Newspapers are a useful source of information for ESL learners for a variety of reasons. Newspapers generally operate on a slightly more formal level than everyday conversation, which makes the sentence structure and vocabulary choice more standardized, and thus easier to understand for the reader. Knowing how to approach teaching ESL by using newspapers is simply a matter of knowing where to look.

Make sure that your selected article is appropriate for your students. Read through the article several times to make sure that it matches their reading and maturity level. Choosing something that is too difficult, too easy or culturally insensitive will alienate your students from the learning process and hurt their ability to learn during the lesson.

Warm your students up to the topic by quizzing them on some of the vocabulary that occurs frequently in the article. You can do this through simple conversation or, more formally, a quiz. Be sure that you provide your students with enough vocabulary and context for them to make sense of the article by the end of your lesson.

Have your students read through the article once silently on their own before asking them to read it aloud in groups. Try to avoid having one student read a single sentence at a time, as this generally inhibits overall comprehension and focuses only on their pronunciation. You can also spend this time teaching them techniques for skimming the article for significant words or phrases.

Do post-reading activities with your students. Be receptive to their interpretation of the article and their struggles at arriving at a conclusion as to its meaning. Guide them gently through questions and dialogues rather than shutting them down with prescriptive statements. If necessary, you could have them go back and read through the article again, this time focusing on certain grammatical forms or cultural insights. This way the same article can be used multiple times for maximum effect.