I often use newspapers and online articles in lessons (some of which you can find on this website) but recently I came across a great news app called Quartz. The idea with Quartz is that it delivers the news in handy bite-sized chunks either on the website or via your phone app. Instead of just local news or national news, you can find interesting stories from all over the world and it does it with a bit of personality and humour, using emoticons and humorous gifs and images.
What I found most interesting about it when I first came across it was that it communicated the news as if it was having a conversation with me in work. This is something I’ve always encouraged my students to do: read the papers and then come and talk about it. It’s a simple exercise which gives them the opportunity to reuse the language from the article and practice their speaking. This app helps them to do just that and this lesson is designed to introduce it and to give them some of the language they can use to report any news story.
Objective: by the end of the lesson, your students will be more confident reporting news stories to others.
Level: Intermediate / Upper Intermediate
Time: 2 – 3 hours
Materials:
- Worksheet (word): worksheet-reporting-the-news-word
- Worksheet (PDF): worksheet-reporting-the-news-pdf
- Teacher’s Procedure: procedure-reporting-the-news
textploitation 