching, ordering, etc.), the one students liked best was writing their own opinion.

Questionnaire Results

1. Student Preference for Materials and Topics

English Teaching materials in universities in Japan are often static textbooks. However, students want to have a variety of materials, from static to dynamic. Teachers tend to think authentic materials are too difficult for EFL learners to understand, but in fact this is not the case. When asked in the questionnaire which materials they prefer, ordinary comprehensive English textbooks or authentic video materials, the result was 88.5% for video materials, compared to 6% who said it depends, and 1% who preferred ordinary textbooks. The positive and negative reasons for the preference for video materials were as follows. Positive answers: authenticity 30%, interest in the content 27.1%, power of audio and visual input 18.3% Negative answers: difficulty of the language in the video 8%, boring content 4%. The material contents students preferred were movies, dramas, sports, current topics, documentary and overseas information (in descending order).

2. Students’ Evaluation of the Lessons
Earlier in this article, I stated that 84% of the students answered that learning current English is necessary. The reasons they pointed to were: a) more necessary for their major being other than languages or journalism as well as for broadening their views on the world 30%, b) useful 20%, c) for experiencing authentic news 9%, d) more interesting than ordinary English 3%, and e) other 10% (i.e. it is difficult even in Japanese, or difficult to draw a necessary line, or cannot tell whether it is necessary or not).

The sources of materials they preferred were: TV 74%, radio 23%, newspapers 35%, magazines 16%.

Conclusion

By using news for teaching materials, teachers can provide students with opportunities to learn something about world issues, cultures and other things, in addition to learning the language itself. As a language teacher, I always try to integrate language skills with learner autonomy, foster language awareness, activate learners’ intuitive heuristics, and stimulate learners to have insight into social phenomena. News is the best material for this purpose.

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