Spanish
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 Spain, but from many different Spanish-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 Spanish language students like yourselves. Of
course, newspapers aren’t the only source of news stories on
the internet. Broadcast media organisations such as the Spanish equivalent
of the BBC, TVE and internet search engines such as Spanish 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 Spanish on these
topics on the internet?
One good way is by using the Spanish Google news search engine.
To see how this works, follow the steps below:
Visit the Google.es
web site
- Click on the “noticias” tab above the “busquedas”
box. The Google Spanish 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 ETA,
Real Madrid, or the Spanish retailer Zara, you could try a key word
search
- Click into the dialogue box at the top of the page. Now, type
in Zara
- Click on “Buscar en noticias”. This will produce
hundreds of articles in Spanish from around the world about Zara.
Click on one of the links to access the article. If you want the
most recent article, click on “ordenar por fecha”
TIP: To find an article from the hundreds identified, 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.
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