News in English

Trying to learn English by watching news in English is sometimes frustrating for those who are still at the beginning levels. The pronunciation of words read by newscasters is not clear, fast and most often full of new terminologies. For beginning English learners, watching, reading or listening to news is not what we recommend. But if you are on the intermediate to advance levels, reading news in English is what we highly recommend. This might be difficult for the first time but the more we watch English news, the better and the faster will be our comprehension about English.
There are not many news websites that provide English news learning materials for beginning levels students. There are two famous websites, i.e. BBC Learning English and VOA Special English programs which you can visit by typing their names in search engine, for example, Google or Yahoo.

The above news agencies provide sound and video recordings, as well as their transcripts especially for those who are still learning English as second or foreign language. The vocabularies which they use in their news have been adapted to help English learners. So, if you are interested in listening or reading news in special English, please, visit the websites of the above news agency which I have just mentioned.

In recent years, a lot of countries have satellite TV programs that are broadcasted in English. For examples, Peoples' Republic of China has CCTV9 which is fully aired in English, NHK from Japan also has English program which is aimed at introducing or promoting Japanese people and its culture throughout the world. The use of English by a lot of state owned TV stations especially for satellite programs around the world has helped English learners enrich their understanding and knowledge about this international language and at the same time widened their horizon about other countries and their cultures. Many people are not interested in watching news that are related to politics and other heavy matters. If you are one of them then I will recommend a good satellite TV channel. It is called Travel Channel. Ask your cable tv service provider to provide you with such channel or information on its frequency so that you can watch travel news and feature stories that might be more interesting to you than the politics of the world.

by Charles Roring.

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