Having spent most of the morning hungover, reading the Observer, I thought I'd try and offer my thoughts on some of the newspapers available here in England. I'd definitely recommend reading one on a regular basis to help with reading, vocabulary and recognising grammar.
The Metro: It's free, you can pick it up on most buses (try and find a copy without any sick on it!) and it's a pretty easy read. As it's designed to be read by almost everybody in about 30-40 minutes it has a nice balance of news and fluff (Fluff: in a magazine or newspaper, unimportant stories such as 'Paris Hilton has a new nose!').
The Sun: The most popular newspaper in England. It's pretty stupid, aimed at people with a very low reading age and does not contain serious journalism. On the other hand, it does have a very good football section. Sample headline: McCLARREN OUT NOW!
The Guardian: Liberal, fairly left-wing newspaper. Read by most students at Manchester University. Has some good articles in everyday, gives a balanced view of the news and has a high standard of language and vocabulary. Sample headline: Will Global Warming Destroy Us All?
The Times: Mostly read by older, richer more conservative people. A British institution, it has a very high standard of writing, the most complex grammar and vocabulary of any newspaper and balanced reporting. The Times can be hard to read even for English people, but is normally worth the struggle. Sample Headline: Labour Cuts Tax Again
The Daily Mail: Stay away from this one! Full of lies, hatred, racism and bigotry. Badly written as well. Sample Headline: Keep All Asians Out Of Britain.
The Daily Telegraph: The Daily Mail with more money. Sample headline: Keep All Poor Asians Out Of Britain.
The Daily Mirror: Easy to read and contains 'proper' news as well as fluff. Not as good as the Metro
The Financial Times: I've never read it but reliable friends have said that it's very good.
The Manchester Evening News: It's a local newspaper. For local people. Boring.
The Independant: A very good newspaper whose journalist give several different points of view on world events. It is very well balanced, has a lot of information, but is nearly as hard to read as The Times.
That's about all I can think of at the moment! I'd recommend The Guardian or The Indepedant. I'll try and think of some interesting books to recommend in my next post...
3 comments:
Hi
thanks Tim
it was useful
I normally read The Metro, 'cause it's free and I can read it while I'm in the coach, and it has some funny stories, and other not so funny but interesting.
Right now I'm reading the book 'FALSE IMPRESSION' from Jeffrey Archer (Yes, Jeffrey Archer, that's why I was surprissed about his arrestment jajaja), and the book at the begining is a little bit boring but later became more interesting.
Look up Jeffery Archer on wikipedia, he's got an interesting past... He still sits in the House Of Lords though!
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