Filipinos in Thailand - Integrating Campus Journalism to ESL Reading & Writing Courses

Integrating Campus Journalism to ESL Reading & Writing Courses

Wednesday, 09 January 2008

One of the co-curricular activities that an ESL/EFL teacher can integrate to its reading and writing course syllabus is the introduction of the basic concepts of campus journalism and its application.

This “added” interactive course is suitable even to a heterogeneous classroom setup in the upper secondary level of the Mini-English Program (MEP) and the English Program (EP). Lecture and training will most probably take 8 to 16 hours depending on the course plan and other factors like number of students and their level of English proficiency, teacher’s background, and school’s support. The first publication will most probably take at least 6 hours a month for its completion starting from the distribution of topics and work to student-writers, the gathering of information through interviews, readings and research, the writing of news/literary/feature articles, the editing and revising of articles until the publication’s reproduction and distribution. As usual, beginners need time to get used to the tasks given to them but after three to four issues, they will surely learn the tricks and master the processes, and so teacher’s minimum supervision in the “field” and in the classroom is all just what they’ll need next.

The main goal of the course is to come up with a “class newsletter” similar to that of a school paper be it monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly publication. A monthly issue is found to be more productive in terms of students’ mastery of micro-language skills although it entails more time and effort. One doesn’t need to be very ambitious in coming up with a class newsletter. You can always start with a 2-page 8.5X14 inch – newsletter containing short straight news articles on the school’s activities called “news tidbits”, short yet interesting feature articles about students, teachers, non-teaching staff and almost about anything that catch the interest of the students. After “mastering” the technique in writing straight news articles, students are introduced to writing feature articles like “getting to know” teachers, hobbies and interests of students, interesting community events and the like. The final stage of the course is the introduction of writing literary articles like poems, songs, short stories, movie and song reviews, and other literary pieces. But the ESL teacher has to choose specific writing skills he/she will be teaching to the students that are appropriate to their levels and needs based on the time-frame of the course. Later, the students are free to write articles that they are most comfortable with, and regular class lessons won’t be interrupted because they can submit their articles anytime, and they can revised them at home.

1. Why campus journalism?

If you are looking for something different and challenging activities for the students, then making them feel and be-like a journalist is one of the interesting class projects. Campus journalism is very interactive because the students are expected to write easy Wh-questions, conduct short interviews in gathering information, writing short paragraphs, revising their own grammatical mistakes, checking information, encoding, lay outing, and a lot more. The four major language skills are covered plus the mastery of language functions can be easily evaluated. Moreover, the product itself (newsletter) brings the students into a deeper realization how the English language works, and it gives them more profitable reasons to appreciate the need to learn the English language.

Meanwhile, the ESL teachers themselves can use the finish “product” as an authentic material in any reading classes. Since it was written by the students themselves, its language and content are very specific that every student in school (even Thai teachers) won’t find difficulty relating to it even just by looking at the photos, and thus it can also be used as an alternative to commercial student magazines.

Not only that, the newsletter shares in creating an English atmosphere in school. One may never know that an article written by a student may inspire others to view the English language as something necessary in their lives and not just a school requirement.

2. What should be the content of a class newsletter?

Normally, the first page contains news articles, photos and announcements while the second page contains the literary and feature articles, and of course some interesting photos. The editorial staff may add other important features: editorial staff box, news tidbits, columns and more. However, avoid having many articles and photos crowding in every page.

3. Who does the editing and lay outing?

If there are “highly” skilled students, the ESL teacher can train one or two in editing common grammatical mistakes. Naturally, rewriting the article is the responsibility of the student-writer. The ESL teacher proofreads the final drafts of the articles. If there is a need for the student-writer to revise and/or rewrite his/her article then he/she is obliged to do so. After all, it is the PROCESS of learning which is more important. In the absence of student editors due to a myriad of “school responsibilities,” the ESL teacher needs to find more time to edit the students’ articles. Again, the good part is that the ESL teacher is dealing with very short articles only. A caution to the ESL teacher or to the student editor: you should NOT impose your writing styles and vocabulary know-how to the student-writer. There are indeed many better ways to write an article; and the writing style of the student-writers may not be that good but for as long as their articles are comprehensible and free from grammatical errors, it is always advisable that student-writer’s style and vocabulary know-how should be always considered as priority. The student-writer finds the task very fulfilling in the end especially if he/she reads more of what he/she has originally written.

The lay outing, on the other hand, can be at first prepared by the ESL teacher and if he/she was able to train a reliable student then the lay outing of the newsletter can be given as a student extra-assignment. However, considering student load and the objectives of the course, the ESL teacher might as well take it as an added responsibility. A two-page newsletter isn’t exactly that hard to lay out as long as the ESL teacher knows how to use the Microsoft publisher. If not, the ESL teacher can view it as an “educational” experience in using other Microsoft programs.

4. Is it costly?

First of all, producing an official school broadsheet or magazine-like newsletter is indeed quite expensive. The good news is we don’t need to be that ambitious. Thus a class newsletter is just proper and affordable. We’re talking about a colored 2-page 8.5x 14 inch – newsletter. Encoding is most probably free because the students can do it at home or in school. Then the photocopying (which makes your newsletter black and white) of a long paper costs, say, 1 baht for each page which makes that 2 baht for a back to back page. The cost of the reproduction of 200 – 300 copies (depending on the number of target readers) can be subsidized by the school.

Abel Morales Cadias
MA-ESL
ESL teacher - Damrong High School (EEP)
Guest Lecturer ( Chiangrai Rajabhat University - Graduate School)

Abel has been in the field of education for 9 years. He has earned his Master's degree and is currently on his way to his Doctorate degree. He now lives and works in the north of Thailand, in Chiang Rai.

Share your views

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

More about Abel

Tag Story:

Wanted to connect with the Filipinos in Thailand?
Join us in our active discussion forum. Click Here!!!

Check out the Faces of Filipinos in Thailand!
View them all here in our Filipino Gallery.

To go back to our main page, please follow this link.

Related Articles: