8-pages News in easy Swedish

2016-2021 (ongoing)

Lecturers
Students

Business & Communication
International Relations
Teacher Education
Tourism

Autonomous learning
Classroom Context

Swedish

Swedish

A2
B1

Audio
Guiding resources (online course/book)

Vocabulary
Grammar
Prosody

Listening
Writing
Reading

This resource is a great resource for people learning Swedish, but already with a B1 level and wanting to continue improving their Swedish. It´s an 8-page newspaper written in simple Swedish. It is available on paper, but you can simply read it online. The pieces of news are short, with simple language. Each article has a recording, so one can listen to the news while reading. What is really a plus is that the recordings give you the possibility of pausing whenever you have doubts, and you want to look up a word. The newspaper covers many areas, from society, politics, culture to daily life in Sweden, so this is the perfect resource for a businessman, a tourist or anyone interested in the Swedish language and culture.
This newspaper requires learners to have an intermediate level of Swedish, that is beyond a basic knowledge of the written and spoken language, because learners will have to read and/ or listen to authentic material, despite having been abridged and simplified.

Even though this resource is more adequate for autonomous use, as the learners can use it as many times as they want and at their own pace, this has also good potential for the classroom context. All the website is written in Swedish which might be harder for students who are not at all familiar with the Swedish language. So, it is suitable for students with an intermediate level of Swedish.
In the classroom, I would use it as a way of improving reading and listening skills. Following a task-based learning approach, students would be asked to select a piece of news. The following could be set as an example: “Nu är Magdalena Andersson vald till ledare för Sveriges största parti, Socialdemokraterna. (Now Magdalena Andersson is elected leader of Sweden's largest party, the Social Democrats) (Nov 4, 2021)”
Students read and listen to the news to be able to associate the writing with the speaking. After clarifying any difficult word or grammar structure, the students’ task would be to write a similar piece of news (using vocabulary and grammar structures which they are already familiar with). That way, sts would be practising reading and writing skills.

If used in the classroom context:
Step 1: Depending on the topic covered in class, the lecturer starts the lesson by setting the context (e.g. political organisation in Sweden) and elicits from the students the different political parties in Sweden and the type of political regime implemented in Sweden. Sts give feedback.
Step 2: Lecturer pre-teaches (recalls) some words that will appear in the text selected for reading.
Step 3: Reading activity- Lecturer selects a piece of news related to the topic and asks Sts to read it, and also listen to it, on their own computers or mobile phones. Students report back the main ideas on the news.
Step 4: In pairs or in groups, students must produce a similar piece of news, using keywords and structures they already know (or can even use some of the words from the piece of news selected, but add new ones)
Option 2: Students can also use the same piece of news and tranform it by finding antonyms to some of the key words from the text.