by Paul Wringer and David Dycus
<pcwringer@asu.aasa.ac.jp> and <dcdycus@asu.aasa.ac.jp>

For sheer variety and timeliness, it's hard to find a better source of teaching material than the newspaper, and on-line newspapers have made access to the news easier than ever. Such access is a great advantage, but finding articles appropriate to learners' reading level is a challenge. With this in mind, we present this set of links. In the first section we present sites that have an explicit educational focus somehow related to the reading the news. In the second we present on-line papers without any educational focus but with qualities that make them good places to look for authentic news articles. Finally, we list some sites that specialize in links to newspapers and other news media.

Sites with Material for Language Education

The Bangkok Post
<http://www.bangkokpost.net/education/home.htm>
This is an excellent site made with EFL readers in mind. It's a good idea to check out the Site Map for the Educational Services Home Page first <http://www. bangkokpost.net/education/map.htm> as it gives a good view of what is on the site and how to get to it. It contains links to the following sections: Feature Focus, Improving Your English; Teaching Tips; Reading Tips; Department Services; Tips for Students. Feature Focus presents a summary of the day's featured article with a link to the full article. The full-length article is a true reading exercise, complete with pre-reading and post-reading exercises to help readers hone their reading strategies and skills. The other sections, as their names imply, offer help and advice to EFL readers.

The New York Times /On the Web/ Learning Network
<http://www.nytimes.com/learning/>
This is another newspaper that includes resources for education, although not specifically for EFL/ESL. Lesson plans are archived and can be searched, and the grade level for each lesson plan is indicated. The main list of menu options has sections called Student Connection (includes news summaries and quizzes), Teacher Connection (including daily and archived lesson plans), and Parents Connection (includes follow-up discussion topics).

Los Angeles Times
<http://www.latimes.com>
This major newspaper has a page dedicated to education , entitled Launch Point, designed to get young learners and teachers connected to education content sites. At <http://www.latimes.com/ news/ learning/launch/vocabulary.htm> are links to sites to vocabulary development pages, divided into level1, 2, and 3 (which seem to equate with beginner, intermediate, and advanced).

Story of the Week (CNN)
<http://literacynet.org/cnnsf/week.html>
A well-organized site, easy to use. Each week a story of the week is presented in both abridged and full form. Includes instructor pages and categorized story archives. Menu options include Story, Abridged Story, and Story Outline. The page is linked to the Learning Resources page <http://cnnsf.com/>, which offers "web-delivered in-struction using current and past CNN San Francisco bureau news stories...for adult literacy and educational purposes." Many stories have audio and video support. The Headline News Brief button takes you to a page of story summaries and links to other stories (in turn linked to other related stories) at the main CNN site and to related sites.

English to Go
<http://www.english-to-go.com/>
Presents free weekly reading lessons based on a Reuters newspaper article, complete with exercises, but one must subscribe to get access to archived materials and other resources. An individual can get a six month subscription to the English To Go Library of Instant Lessons for US $20. Institutional rates are available.

A Small Selection of Newspapers

It is impossible to even begin a comprehensive search of on-line newspapers, much less a description of the best ones. In this list, we have tried to list a few sites that 1) present concise article summaries, which are a help those searching for material and also help readers prepare for reading the full article, 2) are easy to navigate, and 3) have free, searchable archives (the more comprehensive, the better). Because of space limitations, we describe only two to three newspapers from Great Britain, the United States, and Australia, but encourage readers to send in their own site descriptions for on-line English newspapers in other nations. Multiple sites are listed not only because variety itself is good, but because the way stories are reported is often different from paper to paper and country to country. Reading articles on the same topic but from different sources is a useful way to encourage critical thinking.

Australia

Sydney Morning Herald
<http://www.smh.com.au/>
This paper carries a full range of international and national news with short summaries of stories with links to full reports and related stories. You must go to the end of a long page to find the archives link. At <http://www.smh.com.au/cgi-bin/archive.cgi> you can search a one-month archive of stories for free and three months' worth of articles for a fee.

