Research article the role of newspapers and magazines to teach english in the

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Vol.6 Issue 2 
2019 
THE ROLE OF NEWSPAPERS TO TEACH ENGLISH IN 
THE ESL/EFL CLASSROOMS 
Since print and electronic media attracts the 
learners in learning the language well, the teachers 
should try to adopt such variety of materials to keep 
the learners active in their ESL/EFL classrooms. The 
teachers can try out a wide range of activities using 
print media such as newspapers and magazines so 
that the learners participate in the activities very 
actively with utmost interest. Newspapers play an 
important role in teaching English as they publish the 
columns about news, reviews, editorials, historical 
events, games and sports, movies, entertainment, 
education, literature and poetry, science and 
technology, politics, business, weather, Ads, comics 
and so on. Newspapers publish regional, national and 
international news and they are fresh every day. 
Therefore, the language used in the newspapers 
entirely different from the language used in the 
textbooks. The language used in the textbooks is a 
standard one and there is no possibility to change the 
text until the completion of the time duration of the 
course, whereas the language used in the 
newspapers is not a permanent one, they change 
from day to day as newspapers are published daily. 
Furthermore, the language used in the newspapers is 
also vary from day-to-day. It gives the opportunity for 
the English teachers to select the relevant material 
useful for their teaching. Also, the teachers should 
take the needs and interests of the learners into 
consideration to engage them in the ESL/EFL 
classroom activities. When the authentic teaching 
material adopted from the newspapers make the 
learners to participate in the classroom activities with 
more interest and enthusiasm, the ESL/EFL learners 
learn the language skills perfectly with higher 
motivation and finish the tasks more successfully. 
Therefore, the teachers of English should make use of 
the daily newspapersto design suitable materials in 
the ESL/EFL classrooms according to the interests and 
needs of the learners to make the teaching and 
learning a fruitful one. 
The teachers of English can improve the 
language skills of the second or foreign learners by 
adopting material from the available English 
newspapers and perform various activities. The 
teachers can ask the students to form groups and 
find out the most important news of the day. At this 
juncture, the second or foreign language learners 
form groups of four to five and each group of 
learners is given a set of newspaper. Then the 
learners skim for the important news and note down 
on a paper. Since this activity is time bound, the 
learners do the activity quickly and accurately. Once 
the time is over, all the groups sit together and 
discuss the important news. This kind of activity 
really enhances the learners’ reading skills of 
skimming. The teachers can also ask the learners to 
select a particular news item or article of their own 
interest and prepare a report on the news and also 
find out the meaning of any five difficult words. The 
teachers can ask the learners to do this kind of 
activity at home so that the learners can finish it at 
their convenient time. With this kind of activity, the 
learners not only improve their reporting skills but 
also enrich new vocabulary. The teachers can also 
form the learners into groups and give each group a 
different news item and ask the groups to prepare a 
quiz based on the news times given to them. Then 
the learners start working on it in groups and prepare 
the maximum number of questions based on the 
given task. Once the preparation of questions is over, 
the teachers ask the learners to put the questions to 
the whole class so that the other groups concentrate 
on a particular topic and answer the questions by 
reading the article thoroughly. Likewise, all the 
groups do the activity and it really improves the 
second or foreign language learners’ reading 
comprehension 
skills,