Newspaper Articles in University EFL Reading Classes

Recent emphasis on authenticity of materials in Communicative Language Teaching has helped reappraise the pedagogical value of newspaper articles, producing dozens of EFL/ESL textbooks which contain newspaper articles as the target reading passages. Newspaper articles in those textbooks, however, usually report events that took place more than a year before and thus have already lost much of their immediacy and consequently some of their pedagogical value as well. This paper reports a simple but effective use of newspaper articles in the form of a weekly short quiz in advanced EFL reading classes for university students. This weekly newspaper quiz not only takes full advantage of newspaper articles as authentic reading materials but also focuses on their immediacy as an important motivating factor for advanced EFL students. Merits of this weekly newspaper quiz are discussed from various points of view, and the students' reaction to the quiz is also analyzed