Reading and vocabulary building for EFL ESL learners and teachers using a newspaper (NiE)

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Dealing with vocabulary
For many students—and some teachers as well—their first exposure to an authentic text such as the Bangkok Post is a bit of a shock. At first glance, it appears full of unfamiliar and difficult vocabulary. In reality, the situation is far less severe and with a systematic approach, vocabulary in the newspaper is not a problem, but a significant opportunity for language growth and development.

A newspaper like the Bangkok Post, with its many different sections, is an excellent vocabulary resource. The main news section is a good source of basic vocabulary on topics ranging from elections to AIDS. And with its special style of writing, it is one of the best places anywhere to look for examples for vocabulary-from-context exercises. For descriptive adjectives, the feature section is a good place to look—particularly in its many travel-related stories. The hardest-hitting language in the newspaper is found in the opinion section, both in the editorials and the letters to the editor. Movie and book reviews can be quite lively as well. As for informal, conversational language, try the advice columns, such as Dear Abby and Miss Manners or the comics section. For specialised language, the sports, business and classified sections are obvious choices.

The section Tips on reading the Bangkok Post contains many ideas for dealing with vocabulary, and if you haven’t already done so, we suggest you look through it. Of particular interest will be these sections:

Dealing with unfamiliar vocabulary (this page): for information on learning vocabulary through context and on a topic by topic basis.
The style of the news story: for the important concept of getting three or more chances to understand the main ideas.
The headline: for an introduction to the specialised vocabulary used in news headlines.
Common news stories: for high frequency vocabulary on a series of topics.
Opinion writing: for an introduction to the hard-hitting, no-holds-barred language of the editorial.
Too often, the carefully-controlled vocabulary from context exercises found in EFL/ESL classes don’t seem to carry over to the real-world of authentic texts. In that environment it is not so easy to guess the meaning of an unfamiliar word. The newspaper, however—particularly the main news section—is a context-friendly environment and all of the context tools discussed in Using context can be applied here. The most useful of the techniques will be the search for synonyms as well as for superordinates and hyponyms.

Synonyms are especially common across the headline and the lead since the writer must repeat the main idea and may use a synonym to avoid sounding repetitious. And since news stories move from the general to the specific, it is quite common to find a superordinate at the top and one or more hyponyms later in the story. See the story on juvenile delinquency in the section Taking full advantage of the news style for an excellent example of this concept.

For a useful classroom lesson demonstrating and using techniques for learning vocabulary from newspaper context click here.

A few more ideas on context

And Thai teachers will want to look at the book Focus on Words for a complete treatment of vocabulary from context.

Topic by topic

This is a fruitful area for assignments. For example, you might want to clip five or six stories on a particular topic (election results, earthquakes, criminal court cases, etc.) and let the students try to determine as much of the high-frequency vocabulary as they can. Different groups of students could be responsible for different topics. You can base a similar assignment on an individual story that develops over several days or weeks. For a comprehensive look at a topic by topic approach to vocabulary, see the book English By Newspaper.

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