In T. H. Nash et al. (Ed), Papers from the eleventh conference on English language teaching and learning in the Republic of China (pp. 193-209).  Taipei:  Crane Publishing Co., Ltd., 1996.

Introduction and Rationale

One of the problems facing EFL teachers is providing students with sufficient input in the target language.  At advanced levels in particular, students and even teachers may become bored with the usual twenty-lesson text with accompanying audiotape and exercises.  While the more outgoing students may seek out native speakers in the community, others may feel they have nowhere to turn to for additional input.

Today in Taiwan we have access to satellite and cable TV programs, many of which are broadcast in English.  Thus the opportunities for learning and perfecting foreign language skills are indeed great; however, most students and even their teachers have little idea how to utilize this resource to further their language skills.  Some teachers may think that using video means showing an episode of Three's Company or a full-length movie on the last day of class or as a reward for good work.  While these activities may give students the opportunity to practice extensive listening, they could just as well watch these programs at home. 

The activities reported here were developed for a course begun at National Tsing Hua University in 1992--Advanced listening and Speaking with Video.  This course differs from other listening and speaking courses in that practically all the materials are from authentic video.  The term authentic video is used to refer to TV shows and movies made for native speakers for various purposes; it is used to contrast with ELT videos, which are made specifically for language teaching.  That is, the materials for this course are not videos for language teaching, but ordinary TV programs that can be viewed on TV here in Taiwan (Katchen, 1991).

The course mentioned above was designed for third and fourth year English majors; their level is upper intermediate to lower advanced.  For intermediate students, we would need to prepare our materials more carefully and make sure we let students view stories several times with activities that give them more practice with intensive listening.

While just about any video material can be adapted for use in language teaching, here we focus on news stories.  For teachers who have little or no experience developing activities from authentic video, the news story is probably the easiest genre with which to begin.  In the following sections, first the advantages of using news stories are presented, advice for choosing news stories is given and types of pre-teaching preparation discussed, then various teaching techniques are suggested.  Finally, a discussion of student reactions to these activities is followed by some concluding remarks.

Advantages of Using News Stories

Availability.  The biggest advantage of using news stories is their availability.  At the time of this writing, some residents of Taipei are receiving 24-hour CNN, and most likely the BBC World Service will soon be available again.  With these stations, the same news stories are repeated in exactly the same or similar form for several consecutive hours, so patient learners need not have their own VCR to see and hear a story repeated.  Additionally, in Taiwan on any weekday we can watch the American PBS, CBS, and ABC nightly news, some CNN rebroadcasts, some BBC1 (domestic) news rebroadcasts, and some other news programs in English, either on Taiwan's TV stations or from Japan's satellite NHK station BS1.

For teachers who are a little apprehensive, there are a few good video courses available which use news programs and offer workbooks with various activities (e.g., ABC News ESL Video Library, 1993; Central News, 1992 [intermediate]; ITN World News, 1993 [upper intermediate]).  Teachers can start with one of these courses and learn the techniques before trying to develop activities on their own from off-air news.

Some news programs, such as the CBS Evening News shown at 7:30 a.m. on CTV or the ABC Evening News shown at 7:30 a.m. on CTS, are usually relayed live (6:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) from November through March and therefore contain no subtitles.  The approximately 10 minutes of the CNN World Report rebroadcast at about 6:45 a.m. by TTV has only only one-sentence subtitles in Chinese.  We should be very careful, however, when using rebroadcasts over Taiwan's TV stations that have word-by-word Chinese subtitles.  Our students do not need more practice in reading Chinese!  If we have to use subtitled broadcasts, we can easily cover the subtitles with a strip of paper and let the students see them only the last time we view for comparison.  Teachers who say their students must see Chinese subtitles can show the subtitles the first time so the students get the information, then cover them and force the students to attend to the English.

Advanced classes, on the other hand, after doing some activities with the English, might have some fun comparing the English with the Chinese subtitles and finding the mistakes or discussing if the translation could be better.  There are legitimate uses for Chinese subtitles and translations, but, as it is always easier to read in our native language than to listen in a foreign one, the poorer students especially will take the easier option and make no progress in their English.  Our job as English teachers is to devise activities (see Techniques section below) to force students to pay attention to and comprehend the English.

