Return-Path: <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id eBJ32l918546; Mon, 18 Dec 2000 22:02:47 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 22:02:47 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <00bc01c06967$d816e160$09150785@fedu.fukuiu.ac.jp> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "Charles Jannuzi" <jannuzi@edu00.f-edu.fukui-u.ac.jp> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ESL:5393] Re: newspaper summaries X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: O Content-Length: 4951 Lines: 98 Some suggestions for those teachers constructing and following this thread (I also hope to expand the focus of the thread a bit): (1) Some, but not all, articles in news publications follow the inverted pyramid style, so it may well be more important to summarize more of the information at the top of the article. (2) Articles in "classic" newspapers--like the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, NY Times--do have their own sub-genres. There are these categories, with these blending in actual articles: pure news, analysis, opinion/editorials. There is less to infer or analyze or interrogate or deconstruct in a pure news piece, though critics from both sides of the political spectrum criticize the media for editorializing when they should be reporting--often this "editorializing" charge comes over dissatisfaction with what the media CHOOSE to report as news. New York Times or Wall Street Journal editorials are heavy going; also, these two papers have made the fewest concessions to trends in how we like to "consume" our news. News items at www.reuters.com for example follow the pure news format closely. (3) Many newspapers send out forms of their papers in e-mail, and I like getting these over visiting their web sites. I especially enjoy the ones the Christian Sciene Monitor and the Economist send out. It might be interesting to let students compare their summaries with the summaries the news organizations send out over their e-mail lists. In the early days of the Internet and WWW, one might have thought that newspapers would become dominant information and service portals, but upstart companies like www.yahoo.com and www.lycos.com (and they just serve up what news agencies like AP and Reuters make available) have surpassed them. A lot of people get their news at sites like yahoo and lycos INSTEAD of online newspapers. Also, traditionally non-print news organizations like CNN and the BBC have translated very well to the hypertext of the WWW. (4) About schema. In this area (perhaps more than any other) there is a lot of confusion about the nature of the benefits. Yes, background knowledge can boost comprehension. But it can also do so at the expense of language practice. I live in Japan and, so long as I could get all the information I needed in English, I didn't bother with the Japanese news. Now I make it a point to try and read and listen and watch the Japanese channels in Japanese, too--and often the items are not reported in international news or the Japanese perspective on international news is quite different. Also, I found the way Japanese TV, for example, constructed and presented many stories very confusing at first, since my expectations were very American. The Japanese newscast still prefers longer reports from "expert" reporters stationed at the scene (as does CNN International, thank goodness!), longer analysis by the top newscasters in the studios, and longer interviews with academic "experts" on a certain topic. However, I'm talking about NHK, which is much like the BBC of the UK, and so is not comparable to the commercial networks of the US. The use of the video camera to create a scene is also sometimes different (such that it is often easier for me to figure out at first what is going on in a French or German news program on cable TV, even though I understand far more Japanese than French or German). Back to newspapers, some writing in Japanese newspapers does follow a noted Japanese rhetorical pattern that is more digressive, more inductive, and with less explicit arguments in the introduction (I am talking about editorials though, not straight news stories, which I don't find much different). That being said, however, there is another factor: interest and motivation. In an EFL class, with some students (not all, though) mundane items about the US might not be very interesting. Is it that we often don't understand something we haven't directly experienced or that we don't have an interest in it if we haven't directly experienced it? In this case, experience and interest seem to work together. As an American in Japan at first it was often hard for me to predict what Japanese students would know about the US, so it is hard to plan what background knowledge they would need to understand an article (after 10 years I have a better idea--enough to know what articles to avoid) . Items in English about Japan--especially if they are written from a non-Japanese perspective--appeal to many students. I do not have a neat conclusion on this, but I would say (1) make sure students get to work with news items that also reflect their cultural and occupational backgrounds and personal interests and (2) help students to get to a variety of sources. Yours, Charles Jannuzi Fukui University, Japan Contributing Editor, "Literacy Across Cultures" (Contact me off list to join the LAC distribution list: < jannuzi@mint.ocn.ne.jp > .)
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