The Use of English Newspapers on Secondary Level: A Personal Experience

By Aalumgir Shah, PGD TEFL

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement of the Degree of M.A TEFL

To Madam Shahla Yusuf

Linguistics Department of Allama Iqbal Open University, Karachi Campus 2011

Aalumgir Shah, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad.

The Use of English Newspapers on Secondary Level: A Personal Experience

by Aalumgir Shah, Allama Iqbal Open University, Pakistan

Abstract
In a country like Pakistan, where the medium of instruction is Urdu (the national language), English is taught as a second language in the national school system. As such, it comes as no surprise that many of the students who enter college or university lack the reading and writing skills required completing their course of study. At different universities, as part of the graduating package, students are required to undergo various English language programs, ranging from proficiency to ESP courses. While they were in the public school system, these students rarely practiced their ability to read in English outside the English language classroom. Many of them did not even take the trouble to read the local English dailies! This article is the result of classroom experience of secondary level in which English language newspapers are used to encourage functional literacy in English among the students. At the same time, the students are also provided with the necessary experience to improve their reading skills, enhance their knowledge of current issues and improve their writing skills. This project reveals the different activities of using newspaper in the classroom investigating teacher views and perception about reading comprehension enhancement by newspaper.

Introduction
Almost all the students who enter the university are literate in English; that is, they are able to read in English but many of them are not in the habit of actually using this ability to practice reading outside the demands of the ESL classroom. Hence, functional literacy is confined to reading so as to be able to answer comprehension questions, complete grammar-based exercises, or write a composition/essay. Occasionally, if core subject reference materials are not available in the national language, students read books and journals in English to obtain content related-knowledge. Begin the semester by introducing newspapers into the ESL classroom. Get the students to buy at least one copy of the newspaper per week usually the Sunday edition of the English daily of your choice. Then talk to them about the advantages of reading newspapers, especially how such ongoing reading can help them develop reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary skills. Besides this, also talk to them about the importance of developing schemata so as to widen their general knowledge. Explain to them that reading is a critical skill that is essential for the undergraduates, not only in preparing them for the various English language examinations, but also for ensuring their academic success. Stress the fact that by developing their reading skills, they can better articulate/discuss ideas as well as read and understand a variety of texts. They can also internalize a full range of world background knowledge, language conventions and vocabulary by exposure through reading. Also point out to them that in an academic setting like a university, it is essential to develop their reading skills because they have to carry out research work and write assignments, term papers and reports. And finally, emphasize the fact that if they want to excel, their reading must go beyond the content lecturers notes and recommended textbooks. They must read journals and reference books as well as related information available on the Internet, all of which are in English. Therefore, there is a dire need not only to equip themselves with the necessary reading skills but also to train themselves to read and understand texts independently.

To investigate the uses of English newspaper in improving Reading skills, the following procedure was adopted. The introduction of the Reading Project, if planned well, can take up a whole twohour lesson. To share this activity with teachers and teaching professionals, a detailed description of how this Reading Project can be introduced and managed is given below. The objective of this article is to find out that how reading skills can be enhanced using any of the local English language newspapers. The main objective is to encourage the students to read any of these local English dailies.

Case Study:
Participants Participants in this study were 10 English teachers as a study population from different institutions of Landhi, Qazafi Twon, Gulshan-e-Hadeed. Responses were weighted according to age, gender and perceptions about using English Newspaper in language classes. The participants were chosen on the basis of their experience and therefore they have been randomly selected as control group of teachers.

Procedure:
A questionnaire with 12 statements was used to grade different reading activities of using English newspaper in the secondary class. The following 2 questions were asked before providing questionnaire to them. The main reason to ask these is find investigate the perception of selected teacher for using English Newspaper in secondary classes. They were all randomly selected as control group of teachers for rating the questionnaire.

1. Is using English newspaper in classroom most productive reading technique? 2. Should Teaching Reading skills in secondary class not be content based only?
Respondents rated all the statements according to how much they agreed or disagreed that each statement described their own experience with their classrooms. Every questionnaire took 10 minutes. These statements were analyzed and statistically combined using factor analysis into some distinct reading experiences. For the questionnaire, see the appendix.

Findings & Data analysis: The teachers rated the statements regarding reading activities as per five point scale which has been described in Table 1. Table 1: Class Reading Activities of Teachers Using Newspaper

I use Newspaper with following activities 1. I introduce students to new vocabulary words, I Play a game called Stump the Class. 2. I ask students to determine which statement is more newsworthy. 3. I teach students how to use the newspapers index. 4. I ask students to scan the newspaper and tell you which stories they would like to read in class. 5. Get the students to talk about the reasons why the author(s) write about the topics. 6.I distribute the newspapers, one for each group of two or three learners. I tell them they have a time limit with which to skim through the newspaper. When the time limit is up, ask two groups to get together and report to each other everything they remember that is in the news. 7.I use the traditional method of having students read silently, answer comprehension questions. 8.I use jigsaw activities that students must depend on each other for their information. 9. I ask students to select a short item of news and to summarize it to a partner / team, changing some of the details. 10. I encourage students to read newspapers in English on a more regular basis, and organize short presentations at the beginning of each class.

