Desk of International & Social Affair
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We deal with English newspaper reporters in the Recruit. Do you learn many things from there? I hope you will. You are also reading English news magazines. Considering you are a high schooler, I wonder how much you understand while you are reading. To improve your reading skill, I’ll give you several tips.
First of all, read the headlines!
Headlines show the overall meaning of the paragraph, so reading them is one of the most important things in an English newspaper. Before reading the whole sentence, watch the headlines and guess. Then read the following paragraph and compare it with what you think about. Are they similar?
While you are doing this, you can also improve your writing skill. Most of the be-verbs are omitted in the headline. Besides, past-verbs are rarely used because newspapers have to give a live feeling. Keeping these things in mind, let’s go to the body of the context.
Continue to read!
While reading the paragraph, you may think there are too many words that you do not know. Despite this difficulty, do not give up. No one can understand every word in the newspaper.
Do you know all the vocabulary words in a Korean newspaper? Of course not! There are many new words such as tiger slam and DINK. Do not use a dictionary and continue to read.
Memorize abbriviation!
You need to concentrate on the first sentence of the paragraph because most important contexts are in the first sentence. Moreover, to know the abbreviation can be very helpful. For example, NK means North Korea, WTO means World Trade Center, laid-off means fire, and NGP means National Grand Party.
Read what you heard about!
Finally, when you read the newspaper, choose one or two articles that you like, and then increase the quantity. If you are a high school student, it may be difficult to read economy and politics. Instead, read the culture, sports, and Ann Landers sections. These stories are much more familiar to you. For example, you know the story about Park Chan-ho, so you can easily understand the article.
Some of you get sick when you think about newspapers. Newspapers are filled with gloomy and sad information. However, you cannot avoid studying English, and reading the English newspapers will be a good way to learn English and get common knowledge at the same time. I hope you try these tips, they really work! I also hope you will keep on eye our magazine.
The UOS Times
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