One of my community tutors asked me what I read in English. I said Dailymail, then she told me that Dailymail is bad for learning English.
Is it really bad? I often read news articles on dailymail.co.uk to learn proper British English.
sometimes I also read articles on guardian.co.uk and mirror.co.uk.
any suggestions or ideas?
any comment will be welcome. Thank you.
Because to put it simply, they have a tendency to lie. Wikipedia actually removed the paper from their list of reliable sources in the past year because of this issue.
Is the Mail authentic British English? Yes. It's perfect if you want to absorb some authentic sensationalism, jingoism, sexism, racism, intolerance and xenophobia, with some downright lies thrown in for good measure. That's just a warning about the dubious content.
As for the language itself....well, why not? The Mail is actually quite well written in terms of language, and its simple ideas and depressingly predictable standpoint make it easier to follow than the broadsheets. If you can bear the narrow-minded attitudes and remember to take what it says with a liberal pinch of salt, you may well pick up some natural and useful English from it.
As Patchy says "In order to learn English, it matters not a bit whether the content is truth or lies". The Mail is a terrible way to learn about the world, but probably a reasonable way of learning English.
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Stephen Krashen talks about a study involving people learning English from the American National Inquirer (or Enquirer. . . I never remember the spelling), and the more appealing the content, the better the learning.
Simply reading the low-brow lies and gossip of this "rag" gave MUCH better learning results than those others reading all the fancy language-learning books with exercises and graded texts.
The main ingredient for learning is the appeal of the material for the reader, and most of us enjoy some juicy gossip, whether we admit it or not.
Maybe it would be good to explain about British newspapers and the British politics/society that they relate to.
In Britain, there are three sorts of newspapers. Popular newspapers also referred to as tabloids, such as the Sun and the Daily Mail and Daily Express, the quality newspapers such as the Times and the Guardian and local newspapers. The tabloids are aimed at ordinary working people while the more serious newspapers, the so-called quality press, is aimed at more educated readers.
What this means, in reality, is that the vocabulary found in the tabloids is far less than in the quality newspapers. There is something in writing called the fog index. Fog is that grey stuff in the air that causes poor visibility. It is calculated on the basis of how long the sentences are and how many syllables on average are in each word.
Less educated people find longer words with more syllables more difficult. So for them, reading the Guardian or Times might be a strain because of all the long words. The sentences will also contain very simple grammar and not be the best model for you to copy.
Not only is the vocabulary less but the arguments portrayed by the newspapers can also be very simple to appeal to an uneducated audience. Each newspaper is polarised to a particular political audience. They like to appeal to their readers who have a particular political opinion. The equivalent right-wing newspaper for educated people is the Times, or you could also read the magazine called the Economist. The Economist, in particular, has great writing in it and the style is perfect for language learners. It also comes with high-quality audio, so you could practice your listening, too. And it is not too expensive to get a twelve-week trial.
