True Stories in the News: A Beginning Reader

I can't say enough about this reader. I found it by chance at the bookstore of my nephew's college two years ago, which has a big ESL department, and have been amazed with its effectiveness every since. It works for readers of all ages and I have students from elementary school to adults. It has high interest stories written with high frequency verbs in past simple, it introduces one or two new vocabulary words in each story and then repeats them so that the students learns them easily while reading the story. There are questions and activities which I don't use but are well thought out. The stories really capture the attention of all of my students and don't condescend at all. I have my students read the stories in English, translate them to Spanish (I teach in Spain and have found that their comfort level goes way up when they fully understand the story and can process it in their minds in Spanish), and then ask them to relate the story back to me in their own words in English. It's been an absolute revelation. The fact that the stories are true means that the students relate to the stories more easily and appreciate them. I bought the intermediate level book which was too big a jump and introduces too many new vocabulary words for my students, but I'm going to try the high beginner book. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

I used this book and _More True Stories_ with conversation classes for Japanese adults and found they worked very well to spark conversation. Once in awhile I used the exercises which follow the story, but usually I made up my own speech themes related to each chapter. We read one story every two weeks. The first week, we read the story aloud, and talked about it. The second week we read the story aloud again, and then students gave short speeches about the theme. The stories them selves are intriguing, but it was my students' own related stories which made them like the book. I prefer these two texts to _Easy True Stories in the News_ because that one is written entirely in the present tense. My students had a lot of difficulty using past tenses, so I wanted to use texts which featured those forms.