French
Online Extensive Reading and Listening Programme

Reading the News

One way of accessing a virtually unrestricted supply of valuable reading resources is through the internet. It provides you with material not just from France , but from many different French-speaking countries. Newspapers offer a particularly rich source of reading material on the internet. There are literally hundreds of them available online giving you access to articles on a wide range of international, national and regional issues. News websites are regularly updated with, in some cases, articles and reports appearing as often as every ten minutes. This means that they offer a constant source of fresh and interesting reading material for French language students like yourselves. Of course, newspapers aren’t the only source of news stories on the internet. Broadcast media organisations such as the French equivalent of the BBC, TF1/FRANCE 2 and internet search engines such as French Google also maintain news pages on their websites.

HOW TO SEARCH FOR THE NEWS:

It’s important to read articles on subjects that interest you, whether that be football, fashion, culture or current affairs. But how do you go about finding newspaper articles in French on these topics on the internet?

One good way is by using the French Google news search engine. To see how this works, follow the steps below:

• Visit the Google.fr web site : www.google.fr
• Click on the “actualités” tab above the “Recherche Google” box. The Google French news page will appear. It contains links to the most important news stories from across the world
• Click on one that interests you, and read it through. Alternatively, if there is a particular issue that interests you, for example, Nicolas Sarkozy, haute couture, or the French comic, Lucky Luke, you could try a key word search
• Click into the dialogue box at the top of the page. Now, type in Lucky Luke
• Click on “Recherche Actualités”. This will produce a number of articles in French from around the world about Lucky Luke. Click on one of the links to access the article. This will give you a “Tri par pertinence” (articles sorted by relevance) but if you want the most recent article, click on “Tri par date”.

TIP : To find an article, focus on the titles. Click on one that sounds interesting. Now, read the first paragraph of the article - journalists call this the lead. It’s designed to grab your attention and give you an idea of the issues discussed in the text. Quickly skim the rest of the article by reading the first sentence in each of the paragraphs, any sub-headings and captions under pictures. If it still seems interesting, read the full text. If not, look for something else, there are loads of articles to choose from.