How Google News Can Improve Your English

Listen to this post as a podcast: (Listen first without reading the text, listen while reading the text, read using Lingro and then listen again without reading the text. This will help your listening comprehension).



Leia esta postagem em português: http://georgeroberts.blogspot.com/2010/08/o-que-google-noticias-pode-fazer-para.html.

One of the options on the main page of Google, Google News, has become an alternative to the daily newspaper for many people. A computer program automatically chooses the hottest news of the moment with continuous updates 24 / 7 (Americanese for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). On this page, you have access to thousands of sites and sometimes thousands of articles about a particular topic. If you are interested in a particular topic or news story, you can follow it by placing the relevant term in the search box. This is especially good because sometimes the corporate media tend to "forget" the ramifications of issues that have lost their impact on the general public but are still important. Smaller or alternative sites or blogs accessible on Google News can keep you abreast of these issues.

The good news for us is the fact that Google News now has versions for many different languages and countries, including several in English. On the menu in the upper left of the screen, place your cursor over U.S. (United States) and click. An updated news bulletin will open up. Place the word "Brazil" (with a z, not an s!) in the search box.

So kill two birds with one stone: get part of your daily news fix and practice your English at the same time! It's surprising how much about Brazil there is on Google News. Even if your English is not that great, you have the huge advantage of knowing what these news stories are about because you've been following them in Portuguese. You can guess a lot from the context.

When I performed my search, there were articles about Pele and Neymar, the purchase of TAM by LAN Chile, Petrobras's profits, Dilma's commanding lead in the opinion polls, the future of the American coach whose team lost to Brazil in a friendly, and a new natural gas deposit in Brazil and the reactions to it of Eike Batista, the former husband of Luma de Oliveira (I added this important detail).

You can use multiple versions of the same story to broaden your vocabulary and learn new synonyms. You can also do this with the subjects on the main page of Google News U.S. that have nothing to do with Brazil. Do not forget to put the articles you are reading and comparing in Lingro to make it easy to review your new vocabulary later. In studying German,I find it useful to see the same subject matter covered in different ways and with different words. If you follow a particular subject for several consecutive days and in several different versions, not only will you strengthen your vocabulary almost automatically; you will also become extremely well-informed.