One of the most widely available, relevant and valuable resources you as students can access are newspapers. 
In many cities around the United Kingdom they are handed out for free and they provide you with local and international news as well as insight into British culture. However, newspaper articles can be quite difficult to read at times with difficult vocabulary and puns (a play on words designed to create humour). So how do you decide if a newspaper article is interesting to you and then how do you understand what it is about?
In many cities around the United Kingdom they are handed out for free and they provide you with local and international news as well as insight into British culture. However, newspaper articles can be quite difficult to read at times with difficult vocabulary and puns (a play on words designed to create humour). So how do you decide if a newspaper article is interesting to you and then how do you understand what it is about?Newspaper articles follow many conventions (an agreed structure that most writers follow). Knowing how these articles are structured can help you understand what they are about. Here are some things I would like you to look out for the next time you read a newspaper:
- Look at the picture! Most newspaper articles come with a picture that relates to the story. Pictures are rich sources of information, for example if the article is about the discovery of some dinosaur bones the writer might add a diagram of a human standing next to the dinosaur to show you how big the dinosaur was. This is called scale.
- The first two sentences of the article are normally a summary of the entire article. This means that you can decide whether or not you want to read an very quickly. If it doesn’t interest you, then move to another article.
- Articles normally contain foreground and background information. To understand what this means look at the following example:
World famouns paliantologist (a person who digs up dionosaur bones), John Sparks, has made a new discovery in the Sarhara desert. Sparks, who has worked in Africa for 30 years, found the Tarbosaurus bones while on the hunt for prehistoric fossils.
The words in bold font are not directly related to the story of Sparks finding the Torboasaurus but rather background information about his professional life. The discovery of the dinosaur is the foreground or main information. Knowing that newspaper articles work this way can help you identify what the most important ideas in an article are.
So when you leave Bell today pick up a newspaper and see if you identify the above features in the articles. Let me know in the comments section what you found. Good luck!
My friend Mahfuz is a good blogger. He writes on different topics.
My friend Mahfuz is a good blogger. He writes on different topics.
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