Closed-captioned broadcasts (with English subtitles produced by American TV stations primarily for people with hearing problems), such as the ABC Evening News rebroadcast in CTS in late morning, can be problematic, too.  First, these do not always contain each word spoken, though the meaning is preserved.  If students read something different from what they hear, they may become confused.  Second, the written text appears after the words have been spoken; therefore, even a native speaker cannot both listen and read at the same time because what one is listening to is different from what one is reading.  A possible solution would be to use only one mode at a time by playing the segment silently first and letting the students read the English and pay attention to the images, then later, after students have comprehended the general meaning from their reading, covering the text to avoid confusion and having them listen, or devising some other order.

Length. Because news broadcasts consist of many stories, each of which is relatively short and complete in itself, the length of the individual story makes it ideal for classroom exploitation.  Language teachers who have worked with video (e.g., Tomalin & Stempleski, 1990) advise us to use short segments--one to three minutes in length--for one or two specific language tasks rather than longer segments with vague goals.

When we listen in a language we know imperfectly--a foreign language--we have to work fairly hard to pay attention, and we get tired faster.  Even when we teachers watch a film in a foreign language we command rather well, we find we cannot concentrate fully for two hours and our level of comprehension drops.  How much more is that true for our students?  Therefore, our listening tasks should begin with short pieces.  Students can use longer videos and films for extensive listening practice on their own time, or we may want to use excerpts from films to teach something else (e.g., nonverbal behavior, elements of culture, points of departure for discussion).  However, when we want to teach specific listening strategies, when we want to practice intensive listening, we should use shorter pieces that we can listen to several times.

Authenticity of Language. The language of news broadcasts is not artificially produced to illustrate a textbook lesson; it is language spoken to communicate ideas to native speakers.  A particularly good feature of news broadcasts is that TV anchors have clear, precise, and accurate pronunciation; furthermore when we are watching the speaker's face, we find comprehension les difficult than when we only listen to the voice of the reporter in the field.  Moreover, their grammar is correct, and they use the vocabulary and style of educated people.  That is, newspeople tend to speak standard, socially acceptable varieties.  Our students, as future university graduates, will want to command a socially acceptable, educated person's variety.

Students in Taiwan often complain about British English; they say they want to learn American English and do not want to listen to any other varieties.  This is a foolish attitude.  No matter what educated variety students learn to speak, they will need to be able to understand many varieties,  For example, almost all Europeans learn British English because of their proximity to England.  Let us imagine one of our graduates working as a bilingual secretary/receptionist for a Taiwan firm involved in international trade.  One day the representatives of a German firm, speaking nearly perfect British English, visit the Taiwan firm.  When asked to speak to the guests in English, can our former student say "I'm sorry, I don't do British English"?

Varieties of Language. In addition to varieties from predominantly English-speaking areas, news programs expose us to many other varieties of English, such as when South Africa's President Nelson Mandela or India's Prime Minister Rao are interviewed (Katchen, 1990).  We may hear many different geographical or nonstandard forms when the man in the street is asked his opinion; these nonstandard comments also contain the hesitations and slips of tongue typical of ordinary, everyday speech.

More and more often we hear educated nonnative speakers using English as a lingua franca in world politics, economics, science, and many other fields.  Despite nonnative pronunciation, a few grammar errors, some possible gaps in vocabulary, these professionals are admired,  No one thought any less of the very capable former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger because of his accent.  We hear English really being used as an international language.

Many of our students will be using English as an international language in their futures; they may go abroad for study, professional meetings, or travel.  Here is Taiwan, they will also have ample opportunity to use English with the other nonnative speakers they come into contact with personally and professionally (e.g., with businessmen from Hungary, Guatemala, Indonesia, all with different ways of using English).  Even the less well-educated taxi drivers and fast food clerks have contacts with foreign visitors in English.  Thus the educated nonnative speakers seen on the TV news using English can be good language role models or our students by showing them that they need not speak English exactly like a native speaker in order to be a good communicator and to use English effectively.

Additional Aids to Comprehension.  News broadcasts often also provide additional aids to comprehension.  They may add information with apposition, such as "Bill Clinton, the American president, ..."  They show maps to help us locate the area in the world, such as a map of East Asia with Taiwan and Taipei pointed out.  The name of the location is usually printed at the bottom of the screen when we hear the report from the scene.  Names of famous or important people or experts being interviewed also appear on the screen.  All these little extras help facilitate understanding, and we teachers can point these out to students.  Although all news stations use these techniques, the BBC World Service News seems to be more conscious of their huge nonnative-speaking audience and to apply them most consistently.

