Abstract

Articles of newspapers online presents a scenario for the students of secondary III, IV and V of the secondary level.  Based on the objectives of the M.E.Q. program for English as a second language, it offers resources, pages for the teacher and the students, activities for exercise and evaluation. At the end of this communicative learning situation the students should be able to analyse and write a news article more effectively.

The core of the scenario suggests a step-by-step approach proposing: brainstorming, searching on the web, writing a news report and presenting it to the class. Featuring Kippling's poem, My Six Servants, the learning situation begins by showing the questions words: who, what, why, where, and how on the student's page. Then follows an example of analysis of a news article, Winning Conditions for Habs, from Red Fisher of The Gazette. In the page of links, news agencies and newspaper sites all across North America offer a good choice of topics to find a good news article for class study. The teacher aims at an article and asks his students to analyse it. Once the students have done the exercise, the teacher may do it again on another site, but this time as evaluation material. A follow-up may be done in class reading some students' news and discussing them. Each activity may last for an hour or two.

Since each news site changes every day, it offers a source of renewed information and progressive learning that can be useful not only to professional reporters, but also to everyone who wants to be fully aware of the changing world in which we live.