Tips for Using The News to Learn English 📺📻📰
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So I think the news is a great way to learn English. Whether you read the news in a newspaper or watch the news on TV, or maybe you listen to the news while you're driving, it's just a great way to learn new vocabulary and to improve your reading comprehension and your listening comprehension.

So in this English lesson, I'm going to talk about six reasons why I think the news is a great way to learn English. And when I explain each of those, I'll also give you some tips on how to use the news to learn English. The first reason why I think the news is a great way to learn English is because you don't need to know a lot of vocabulary.

Now, I'm going to say a number here and it might seem really, really big, but it's not. If you know 3,000 or 4,000 English words, you should be able to understand a news article when you read it or understand a news story when you see it on TV or when you hear it. So, first thing, the amount of vocabulary is somewhat small.

I say somewhat because it's still a bit of a challenge, isn't it? To learn three or four thousand words. And then also the stories or articles are usually somewhat short. You know, when you read a news article in a newspaper or when you watch the news on TV, you're getting the news in just little segments and that's kind of nice for understanding. So the first reason, the vocabulary is limited and the news articles and stories are usually somewhat short.

The second thing about the news is that the news is somewhat repetitive. If you read a news article in the morning, you will probably hear that news story again as you drive to work on the radio. And you might even see that news story again on the news that night if you watch the news on TV. So when something happens in the world, they report on it and then they usually give you an update or a follow up story later in the day.

Because it's repetitive, it will help you remember things. If you hear two new words in the morning and you learn those words, you might also hear or read those words later in the day. So the second cool thing about the news is that it's repetitive.

And this is what you should do with that. When you first read a news story, maybe on your computer or in a newspaper in the morning or at night, you should learn a couple new words, two or three words that you didn't know before. And then see if you hear those words again later that day or read them again later that day. So the second cool thing about the news, it's repetitive and you can use that to your advantage.

The third really cool thing about the news is that it is multi-platform. And I kind of hinted at this in the last section. You can read the news, you can watch the news, you can listen to the news. You can find the news in a variety of ways. So if you want to practice your reading, you can read the news on your computer or you can read a newspaper. If you want to practice your listening, you can watch the news on TV or you can listen to the radio or a podcast.

So this is really, really cool because if you learn a word by reading it, then later in the day, you might hear the word and learn how to pronounce it. So when you read it, you maybe don't know how to say the word, but later in the day, because the news is repetitive, you might hear it. So the cool thing about the news is it is multi-platform. It helps you with your reading and it helps you with your listening. The fourth cool thing about the news is that it is random.

you don't know what's going to happen next. So even though I said on a given day, the news can be repetitive and it can tell you the same news story over and over again, day to day, we don't know what's going to happen in the world. And this is a great way to learn new vocabulary.

You don't know if tomorrow there's going to be some bad weather in the southern United States. You don't know if tomorrow the stock markets are going to rise. You don't know what's going to happen in the future. And so the news is random. And this is how this helps you.

When you're learning English, sometimes you only learn about things you like. Maybe you like science fiction movies, so you watch a lot of them and you know a lot of words in English to talk about science fiction. But because the news is random,

because you don't know what's going to happen next. It will help you kind of push the outer limits of the vocabulary that you know. So the fourth really cool thing about the news, it is random. You don't know what's going to happen next, so you don't know what words and phrases you're going to learn tomorrow. The fifth really cool thing about the news,

You can read the news in your own language, you can watch the news in your own language, and you can listen to the news in your own language, and then you understand what's happening. Then you can read the news in English or watch the news in... Watch the news... This is my hand gesture for watch. You can watch the news in English and then you can listen to the news in English. So you can understand the story in your own language,

And then when you read it or watch it or listen to it in English, you can kind of connect the dots, we would say. If you know that they're talking about railroad tracks in the news story, when you listen to the English version and you hear railroad tracks and maybe they show you some railroad tracks, you know what they are talking about. So,

So the fifth, am I on number five? Let me check my paper. I am on number five. The fifth really cool thing about using the news to learn English, you can kind of prepare yourself by reading that news article in your own language. Then when you read it in English, you have a better idea as to what is going on.

So the sixth really cool thing about the news is that it has categories and you can use news categories to your advantage. By the way, what I mean by categories is that you can read about world news or the business news or sports news. You can read news in a category that you like.

So the two ways you can use this to your advantage are this. Number one, you can read news articles or watch news stories about things you like. If you like sports, you can read a lot of articles about sports. You can watch a lot of sports news on TV.

But you can also challenge yourself. If you don't often read news articles that are about the world or about business, you can choose those categories and then you can focus on learning vocabulary in an area that you don't normally study. So the sixth cool thing about the news, there are categories. Use them to your advantage in two ways. Read articles you love and read articles from categories that you don't normally read articles from.

Well, thank you so much for watching this English lesson where I explained why the news is a great way to learn English. I hope that you picked up a few tips.

that will help you with your own English learning. By the way, if this is your first time here, don't forget to click that subscribe button, give me a thumbs up, leave a comment below. Oh, and I wanna give a shout out to Brent. If you go to Brent's channel, he actually does English lessons about current news stories. I think they're very effective and very well done. So head over there and see what he has to offer. Anyways, have a good week. I'll see you next week with another English lesson. Bye.

Hi, Bob the Canadian here. Thank you for listening to this English podcast lesson. If you would like to support me in the work that I do as an online English teacher, please visit patreon.com slash bobthecanadian.