Educational Value.  In addition to all their other advantages, news stories help to educate us.  The news really is "news" about a variety of topics; although politics seems to predominate, we also hear about developments in medicine, technology, sports, education, and so on.  Furthermore, university students should be informed about what is happening in the world around them.  They have been insulated and isolated children long enough; this is the time they should begin reflecting on the larger issues and problems of adult life.  The news is also a common topic of conversation; if students learn about the issues and acquire the specific vocabulary for certain topics, they may find it a little easier to converse with English speakers in social situations.

Choosing News Stories

All of us are more comfortable with topics we already know something about.  We English teachers are familiar with the jargon and ways of speaking of our profession, but if a nuclear physicist came to lecture us in the same way he would address his colleagues, we would be lost.  Despite some unknown items of vocabulary, our problem would not necessarily be one of language but one of context: we are simply not familiar with the concepts of the field.

We have to remember this when we choose news stories for our students.  We would not choose a story about the legal intricacies of a nurses' strike in Britain, not only because none of us really cares, but because we do not know the background (however, if our students were nurses or perhaps lawyers, they might find the context relevant).  This is one reason for being careful about using the domestic BBC news broadcasts (as opposed to the World Service) or the US broadcasts and even the half-hour CNN broadcasts (Around the World in 30 Minutes); the majority of their listeners are in the UK or the USA, and they focus on stories their viewers would be interested in and have the background for.

The CNN World Report, the BBC World Service News, or the ITN World News are better sources of news stories for our students.  These programs use stories that are of interest to an international audience; thus students are more likely to have heard the same stories in their native language and to be familiar with the ideas and issue involved.  Students should have the habit of listening to or reading about the news in their native language.  They can read the daily English language newspapers The China Post of The China News or weekly news magazines such as Time and Newsweek.  With written sources in English students can also check the spelling of names and places and learn the specialized vocabulary for talking about a topic (e.g., ceasefire).

A number of international stories remain in the news over long periods of time (e.g., the Middle East, South Africa, GATT, the progress of the Channel Tunnel), so students can gradually build up background on these issues.  Then, when they hear news stories about these areas, they will only have to figure out how the new information fits into the framework they already have.  A good strategy is for students to begin with one story and to read newspapers and magazines for background and follow the story every day.  After they become familiar with one topic area, they can add another.

Most news stories tend to relate bad news--about wars, famine, disasters, murders--they are depressing.  For young people especially, we should choose some more positive, lighthearted topics.  Often toward the end of news broadcasts, we can find more general or human interest stories; we get the feeling that the networks always have a few of these stories ready to fill up the time just in case there weren't enough disasters that day.  Thus we can choose stories about developments in medicine, technology, science, the arts, sports, the environment, education, religion, lifestyles, fashion, and so on.  Sometimes these report good news (e.g., how a letter got lost in the post for 15 years and was finally delivered), sometimes bad news (e.g., how pollution is killing fish).  the topics are varied, so we can usually find something to interest at least some of the students, and the language is not as technical as in a documentary, although we may have to teach some vocabulary.

Choosing these more general, human interest topics is advantageous in another way: because the topics do not become old so quickly, they can be used several times, with different classes.  These general topics can also be used as stimuli for discussion or writing activities about, for example, social or environmental issues.  The commercially available videos with workbooks mentioned above are good sources of such stories; otherwise, we can videotape the CNN News the same time each day for a week.  From these recordings we can surely find something we can use.

Pre-teaching Concerns

Before showing a news story in class, we may need to spend some time asking students background questions, even when such stories appear in the local press, to remind students and focus their attention.  For a story on the fighting in Bosnia, we should ask at the very least where Bosnia is, who is fighting whom and why.  Special vocabulary may also be needed, such as ceasefire, ethnic cleansing, UNHCR.

We also have to teach the correct spelling and pronunciation of the names of people and places (Katchen, 1992b).  This is vital for Chinese students.  In any language, when foreign names are used, they are changed somewhat to fit the phonological rules of the language doing the borrowing.  Thus names are rendered quite differently in Mandarin Chinese than they are in English, and both the Chinese and English forms differ from the original form when its source is a third language.  Who could guess that the rendering of the English Yugoslavia (Serbian Jugoslavija with a pronunciation similar to the English) in Mandarin (nan sz la fu) is a partial semantic and partial phonetic translation?  The Chinese (sz la fu) sounds something like -slavia, but (nan) bears no phonetic similarity at all to yugo-.  One has to know something about both Chinese and the Slavic languages to recognize that (nan) = yug = "south": they share the same meaning.  Students could not guess this; they just have to learn the new names in English.

