Critiquing newspaper commentary articles

Koh, A. (2004). Newspaper literacy: An investigation of how Singaporean students read the Straits Times. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 3(3), 43-60.

Background

The author’s students did not know how to read a newspaper critically as they summarized articles instead of critiquing them in newspaper critical commentaries. Curriculum planners and teachers of General Paper, however, assumed that junior college students were interested in current affairs, and would thus not have any difficulty reading a newspaper.

Aims

This study investigated the problems that Singaporean pre-university students in a junior college faced when reading newspapers and sought to conceptualize interventions that would help students move from writing summaries of newspaper articles to writing newspaper critical commentaries.

Sample

First-year pre-university students from three classes in one junior college participated in this study.

Method

The author gathered survey data on the newspaper reading habits of students and conducted three focus group discussions based on the survey data collected.

Findings

Students found reading newspapers difficult because they could not relate to the issues reported, found the vocabulary used incomprehensible, and the sentence structures too complex. Very few students read newspaper articles closely and questioned what they read. They found the commentary and analysis section of the newspaper boring, long, and very difficult to summarize. They were not aware that these commentary articles reflected one perspective, and that they could critique that perspective. They also preferred to read the ‘Home’ section which they could relate to more easily rather than the ‘Prime News’ section which featured events that were remotely distanced from their own world. Students read the newspaper for knowledge and not for language purposes.

Implications

Teachers needed to teach the newspaper genre explicitly, show students how news items were constructed and selected, and how the perspective taken in the news item might not reflect the reality of the world. Students could form a newspaper reading community to critically discuss the news item. They could use what they preferred to read for discussion before proceeding to news items that might require them to use a more critical framework for analysis. Students could be taught the vocabulary and analytical tools of critical discourse analysis to help them discover the ideologies and representations of news items.

Original article retrieved from EBSCOHost.