Today's Front Pages: Today's News in the Target Language

Activity authored by Laura Franklin, Professor of French at Northern Virginia Community College, to be used in conjunction with the original website Today's Front Pages by The Newseum
Author Profile
This material was originally developed through Merlot
as part of its collaboration with the SERC Pedagogic Service.

Summary

In this Just in Time Teaching activity, students will search the Today's Front Pages website for readable .pdf s of the front pages of newspapers of their target languages, the languages they are studying. Ideally, the students will be able to find two different accounts of the same headline story. The students will bring these to class for an interactive exercise during which they will report their news in the target language.


Learning Goals

  • Students will become familiar with major target language news sources.
  • Students will develop reading skills in target language.
  • Students will make comparisons between news coverage in target language newspaper and in his/her own local newspaper.
  • Students will learn new vocabulary to use in language class.

Context for Use

This activity is appropriate for any size class and can be used as a daily or weekly warm-up in intermediate or advanced language classes. Instructors can devote as little or as much time as they like at the beginning or end of class.

Description and Teaching Materials

  • Students all consult the Newseum's website and click on Today's Front Pages on the right navigation bar.
  • The students will access this website: https://www.newseum.org/
  • The student will click map view and go to the continent and country in which their target language is spoken.
  • The student will review a few front pages of different target language newspapers. Special attention should be given to two papers covering the same story on the front page.
  • Students should print the readable PDF and bring these to class.
  • Students should also look at the website of the newspapers to see if there is additional information provided (text, audio or video) that was not on the print version.
  • Students should fill in this grid (Microsoft Word 29kB Aug11 09), provided by the instructor to prepare for discussion of the articles in class.
  • In class, students should be able to summarize the story in less than two minutes, using the target language and the new vocabulary.
  • Students should be able to do a briefing that gets at the who, what, when, where and why of the story.
  • Students should be able to make cross-cultural comparisons.

Teaching Notes and Tips

  • The grid that the students complete should be in the target language.
  • This is a very effective warm-up or cool-down exercise that gives the students a break from the curriculum and allows them to conduct real-world conversations.

Assessment

This exercise may be graded as a regular part of homework or not at all. If adopted as a regular exercise, teachers may want to assess the effect it has on vocabulary use in written and oral production.

References and Resources

Major news outlets all have websites that could be resources for the expansion of this assignment. Deutsche Welle, CNN en espanol; BBC, Agence France Presse, Al-Jazeera all of these sources have authentic news that can be used to teach language and to follow up on this assignment.