Well, news and world events are always broadcast in major TV news services. This way, you can first follow news in your native language to get a general understanding of what is happening around the world. This general knowledge of current events will help you understand more when watching the news in your foreign target language and your anxiety level will decrease significantly.
Yep! Looking for news channel of your choice would be the first step. Well, of course you can search your own TV channel and choose any News Service that you like.
Any Benefits from watching TV news? So what’s in it for me?
Another good thing is that following news will allow you for getting used to both the sounds of a foreign language and different accents. By following the news you will usually get various speakers and news announcers who are speakers with good diction and pronunciation to be followed. Furthermore, presented news stories will give you a good idea of what’s going on in the country where the target language of your choice is spoken.
Also, usually TV news have the so-called news tickers (also known as “crawler” or “slide”) that are put in the lower third of the television screen space on TV news networks dedicated to presenting headlines or news pieces. News tickers usually differ among the TV stations. For this instance, Sky News always displays a ticker of black color with white text throughout the whole broadcast day. This ticker turns yellow with black text to highlight breaking news.
News tickers can be also a good source of new vocabulary for you as while watching the news you can write down all the new words that appear in the news pieces. TV or Radio broadcasting news service. When I began learning English (my first foreign language that I wanted to learn) I tuned in for the latest BBC Radio news. The thing with radio news is it is harder to follow as you have no visuals (images) to support your general understanding of the news being presented in TV news footage. You are actually exposed to the sound – this can also enhance your listening comprehension skills and sounds of a foreign language and you are not distracted by images.
Quite often radio news services also offer podcasts – MP3 files with the news that can be downloaded and listened to later. You then are able to play the downloaded recordings as many times as you wish to understand better the pieces of news that otherwise might have been missed.
Having no time to follow the regular TV news?
Hmm… there is an option for you as well. You can install an application that will help you follow the latest news in your computer, iPad or your mobile phone (e.g. Breaking News). It is up to you to follow news in a form of your choice.
