Understanding newspapers (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

Understanding newspapers
Tags: Newspapers \| Poll \| Comprehension/understanding \| English
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Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

Poll Question: Non native English speakers: How many words are new in the article?
Poll Choice	Votes	Poll Statistics
0 new words - it’s easy!	8	[57.14%]
1 to 5 new words	6	[42.86%]
5 -10 new words	0	[0.00%]
11 - 20 new words	0	[0.00%]
20+ new words	0	[0.00%]
You can not vote in this poll

Andrew C
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
naturalarabic.com
Joined 5181 days ago
205 posts - 350 votes

Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)

Message 1 of 4

05 November 2010 at 2:53am | IP Logged

New York Times wrote:

A fly-by of a comet went off flawlessly Thursday morning, giving giddy scientists only their fifth close-up look at the nucleus of a comet.

NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft passed within 435 miles of Comet Hartley 2 about 10 a.m. Eastern time. Soon after, it turned its high-speed antenna toward Earth to beam back the photos it had taken.

People at mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., cheered when the signal from the spacecraft came in and cheered again as the pictures popped up on their computer screens.

The first ones, taken hours earlier while the spacecraft was tens of thousands of miles from Hartley 2, showed a small white dot.

Then they saw several images taken near its closest approach and marveled at the odd shape of Hartley 2, which seemed to resemble a peanut or a bowling pin flying through space. Rays of gas and dust were shooting off its surface.

“We are all holding our breath to see what discoveries await us in the observations near closest approach,” Michael A’Hearn, a University of Maryland astronomer and the mission’s principal investigator, said in a statement.

I'm interested to have an idea of how well foreign students of English can understand English newspaper articles. This one is from the New York Times and is just a random article of average difficulty.

Thank you!
1 person has voted this message useful

Doitsujin
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5311 days ago
1256 posts - 2363 votes

Speaks: German*, English

Message 2 of 4

05 November 2010 at 10:27am | IP Logged

If you want to see the text through they eyes of a non-native speaker, have it analyzed by the The Oxford 3000™ profiler. According to the site, 81% of the words in the article are among the 3000 most frequently used words, which should make it a fairly easy text.
1 person has voted this message useful

schoenewaelder
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5551 days ago
759 posts - 1197 votes

Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

Message 3 of 4

05 November 2010 at 6:41pm | IP Logged

Well I'm English, and I'd like to know what a "high speed" antenna is. As far as I was aware, all the conventional ones are limited to 3*10^8 m/s.

I was also confused for a second by "a bowling pin". I imagined a normal pin travelling rapidly, with perhaps a slightly unstable wobbling or rolling motion.

I didn't vote, though.

Edited by schoenewaelder on 05 November 2010 at 6:42pm
1 person has voted this message useful

Splog
Diglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
anthonylauder.c
Joined 5660 days ago
1062 posts - 3263 votes

Speaks: English*, Czech
Studies: Mandarin

Message 4 of 4

05 November 2010 at 6:52pm | IP Logged

Doitsujin wrote:

If you want to see the text through they eyes of a non-native
speaker, have it analyzed by the
The
Oxford 3000™ profiler. According to the site, 81% of the words in the article are
among the 3000 most frequently used words, which should make it a fairly easy text.

Even though many of the words were basic, they were often combined idiomatically, in
ways that makes the meaning less obvious, and therefore more advanced. This was
particularly the case with phrasal verbs. For example:

"fly by"
"went off"
"beam back"
"popped up"
"shooting off"

3 persons have voted this message useful

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