As our students are studying English, they need to know the proper English spelling in order to read the newspaper and the proper English pronunciation in order to listen to TV or radio news.  Familiarity with the Chinese versions will help students with context, but sometimes news stories come from places unheard of before, so students may learn the English names in our class before they encounter the Chinese equivalents in the local press.  We teachers have to make a special effort to present the correct English spelling and pronunciation of names of prominent people and places.

News stories have structure; this structure is not the same in all cultures or languages.  For example, the BBC World Service News begins a story with a summary of the main points by the anchor.  That is the minimum; some stories end there.  Then, for the more important stories, they switch to a reporter in the field who tells us the story in more detail with examples.  His report may include a comment by an expert or a main participant in the story.  After that, the reporter in the field either concludes or we have a repetition of the participant and reporter sequence.  When the anchor reappears, it is almost always to begin another story.  If students are aware of this structure, they have some idea what kind of information is coming next.

Summary of Techniques

Once we have the proper equipment--a relatively new videotape player with real-time counter, the freeze frame function, and remote control--we are ready to try some techniques.  But before we take that videotape into the classroom, we should remember that all off-air programs and other commercial videos are subject to copyright restrictions and we do not have permission to use them.  Nevertheless, laws differ from country to country and those governing educational use are not too clear.  With news stories we are on somewhat safer ground because we usually use only excerpts of the whole program and often copy over the tape to get rid of old news.

There are all sorts of activities that have been used successfully with video materials.  Not all news stories are presented in the same way, and activities that would be appropriate for one story might not work for another.  The teacher needs a little experience matching workable activities to stories.  Here we present some basic activities to choose from.  We begin first with ideas for silent viewing, then later present activities for viewing with sound.

Silent Viewing. For some stories, just about all the important information is contained in the visual images.  We can show students this by asking them to watch without sound for the main idea; then we can ask them what they already know about the story from the information received via the visual mode only.  In addition to what they see from the action (we need a longer, on-the-scene report, not just the anchor's/presenter's face), they can notice any writing on the screen, such as the locationor the name of a person.  We can freeze frame (pause with picture on) to point these out to students.  Even without the names on the screen, students may be able to guess the location from the people look and dress, any well-known people shown (e.g. world leaders), and any extraneous writing that appears (e.g. on shop signs).

To get the main idea in a slightly more detailed way, there are at least two approaches; the one we choose will depend on the content of the story.  We can ask students to look for the answers to the WH- questions--Who?  What?  Where?  When?  Why? and sometimes How?  The answer to When? is almost always Today or Recently, so we can usually ignore it.  For other stories, searching for the problem, causes, effects, or solutions is more appropriate.  In a story about air pollution, we may see clouds of smoke and smog, traffic jams, people with respirators, people rubbing their eyes.  We can see that the problem is air pollution, it is caused by an excess of cars and trucks and also the inefficient use of fuel by trucks (diesel pipes emitting smoke) and insufficient controls by factories (smoke billowing from smokestacks), and the effects on the public include eye and lung problems.  Of course, we will hear more details when we listen, but the visual images give us much of the important information.

Occasionally, especially with human interest stories, the visual reveals the whole plot.  We can imagine these scenes in succession:  a tearful little boy, an empty dog house, some people searching, a little dog found, the boy hugging the dg while the dog licks his face.  Here students can work in pairs, tell each other the story, write the narrative in a paragraph, then share it with the class.  If we are lucky, students may disagree  over the meaning of some details; the teacher may also have to provide some vocabulary as needed.  In short, we can have a lively discussion activity, then, as always, we can watch with sound and find out more details.

Whenever we view silently, for whatever purpose, we eventually watch again with the sound on.  Students can then check if their guesses were correct (they often are) and find out more information.  There may have been some important information that was not obvious by means of the visual.  After checking on the results of our silent viewing activities, we may then want to do another activity incorporating the audio portion.

Viewing with Sound. As we mentioned before, the kinds of activities the teacher chooses depends for the most part on the topic, the way the news story is presented, and how much time the teacher wants to spend preparing the lesson.

Sometimes, for stories that we do not wish to exploit in detail, we may just ask students, after they view the story for the first time, what the main idea was.  We could also ask students to listen for the answers to WH- questions or to find the problem, causes, effects, solutions; the types of questions we ask depends, of course, on the content of the story and ability level of the students.