The Age
<http://www.theage.com.au/news/index.html>
Similar in format and content to Sydney Morning Herald, with short summaries linked to full reports and an archive of four weeks worth of stories. The homepage <http://www.theage.com.au/> focuses exclusively on Australian news, but the link above presents headlines and links to a full range of international, national, and local news. Free archives are available for the last 30 days worth of articles; fees are charged to view older articles.

Great Britain

The Times
<http://www.the-times.co.uk/>
The homepage of this well-known newspaper carries brief, linked summaries of the head stories of the different sections of the paper for that day. Worth noting is searchable archive of news articles dating back to October, 1999. The "Index" button takes you to a page of linked headlines. The search button takes you to a search engine page that is rather sparse. It appears that archives only date back to 1 January, 2000. Search results provide the first paragraph of the articles and links to them, and retrieval appears to be free.

The Guardian
<http://www.guardian.co.uk>
The Guardian has a well-organized homepage with concise summaries linked to articles that are printer-friendly. There is also a searchable archive <http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive> dating back to September 1, 1998 without any apparent restrictions or registration requirements. A keyword search produces the first paragraph of articles and a link to the full story.

Ananova
<http://www.ananova.com>
This unique inclusion to our list is not a news-paper per se, although in many ways it looks like one. It is more a "super news site" presenting the day's top stories from various sources, a page of the days's headlines and links the major newspapers, and a search engine that scans 30-days worth of archived articles of a score of major British news-papers. An interesting part of its content is Ananova, a virtual reality newscaster who "reads" short sum-maries of headline news stories. Her synthesized speech is not exactly natural, but is close enough to be easily understood. Ananova and the related con-tent are from the Ananova site. It may well be the best site to search for recent UK news.

U.S.A.

The Chicago Sun-Times
<http://www.suntimes.com/index/>
The homepage itself has only a handful of sum-maries and is mostly just links to sections of the newspaper. The sections themselves (i.e. News, Sports) do have brief summaries linked to articles. At the top of each article page is a button that links you to a "printer friendly" version of the article. The search facility provides a list of the top to articles that match your query, with titles that link to the articles. The articles also have the "printable version" option.

USA Today
<http://www.usatoday.com/>
USA Today is generally recognized as having content written at an easier reading level than that of most other national newspapers in the U.S. and, for that reason, may be a good site to visit. Article summaries, however, are relatively long.

Los Angeles Times
<http://www.latimes.com>
The site is easily navigated using the links from the homepage and the article summaries found there and on linked pages. Articles tend to be longer and more difficult. The site search facility <http://www.latimes.com/sitemap.htm> searches the articles of the last seven days. The last 14 days of stories are free to registered site members. Archives can be searched for free for 14 days worth of issues. Issues dating back to January 1990 are also archived but cost $2.00 each to be retrieved. Anyone wanting to browse the archives (free or otherwise) must register first with the LA Times. The site also has links to a page dedicated to education (see above).

Links to World Newspapers

The number of sites dedicated to news searches and links is growing. Here are a few worth visiting.

Cyber Newsstand - World Newspapers
<http://broadcast-live.com/newspapers/> The World Newspapers page is part of Broad-cast Live Com <http://broadcast-live.com/>, a site with links to all major forms of broadcast media. Australian, Canadian, British, European and American newspapers are currently available "the minute after they are published." Available are:

British newspapers: 11 papers
Australia/New Zealand: 11 Australian and 2 New Zealand papers
Canada: 28 newspapers
USA: 16 newspapers and 8 magazines
Europe: 24 newspapers (various languages)

UK Newspapers
<http://www.ipl.org/cgi-bin/reading/news>
Carries a wide selection of regional and national British newspapers. Pages include newspapers' feature articles.

Online Newspapers
<http://www.ipl.org/reading/news/>
Lists online versions of print-based newspapers. In addition to traditional local and national newspapers, it also lists official and student run newspapers from all levels of schools.

Other

The Ultimate Collection of Newspapers
<http://pppp.net/links/news/>

The Internet Public Library
<http://www.ipl.org/ >

PL Collections
<http://www.ipl.org/col/>