What's in the News?

Week 16^th - 18^th March

Hi! How are you doing?

Starting the countdown for Easter? I am!

10 - 9 – 8 -7- …ZERO!

By the way, talking about ‘How are you doing?’

Do you remember how to answer these questions?

How do you do?	How do you do?	Formal for: "Nice to meet you."
How are you doing?	I'm fine, thanks. / Not too bad.	Informal for: "How are you?"
What do you do?	I'm a student / a teacher /an engineer.	Informal for: "What's your job?"
What are you doing?	I'm learning English.	What you are doing at the moment.

We started the week reading a text entitled ‘A hard lesson’.

It was the story of a tourist who was conned.

con⁴ /kɑn/adj., v., conned, con•ning,n. 

adj. 

·  Informal Termsinvolving dishonesty and trickery;
deceitful:swindled by a con artist.
v. 

·  Informal Termsto swindle; trick:[~ + object + out of + object]The crooks conned her out of her life savings.[~ + object]She was conned quite smoothly.

·  Informal Termsto persuade by deception, threats, exaggeration, etc.:[~ + object]He conned her with a scary story about witches.[~ + object + into + object]conned me into going out with her.

A man in a business suit sat next to him and told him that he had lost his suitcase with all his documents and a train ticket in it. He asked him to borrow some money so as to get a train to Madrid promising that his company would pay him back. But everything was a lie (not true) and the tourist never saw his money again. Luckily it was only €60!

We continued with the news.

Heading head•ing /ˈhɛdɪŋ/n. [countable]

something that serves as a head, esp. a title or caption:The heading was: "Verb tenses in English.''

Headlines head•line /ˈhɛdˌlaɪn/n., v., -lined, -lin•ing. 

·  Journalisma statement printed in large letters at the beginning of a newspaper article, summarizing the subject of the article.

  Journalismheadlines, [plural] news stories important enough to appear on the front page of newspapers:The peace conference has been in the headlines all week.

Title  /ˈtaɪtl/

ti•tle /ˈtaɪtəl/n., adj., v., -tled, -tling.

n. 

  [countable]the name of an artistic work, as a book, painting, etc.

  [countable]a heading, as of a chapter of a book, that describes what is contained:The title was: "Chapter 4: Issues and Implications.''

Remember: we use present tense in headlines, (the “titles” in the news) so the item of news looks more interesting or shocking. After that we use a variety of tenses, past simple, continuous or present to report the piece of news.

Look out! News is uncountable in English and takes the singular form of the verb.

I’ve got two news. I’ve got some news. 

The news are bad.  The news is bad.

First we listened to some headlines and tried to get the key words (the words that carry important information). After that we tried to make up (to arrange, to compose) the actual (finished) news item.

We wrote a news report. The news was really interesting. “Kangaroo saves farmer’s life.”

It was the story of a kangaroo that was adopted by an Australian farmer after the kangaroo’s mother had been run over by a car and was killed. Time went by (passed) and the kangaroo grew up (became an adult). One day there was a terrible storm that damaged the fence around the farm. The farmer was repairing it when a branch of a tree came off and hit him unconscious. The kangaroo was standing near him and started to make a loud noise (bark) to attract somebody’s attention. The kangaroo succeeded and the farmer’s family came to help him.

It was a nice story. Unfortunately most of the news is usually bad!

And that was our week!

See you tomorrow!