In order to practise reading and writing daily for fluency as well as to improve your vocabulary and try out new structures, reading and responding to articles in The New York Times and other quality publications is an excellent habit to get into. Educational Testing Services (ETS), the people who design and administer TOEFL, TOEIC, GRE and other tests, are very specific in their recommendations for improving your reading and writing skills in English:
Read as much and as often as possible. Make sure to include academic texts on a variety of topics written in different genres and with different degrees of conceptual density as part of your reading.
- Read major newspapers, such as The New York Times or Science Times, and websites (National Public Radio [NPR] or the BBC).
- Write summaries of texts, making sure they incorporate the organizational pattern of the originals.
Continually expand your vocabulary. Continually practice using new words you encounter in your reading. This will help you remember both the meaning and correct usage of the new words (2008, p. 56).
We will according blog on articles from The New York Times or other acceptable source according to the schedule I email you.
And don't worry, you don't have to wait until it's your day to respond to something from the daily news, you can also comment on your classmates' posts every day. At least once every day.
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A few notes that you might find useful:
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Remove formatting |
- When you copy and paste into the blog from another website or other source, it's usually a good idea to use the "Remove formatting" tool.
This is useful when you want to quote a few exact words, or to copy information for a reference list entry.
An alternative is to write in Notepad, and then copy and paste into your blog post. - For the same reason, do not write in MS Word and then paste into your blog post (although I occasionally do do that, for example, the table above). There is no need to write in MS Word, but if you do, use the "Remove formatting" tool after you paste into your blog post.
- I often email articles to myself as I'm reading online. Most online news sites offer easy tools to email a link to someone, so I use it to send a reminder to myself of something that caught my interest. I can then write it up or read it again when it's more convenient.
- Do not delete the pre-formatted reference section. You will definitely need it if you are writing a response to an article from The New York Times or elsewhere.
- Although I initially suggest the BBC News, I agree with the ETS recommendation that The New York Times is a much better standard to aim at for daily reading. (The local papers The Nation and the Bangkok Post are not on my list of suggested reading sources because they are pretty much garbage and not good examples of writing for you to be reading, with the exception of material that they copy and paste from other sources.)
- possibly to be added to if something else occurs to me later.
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References
Educational Testing Services. (2008). TOEFL iBT Tips: How to Prepare for the TOEFL iBT. Retrieved January 16, 2012 from http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/TOEFL/pdf/TOEFL_Tips.pdf
