5. Communication activities

• A student has to imagine that he is reading the paper and sees this advertisement:

A WOULD-BE FILM STAR, WHERE ARE YOU ?!

A young, sassy girl / boy from ten to twenty years old is needed to play a leading role in a film. Write Box 104 for more details.

Tasks:

a) Answer the following questions:

• What is your reaction?

• What would you do in this situation?

• Have you ever dreamed of becoming a film star?

• Do you think it is a good chance for you to start your acting career?

b) The students are asked to write the letter with their reply. They have to say where they saw the advertisement, ask about some additional information: about the title of a film, about its producer, director, etc.

c) The students are asked to make up a dialog. They work in pairs. Student A discusses the advertisement with student B, who is either his friend or wife/husband.

• The students are working in pairs. Student A is an expert in one particular area (e.g. he knows everything about Britney Spears: career, private life, family, friends, school years, etc.). Student В makes a list of facts he knows and he would like to know. Then the student В asks questions and the first one is supposed to give a decent answers.

• Each student is asked to prepare a piece of information about his or her favorite actor / actress, singer, etc. This story must be fascinating, full of amazing facts, it must draw the attention of the listeners.

6. Translation exercise

1. Том успішно зіграв головну роль у виставі "Ромео та Джульєтта".

2. Цей, поки-що без назви фільм, запланували знімати на околицях Києва і Львова.

3. Він мені дуже подобається, бо ця людина - це душа будь-якого колективу.

4. Мій товариш приймав участь у музичному конкурсі.

5. Я заснував нову компанію і, таким чином, вся влада зосереджена в моїх руках.

6. Ця старомодна історія мені зовсім не подобається.

7. Нам потрібна красива, розумна і жвава дівчина.

Conclusions

An important part of the teacher's job is to encourage the students to read English texts. There are numerous reasons why getting our students to read different English texts. In the first place many of them want to be able to read texts in English either for their careers, for study purposes or simply for pleasure. Anything the teachers can do to make reading easier for them must be a good idea.

The theme of my diploma paper is "Teaching reading newspapers at the English lesson". In the first part of the diploma paper I have described the peculiarities of the newspaper style. Special newspaper vocabulary was analyzed: terms, slang, neologisms, abbreviations, acronyms, cliches. I concentrated on different stylistic devices such as: irony, rhetorical questions, metaphor, etc. The second part deals with the theoretical material how, when and why the teachers should teach reading newspapers. Several points of view of Ukrainian, Russian and English methodologists have been mentioned in this part. The third part is the most practical one. I have chosen two articles (one article deals with politics, another one is of an entertaining character) and tried to show how to work with them at the English lesson. Different types of activities have been used in this part: prediction and pronunciation activities, communicative activities, crosswords, puzzles, etc.

Summarizing, we can say how to use newspapers to teach reading and writing:

1. Identify the strategy. If you are a reading teacher, reinforce one strategy at a time. For example, if you have introduced the skill of summarizing, have students read short articles and work in pairs or small groups. Each student can read a paragraph and highlight the important details. Then they can paraphrase these details into sentences that best retell the event related in the article.

2. As a writing teacher, you can teach students how to express themselves succinctly by examining the sentence structure in newspaper articles, which are usually written to convey the most meaningful information in synopsis form. Choose an article and lead a group discussion by reading and analyzing each sentence and paragraph. Show students how article writers learn to make each word count. This is a skill that students need to master in order to be able to write effective essays and research reports.

3. Teach editing and revising procedures. Newspaper articles are good references for teaching students how to check their own writing for grammar and punctuation errors. Because articles are printed in final-draft status with few errors, you can have students study correct subject-verb agreement, capitalization, and punctuation. You can also point out use of concise wording to convey meaning and how to transition from one idea to another in a smooth, easy-to-understand manner. These are aspects of writing that students often have difficulty seeing in their own writing.

Newspaper articles, as well as other text-types, provide opportunity to study language: vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, the students are able to see how the sentences, paragraphs and articles are constructed. Any good and intriguing newspaper article can provoke interesting topics for discussion, excite imaginative responses and be the springboard for well-rounded, fascinating lesson. Lastly, reading newspapers widens the students' outlook and provides good models for English newspaper writing.