Storytelling the News: Don’t just read the news. Share it!

“Storytelling the News”, consists of 14 readings based on human-interest stories adapted from worldwide news sources and includes materials written with interest, authenticity, and immediacy in mind. The universal appeal of these believe-it-or-not stories ensures a pleasurable reading experience and encourages beginning-level students to read with fluency and confidence. This book is designed to help teachers create an atmosphere conducive to reading by making the stories read in class both comprehensible and engaging, and to build student confidence and help them learn to read for pleasure. The purpose of “Storytelling the News” is to create an enjoyable space for students to read and discuss the big and not-so-big current events happening throughout the world. It also provides extensive and intensive activities to help students get the most of each and every story. This book gives students the opportunity to explore high-interest readings, answer authentic and relevant questions, articulate their thoughts, and engage with the opinions of others. This will allow students to practice reading English using a mix of lighter questions and some that are more challenging. There are many reasons why I use true stories from the news with my students: First, the stories are of extremely high interest. I always select stories with “out of this world” or “too crazy to believe” type of headlines. These headlines really grab my attention and also activate their global knowledge, which helps with keeping their interest and developing their prediction skills. Additionally, the articles are current and usually directly applicable to students’ lives. Second, most news stories are written using simple present & past tenses and use simple grammar forms and sentence structures. This is especially true of the headlines, which usually provide a “big picture” overview of the entire story. This is helpful as students can focus on the whole story instead of the details of each work, chunk, or sentence. Third, many articles can be found in English-language newspapers printed in non-English speaking countries. I have found a number of great articles in my local papers printed with the specific purpose of studying English and include a translated copy of the text, an English-to-English glossary, comprehension questions, vocabulary exercises…etc. In my experience, true stories from the news work equally well with students of all ages, abilities, and levels of interest.