An activity that students enjoy is listening for specific words.  It seems like a game, but it gets students to listen very carefully for specific words and sequences of words; they have to break up the buzz of continuous speech into discrete elements.  Basically, the teacher picks out approximately five words from the story, preferably spread over the beginning, middle, and end, and asks each row of students to listen for one word.  When they hear their word (it should be a content word that occurs only once in the story), they must write down all the words they heard around it--before or after their word.  Amazingly, students not only listen for their own word but, while waiting for their word, they hear and remember other people's words, too.  Furthermore, because several students listen for the same word, they hear different adjacent words; some remember a few words before their word, some remember a few words after it.  Collectively, they often recall as much as a whole sentence.  If the teacher chooses one word per sentence, preferably in the middle of each sentence, the students, by consulting each other, may be able to come up with the whole text.  After we find out what everyone remembered, we go back and watch again, pausing and repeating the sentences containing our assigned words.

The previous activities are all done orally in class; we may also devise similar questions in writing, both for in-class practice and for quizzes.  We can ask specific WH- comprehension questions or questions about any part of the content.  These can be True/False, Multiple Choice, Completion, or the type that require longer answers.  While True/False and Multiple Choice questions look easy, they can be quite difficult if they are made to trick all but the sharpest students.  Such questions are not easy for the teacher to prepare, particularly Multiple Choice, but they are easy to grade.  Occasionally a quick quiz containing five True/False or five Multiple Choice questions on one news story may be appropriate.

Another way to focus student attention on individual words is to have them complete a cloze; these can be for in-class practice or for quizzes.  We do not want to do these too often because they take a long time to prepare.  First, the teacher has to make a transcript of the text of the story, then blank out some of the words.  The number and frequency of words to omit depends on the ability of the class and, to some extent, of the level of difficulty of the story.  It is best to start by taking out easier, familiar words, including some function words (articles, prepositions, auxiliaries).  Students do not always hear these little words in rapid speech, but with an incomplete transcript, they can see that such words belong there.  First, we take out only one word at a time.  As students get better at this task, we take out whole phrases.  Ideally, our goal would be to train students to transcribe whole news stories on their own; if students have a self-access language lab, they can try transcribing paragraph-length passages on their own.

When we give a cloze in class, it is not enough to play it once nor to play it from start to finish each time.  One procedure that usually works is to first play the whole story through without stopping; this gives students an idea of the entire content.  Then we can play a short segment (about one or  two sentences), pause and review.  Students may need to hear each sentence about three times, but each time we play a segment, we include the next one or two blanks while eliminating the earliest ones.  that is, for each segment we play, there is a new blank for the student ready for it and some old blanks for those students who have not yet figured out the answer.  We continue in this way until we reach the end of the cloze, then play the whole story again for students to check what they have written.  Finally, if necessary, we may play each paragraph and then stop for about a minute between paragraphs to give students a last chance to erase and change answers.

After completing the practice cloze or after handing back the graded cloze tests, we put the completed transcript on the overhead projector for students to check their answers and then play the story again so that students have a chance to hear what they should have heard.

For follow-up, we could prepare discussion activities based on what we have listened to.  These might fit in better with stories on controversial social issues (e.g. children's rights, animal rights, euthanasia).

Often the news story itself suggests which activities to use with it.  It is best to vary the activities, using perhaps two activities with each story.  As teachers use each technique, they will get a sense of what works for their students.  Just the activities given here are enough to get started and, with variation, to keep the teacher and the class interested.  Additional ideas for techniques can be found in Allan (1985); Cooper, Lavery, and Rinvolucri (1991); Lonergan (1984); Stempleski and Arcario (1993); and Tomalin and Stempleski (1990). 

Finally, we should not waste too much time with preparation.  A portion of this morning's news broadcast can be used for extensive listening practice during the first few minutes of class r during the last few minutes.  We can very quickly make up general comprehension questions or just ask "What is the problem?" or "What happened?" and save the harder, more tedious work--the detailed comprehension questions, the cloze, True/False and Multiple Choice--for those human interest stories which we can use more than once.

Discussion

As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, these activities were developed as part of a course--Advanced Speaking and Listening with Video.  News programs made up about one-third of the material and were used more frequently toward the beginning of the course when we were focusing more on intensive listening.  Later in the course we moved to longer pieces--interviews, documentaries, etc.--and stressed more general comprehension skills. 

throughout the course, students kept a listening journal; each week they had to spend at least one-helf hour outside of class listening to something in English, for example, ICRT radio programs, stories on audio or videotapes in the language lab, TV shows at home.  Each week they had to write at least one page about their listening; part one was to be a short summary of the content of the piece (so that their teacher actually knew they did something), while part two was to contain theeir comments on their own listening ability as related to that piece.

