There are many different reasons why you might want to learn a second (or third, or fourth) language. Perhaps you're a newcomer to a place where your mother tongue isn't widely understood. Maybe you're planning a vacation and want to be just fluent enough in Spanish or French or Tagalog to order a taxi or understand a restaurant menu.
Whatever your motivation, learning a new language can be challenging — but it doesn’t have to be all flashcards and grammar drills. You can accelerate the process, and even make it more enjoyable, by consuming real-world content like news stories.
This is where news websites — or a digital platform like PressReader, which offers easy access to thousands of global publications — can come in handy, by turning daily news into a language learning opportunity.
In a blog post for Babbel, Thomas Moore Devlin recommends that language learners strengthen their skills by reading news articles in their target language:
There are a few advantages to using the news. For one, the news is always written in standard dialects of a language, which can make it easier for you at the beginning. Plus, reading the news in other languages can give you a perspective that English-language media might not.
Reading a new language in the context of newspaper articles exposes you to real-world vocabulary, sentence structure and idiomatic expressions. It can also provide a sense of cultural immersion by providing insight into a given region's current affairs as well as its societal values and norms.
“Once you’ve got the basics of grammar and vocabulary down,” Devlin advises, “you’re ready to start tackling more advanced material in your new language.”
He specifically points to PressReader as a valuable resource for language learners, as it offers newspapers and magazines from across the globe in more than 60 languages. “You can search through the publications by language and topic, so you can discover the news that fits your niche,” he notes.
To get started, your best bet is to keep it simple. There's no need to jump into the deep end with a paper that specializes in-depth analysis or complex financial news.
Begin with a publication that is aimed at a younger audience, or a commuter newspaper written for quick reading. You can find several of these on PressReader, including the French-language Mon Quotidien; Mitt i, which publishes multiple editions covering different regions of Sweden; and Barcelona-based El Periódico, which is available in Catalan and Castilian Spanish.
There are also a number of news websites and other helpful resources online, including Germany's Nachrichtenleicht (Easy News), which publishes articles in Einfache Sprache, or "simple language", which it defines in this way:
Simple language is intended to help people understand information better. In simple language, for example, sentences are shorter. Each sentence explains only one thing, not many at once. We replace difficult words with simpler ones. If we must use a difficult word, we explain the difficult word.
The Chairman's Bao is specifically designed to help users learn Mandarin Chinese through news articles that are updated with fresh content daily.
Remember Steven Spielberg's movie The Terminal? Finding himself stuck in limbo at John F. Kennedy International Airport for some nine months, Viktor Navorski (played by Tom Hanks) teaches himself English by cross-referencing a New York guidebook in his native Krakozhian with an English-language copy of the same book.
By the same token, a good strategy for using news stories to learn a foreign language is to read the article in the target language first, then reference a translation.
One useful approach is to take advantage of PressReader’s translation feature, which can convert articles into more than 20 languages. This allows you to compare the same content in multiple languages and deepen your understanding.
(Please note, however, that PressReader doesn't have any Krakozhian content. That's because the country of Krakozhia was made up for the movie.)
As you develop your reading skills in your language of choice and pick up new vocabulary, it's a good idea to keep track of your progress in a digital or physical "word bank". Highlight unfamiliar words and look up their meanings, and note down example sentences.
Using PressReader’s built-in Text-to-Speech feature, you can hone your listening skills — and your speaking skills — by listening to an article in your target language and then reading that same article aloud.
According to the New York Times:
Reading out loud brings benefits to fluency because it brings clarity to your voice when you exercise your vocal cords to make different sounds. It can also improve pronunciation and act as practice for intonations, pausing, creating emphasis, and more.
Feeling extra ambitious? Try writing a short response or opinion piece based on what you’ve read, or summarize the article in your own words.
Learning a new language takes time, and as with anything else in life, you're more likely to stick with it if you make an enjoyable activity of it, and especially if you find language learning material that you truly like to read.
Start small; aim to read just one article per day in your target language. Pick topics that interest you, whether it’s sports, travel or global politics. When you're genuinely curious about the content, it’s much easier to push through unfamiliar words or challenging phrases.
To keep things fresh, curate a personalized feed of publications and topics. Reading doesn’t have to feel like a chore — magazine features, interviews and even celebrity gossip can offer rich, conversational language that makes learning more fun. Lifestyle magazines are often more approachable than hard news and packed with everyday vocabulary that you'll actually use.
In the end, language learning isn’t about perfection; it’s about progress. By turning your news habit into a learning opportunity, you’re not only staying informed, you’re also engaging with the language in a dynamic, real-world way.