Reading Summary Project

Below is a list of sources with some helpful information about each. The level of difficulty in navigating within the source is indicated, as well as the level of difficulty of the articles themselves. Levels of difficulty are on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is very easy, and 5 is very difficult.

The link on each site will take you to the archives (a list of articles which have appeared in the past), and/or to a search engine. When you reach a search engine, type in a key word or phrase. Warning: search engines at different sites operate differently. Read the directions if there are any, or experiment to try and get what you want.

Impact Online(Navigation = 1; Reading = 3-4)

The news stories for this source are arranged in categories.  There are not many stories, and you will have to predict the content from the titles.  However, there is excellent vocabulary help for each of the stories with pronunciation given for each glossed word.

Local Newspapers (Navigation = 4-5; Reading = 5)

Your local newspaper probably has a searchable archive online.  Ask your teacher for help if you would like find it.  One example is the archive for The Oregonian.  Find the "Search Our Archives" box, type in your key word, and press GO.

The link here will take you to Discovery's search engine. Again, type in a key word or phrase, and you may or may not get what you want. Articles differ in their level of difficulty. Some are really not that hard, but others may use a lot of idioms and language which is very difficult for non-native speakers. A good idea would be to skim through an article when you think it's what you want. The language may be too difficult, in which case you'll need to keep searching. One of the best things about this site are the great photos and illustrations!

Finding an article here is a great way to practice scanning--there is no search engine, just a list of titles, with a brief descriptive phrase after each, so it's easy to see the main topic of the article.

This has only current news stories.  To find a story about your special interest, use the search engine ("Search TIME.com"):  type in a key word, and then press GO.  Only simple searches are available, so you will need to predict the content of articles from their titles after you get the results of your search.

Although searching can be difficult, mnay stories have audio and video clips associated with them. There is also a very large archive of stories. To search, click ABC News or ABC News on TV, type your key word(s) in the search box, and then press SEARCH.

Choose your general area of interest from "News Topics", and then skim the headlines  for a specific topic.  Although this source contains only current news items,  there are also video and audio clips for many of them.

Written by Margaret Young 3/98; revised 12/99