These journals involved two-way communication: the teacher always made some comments, occasionally prompting students to ask questions of the teacher, such as "What's the best way to watch a video with English subtitles?" or "I record ICRT news and then listen to a story over and over and try to write down all the words.  Is this a good way?"  Toward the middle of the semester, some students started to express excitement about their listening with comments such as "Yesterday I think I understood ICRT news for the first time."

Students began to notice, as their teacher had earlier pointed out, that certain features of the program can affect their ability to understand.  Factors such as too much background noise, a mumbling speaker, an unfamiliar dialect, a specialized topic, a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary, and so on can make comprehension more difficult.  Students need not always blame their poor English.  they began to evaluate their own listening strengths and weaknesses and the comprehensibility of the material they chose with regard to their abilities and then to direct their own learning.  From what they recorded in their journals, this was where the excitement of discovery lay.

Many of our students will work as English teachers, either as their full-time profession or as a part-time source of extra income.  Their ability to analyze aspects of their own language learning will aid their understanding of how their students learn.

Concluding Remarks

Here we have looked at some ways to use TV news stories in teaching listening comprehension at upper-intermediate to advanced levels.  We suggest that teachers begin with this genre because of its many good features.  After we get used to the techniques and to the equipment, we may want to start experimenting with other genres.

If we want to bring off-air broadcasts into the classroom, we have to get familiar with the offerings and record what we think we might use.  We have to consider the level of our students and what might interest them.  Not only must we choose the programs, but then we must also develop appropriate activities.

such work takes a lot of time and effort, but for students who are used to memorizing grammar rules, it opens their eyes.  Here is something practical--we're showing them how to be better TV viewers in English.  We're taking a source of entertainment and pleasure and turning it into a teaching tool.  they are fascinated.  Moreover, we're showing them how they can do it themselves.  When they leave our course, we hope they will continue listening on their own to further or at least maintain their English comprehension skills.

Let us consider the following statements.  Many o us now have cable TV in our homes.  In the future we will be receiving even more stations broadcasting in Chinese and in foreign languages.  Many of the programs will be in English.  Taiwan will continue to use English as a lingua franca, particularly in its business dealings outside Asia.  East Asian economies will continue to expand.  With these predictions, does it not make sense to show our students how to exploit an entertainment medium already in their homes to advance their English skills and thereby further their own job prospects?

References

ABC News ESL Video Library. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Regents/Prentice-Hall, and ABC News (Series of 5 videos with workbooks).

Allan, M.  (1985).  Teaching English with video.  London: Longman.

Central News. (1992).  Oxford English Video.  (Activity Books 1 - 3 by Cornish, T. & Horncastle, B.; Activity Book 4 by Cornish, T. & Szyptko, G.).

Cooper, R., Lavery, M., & Rinvolucri, M.  (1991).  Video.  Oxford University Press.

Katchen, J. E. (1990).  EFL for the nineties: Training for world Englishes.  Paper presented at the Sixth Institute of Language in Education International Conference, December 17 - 19, 1990, Hong Kong.

Katchen, J. E.  (1991).  Satellite TV as foreign language teaching resource.  English Teaching and Learning, 15(4), 33-44.

Katchen, J. E. (1992).  TV news listening: Teaching language and content.  Paper presented at the Eighth Institute of Language in Education International Conference, December 15-18, 1992, Hong Kong.

Katchen, J. E. (1993).  World Service Television: ELT resource for Asia.  Small Screen, 6(1), 9-10.

Lonergan, J. (1984).  Video in language teaching. Cambridge University Press.

Meinhof, U.  (1991).  "It's news to me": Designing a multimedia resource for English language learners.  Paper presented at the Chulalongkorn University Language Institute Second International Conference, December 2 - 4, 1991, Bangkok, Thailand.

Meinhof, U. & Bergman, M. (1993).  ITN World News.  (Activity book and video).  Oxford English Video.

Stempleski, S. & Arcario, P. (Eds.). (1993).  Video in second language teaching: Using, selecting, and producing video for the classroom.  Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.

Tomalin, B. & Stempleski, S. (1990).  Video in action.  Prentice Hall International.