Using news websites to enrich vocabulary

Instructor: Yvonne Breckenridge, BEd, MEd, PhD
Date and time: Friday, September 18, 2020 | 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (MST)
Event location: Webinar
Fee: $30.00

Summary

How many medical terms have you learned lately? There is so much going on in the world today and news agencies give us insight into different situations, past and present. Especially in translation situations, there can be technical vocabulary that you may need that is rarely encountered in everyday conversation. However, reading and listening to the news can familiarize you with medical, legal, and financial terms in a more engaging way than studying vocabulary lists and provide a context for familiar terms that are used in a different way.

How would you translate PPE or bubble? How often did you use the word zoom or mask in 2019 compared to now? These are examples of vocabulary that have now become common in the media and conversation. These terms come up in news articles about education and sports, not just health reports. In this interactive session, participants will learn about resources and strategies to improve their vocabulary skills. In addition to looking at more technical vocabulary, activities will include identifying and defining idiomatic language that may be more difficult to understand and explain, especially when they are used to describe current events. 

Yvonne Breckenridge

Yvonne Breckenridge, B.Ed, M.Ed, PhD has taught international undergraduate and graduate students, pre-service teacher education courses for Canadian educators and in-service courses for Korean, Japanese, and Mexican teachers of English. She has also taught courses aimed at helping heritage language teachers create age appropriate materials. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusion in education and examines not only if minorities are represented, but how they are represented.