What's in the News? [antikvár]

Introduction Learning a language is not merely an academic exercise. Students of English want to be able to use the language they have acquired in the same way as English people use it. They not only want to understand spoken English and to make themselves understood; they also want to be able to appreciate English television and radio programmes, to laugh at English jokes, to sing English songs and to read English newspapers. This last wish often gives rise to some disappointment, when, for example, the student who has passed his exams with top marks and has earned the commendation of his teacher finds that he is quite unable to understand the newspapers which he knows English people read every day. He realises that he lacks something. The deficiency is not entirely his fault. The difficulty lies in the fact that British newspapers have a style all of their own; or - rather -each paper has its own individual style forming part of a general journalistic pattern which we may loosely classify as 'Newspaper English'. The more popular dailies use a chatty, slangy, up-to-the moment way of writing, which, as often as not, leaves the foreign reader very bewildered, if not under a totally false impression. Here is a typical piece of such reporting : Curvaceous Patricia Potts, the girl with the smashing silhouette who was Scunthorpe's Dish of the Month in October - the dishiest dish in the area - was dished up with a dish of trouble on her way home from bingo last night. Two would-be muggers tried it on in Dark Street near her home, but she sent them packing with handbag a-whirling, nails a-scratching and platform clogs a-kicking. Even the most conscientious student might be forgiven for giving up at this point. And yet it must be realised that this style carries no problems for the millions that read it every day. Headlines are another problem. The English reader scans the headlines to find out what the news stories are about; the foreign student has to read the stories to find out what the headlines mean. The popular press, in order to print as much information in as small a space as possible, has developed a content-packed sentence, very often crammed with compound words of a highly complicated nature, that needs to be treated warily at first. For example : Warwickshire police announced late last night that Arthur Prentice, a 35-year-old lorry driver of Babblesthorpe, Cambridgeshire, wanted in connection with the disappearance of 17-year-old Glenys Dennis from her home in Cambridge last March, had been arrested in the Solihull area of Birmingham and was helping police with their enquiries. • h. I - ¦ ' ¦ ' 11 I > ; I ! M I ' .1 ¦ ii I li I i. V . ' '' I i'-- ¦ I' -, - ¦ ¦ J ".'I, -i -i .i