Here is an fun exercise you can do every day if you want to. Take the front section of the Bangkok Post and quickly look at the headlines for words you don t know. Then quickly look at the lead to see if there is a synonym to help you. Also look at the body of the story if you need to. And don t forget to look at any pictures accompanying the story.
News stories are especially useful because of their repetitive style.
Be sure to point this out to your students. The week s lesson will give your students some very good practice in using the repetitive elements of news stories to understand new words. The first of these elements is the use of synonyms. Under the restrictions of the news style, writers have to repeat themselves, but they can avoid sounding repetitious by using fresh ways of expressing the same idea. The first example in the introduction illustrates this well.