Strongly Disagree 5
8 0 1

Disagree 2
0 0 2

Neutral 0
0 0 6

Agree 2
2 4 1

Strongly Agree 3
0 6 0

3 2 1

0 0 1

0 4 3

2 2 3

5 3 2

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Q# 01 Q# 02 Q# 03 Q# 04 Q# 05 Q# 06 Q# 07 Q# 08 Q# 09 Q# 10

E t as

The project revealed some distinct reading activities while using newspaper that have a positive impact on readership. These activities drive readership to varying degrees. In other words, the more people have these activities, the more they tend to read. According to the statistical analysis, 10, 7 and 9 teachers agreed or strongly agreed to use activity 3,7and 10 respectively more than other activities. Furthermore, 7 teachers still agreed to use traditional reading activities of literal question and answer to improve reading comprehension. 8 & 6 teachers were quite unfamiliar with activities 2 & 6 respectively. Additionally, 6 teachers remained neutral to scanning activity 4.

Findings:

Activity of using newspaper index has been proved to so beneficial to enhanced students background knowledge. It has been proved by the linguists that literal questions in reading activities do not enhance much comprehension. In Pakistan, majority of the teachers use literal questions for reading comprehension. Activities like jigsaw and summarizing articles are considered to be so productive. Most of the teachers are still unfamiliar with many reading activities of newspaper that can be more interesting and essential for the secondary level students. The above mentioned activities has great value for higher studies and has been proved to give strong background to the learner to be interacted with register of different faculties.

These findings are actionable: making the newspaper significantly more of any one or several of the high-potential experiences should have positive results on readership.

Suggestions:
These terms and tips can help readers understand the parts of a newspaper and help them decide what information could be helpful when conducting research. Therefore, the following tips may be suggested to prepared students for higher studies. Reading research shows that good readers:

Read extensively Integrate information in the text with existing knowledge Have a flexible reading style, depending on what they are reading Are motivated Rely on different skills interacting: perceptual processing, phonemic processing, recall Read for a purpose; reading serves a function

Conclusion
This Reading Project using newspapers can be used by teachers in their respective classrooms or adapted to suit their classroom situations. This activity, if planned and carried out well, can be converted into a research project. Before embarking on such a research project, the would-be researcher may want to look into the underlying principles of encouraging functional literacy using English Language dailies. To a large extent, there are many advantages of implementing a reading project such as this in the Secondary classroom. For one, an attempt is made to encourage the students to read in English outside the classroom. At the same time, they are provided with experience in reading a variety of

authentic texts of current and general interest to supplement the teaching materials, which are specifically written for pedagogic purposes. For their part, the students become familiar with a variety of genres, like advertisements, reviews, reports, statistics, captions and notices, to name but a few. Reading newspapers also provides an avenue through which the students can expand their knowledge schema and develop their reading skills. Besides this, it can to a large extent motivate the students to read a readily available and relatively cheap source of discourse in English, which contains texts that offer high interest content ranging from sensational news, gender-biased articles to content-based information. Finally, to some extent, learner autonomy is being encouraged among the students by giving them a choice when it comes to selecting the reports for the Reading Project.

References
Alderson, Charles J and A H Urquhart. (1984). Reading in a Foreign York:Longman Language. New

Brown, H Douglas. (1994). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Eskay, D.E. (1986). Teaching Second Language Reading for Academic Purposes. (ed) Freda Dubin, D. E Eskay & W Grabbe. Edinburgh: Addison Wesley Leeds, Bruce (ed). (1996). Writing in a Second Language. New York: Addison Wesley

Effective Uses of English Newspaper in Secondary classes

Project Questionnaire

Demographic Detail
Name___________________________________ Age__________ Date__________________ Graduate_________ Postgraduate___________ Male__________ Female___________ How long did you teach English to secondary level? What is your major field? _____________ Years

___________________________________

Directions:
This questionnaire has been designed to help me out to identify to find out above project. Read each statement on the following pages. Please respond to the below mentioned statements. Decide whether you agree or disagree with each statement. For example, if you strongly agree, mark: Strongly Strongly Statements Disagree Neutral Agree Disagree Agree 1. To introduce students to new vocabulary words, I Play a game called Stump the Class. 2. I ask students to determine which statement is more newsworthy. 3. I teach students how to use the newspapers index. 4. I ask students to scan the newspaper and tell you which stories they would like to read in class. 5. Get the students to talk about the reasons why the author(s) write about the topics. 6. I distribute the newspapers, one for each group of two or three learners. I tell them they have a time limit with which to skim through the newspaper. When the time limit is up, ask two groups to get together and report to each other everything they remember that is in the news 7. I use the traditional method of having students read silently, answer comprehension questions. 8. I use jigsaw activities that students must

depend on each other for their information, 9. I ask students to select a short item of news and to summarize it to a partner / team, changing some of the details. 10. I encourage students to read newspapers in English on a more regular basis, organize short presentations at the beginning of each class.