Newspapers: Vehicles for Teaching ESOL with a Cultural Focus

Abstract

With adult and non-academic students of ESOL in mind, the use of the newspaper as a resource for teaching about American culture is explored. The variety of features that the daily paper includes can provide many insights into the society to which students are trying to adapt and can thus ease the process of acculturation. While a focus upon the cultural content of the newspaper is advocated, it is noted that all interaction is in English and practice in communication about real concerns is afforded. All language skills can be exercised while the element of threat, which often exists in formal language classes is reduced. Various features of the newspaper are discussed and questions are suggested which may elicit discussion among students. At some time most ESOL teachers have probably decided to enliven their classes by turning to the newspaper as a resource for variety, contemporaneity, or relevance, but they have likely found themselves having to explain a lot of the cultural allusions which block their students' understanding and thereby reduce the effectiveness of the newspaper's use. The newspaper can be used in ESOL, however, but to better effect if the emphasis is shifted from language teaching to an acknowledged and overt focus on culture.' Especially in an ESL setting, students spontaneously ask questions about puzzling aspects of the society as reflected in the newspaper, they take part in real tasks that the newspaper provides, and they learn useful information about how to exist in their new English-language surroundings. All the while, language is the vehicle for communication either among themselves or with the teacher, and both the sense of threat and the level of selfconsciousness are reduced from what may exist in a strict language classroom.