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Here is the news!

​News reports and fun don’t usually go together, do they? Yet they can, when you allow the students to be reporters preparing a live news bulletin. Better still, students not only have fun, but practise translation (or- the buzzword of today-linguistic mediation) and engage in group work.

A recipe for success:

1. Let students browse for interesting pieces of news in English and report them back to class. (it is good to limit students to one platform, eg BBC News or USA Today etc.- you might want to do some tabloid ones as well:) Skip that part of your students already know how to write a news report.

2. Elicit the structure of a news report as well characteristics of its style and language.

3. Ask students to work in pairs or groups of 3 to browse a news website in their native language and then make them agree on 3-5 pieces of news that they find worthy of translating and presenting to the class. It is advisable to limit the choice (and kind) of platform they can choose.

4. Assign them 40 minutes to prepare their own news bulletin to present orally in front of the class- the bulletin should not be more than 5 minutes long.

5. Enjoy the presentations &give feedback, especially on what can be improved when they actually write a news report.


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