How to Learn English with the News

Hi, my name is Rebecca, and in today's lesson, I'm going to show you how you can improve

your English vocabulary by reading and watching the news, alright?

Many students write in and ask us at engVid, "How can I improve my English?"

Well, of course, the answer to that is very long, and we probably don't have time to go

into all of those, but in this lesson, I'm going to focus on how you can do that through

items in the news.

You can go online and read about news events.

You can watch TV and listen to people talking about the news, discussing news events, reporting

the news, right?

And you can also read the newspaper, for example, or magazines that discuss various news events.

And in fact, when you read about the news or listen to the news, it's a wonderful opportunity

for you to expand your vocabulary.

Why is that?

Because when they're discussing something in the news, very often, it is repeated several

times, so you have the opportunity to have many chances to hear that vocabulary, to hear

it being used, to see what it means, and to understand it, and perhaps even to make that

vocabulary part of your own vocabulary, okay?

So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to read you a paragraph, alright?

This was taken from a certain news event that happened shortly before we recorded this video,

and this time, I'm just going to read it to you, and what I'd like you to do is to try

to understand as much as you can from this one short paragraph, okay?

"Twenty-two people were killed and dozens injured when two trains collided in central

India on September 20th."

Okay?

Now, perhaps you've understood all of it, perhaps some of it.

Next, I'm going to give you another opportunity to understand a little more.

Okay, so now, I'm going to read it again, read the same paragraph again, but this time,

as you listen, I want you to listen for the answers to these questions.

Who am I talking about?

What happened?

Where did it happen?

And when did it happen?

So now, when you listen, I want you to listen more specifically, okay?

"Twenty-two people were killed and dozens injured when two trains collided in central

India on September 20th."

Okay?

You might want to jot that down, just write down the answers if you like on a piece of

paper if you have it there, and next, we'll have another opportunity to look at this.

Okay, so now, I'm going to give you another opportunity to understand that paragraph.

This time, you're not only going to hear it, but you're also going to see it, just as you

would if you were reading about it, alright?

So let's read it together.

"Twenty-two people were killed and dozens injured when two trains collided in central

India on September 20th."

Okay?

Now, you have two reference points, the sound of my voice as well as the information coming

to your eyes, what you can see.

So see if you can find this information.

Who was involved in the incident?

"Twenty-two people and dozens," okay?

What happened?

"Two trains collided."

When did it happen?

On September 20th.

Where did it happen?

In central India, right?

The how, we don't know yet, alright?

These questions, by the way, are what are known as the journalist's questions.

A journalist, when he or she writes something, a news story, always answers the questions

or is supposed to answer the questions, usually in the first paragraph, who, what, when, where,

why and how, and sometimes how much, how many.

In this little sentence and paragraph, we didn't have the information about how, but

we do know what happened, who was involved, where it happened and when it happened.

So when you read the news, look for this information.

Not only will you have answers, but you'll also be able to ask questions.

So for example, suppose you missed half the story and you walked into the room and they

were talking about a story.

So you want to ask whoever was in the room about the story.

So what kinds of questions could you ask, right?

Who was involved?

What happened?

Where did it happen?

When did it happen?

Similarly, from the news events that you're reading, you can also learn and practice how

to ask questions, not just how to answer questions, but also how to ask questions.

This is also very helpful for you if you're trying to practice your reading comprehension

skills.

Let's just look at this one sentence and see how many different types of questions we could

ask about this information, okay?

So I could ask, for example, how many people were killed?

What's the answer?

Twenty-two people.

How many people were injured?

Dozens, dozens of people were injured.

How many trains were involved in the accident?

Two trains.

What happened to the two trains?

They collided.

Where did the accident happen?

In central India.

In which part of India did the accident happen?

In central India.

In which month did the accident happen?

In September.

On what date did the accident happen?

On the 20th, okay?

There are so many other kinds of questions that you could practice asking by reading

a simple piece of news, okay?

So use the news, whether it's on TV, on the internet, in the newspaper, in magazines,

use news events to expand your vocabulary to learn how to get information out of it

and how to ask the right questions when you're in a certain situation, okay?

If you'd like more practice on this or other lessons in English, please visit our website,

www.engvid.com.

Thanks for watching.