WHY USE CURRENT NEWS ARTICLES?
There are many excellent commercial textbooks available for ESL/EFL students of all levels that include either actual (e.g., Tiersky & Chernoff, 1993; Tiersky & Hughes, 1996) or simplified (e.g., Heyer, 1996) news articles. A major advantage of these texts for busy instructors, of course, is that the articles have been carefully selected to be accessible and of high interest to students of a particular level, and the texts provide a number of useful vocabulary and grammar exercises, comprehension and discussion questions, etc. So why use current news articles in your classes at all? First of all, as their instructor, you know the level of ability as well as the unique needs and interests of your students better than any textbook author. Current articles can be chosen that are not only at an appropriate level for your students, but are also more interesting, relevant and timely than those that appear in textbooks. After all, by the time most textbooks are written, published, and distrib
