Abstract
Data taken from English speaking Americans who have studied Japanese reveal that comprehension of Japanese news media was one of the important linguistic skills that they wished to acquire before coming to Japan and suggest that it be essential. This method is being used in advanced and intermediate Japanese classes by the author at college level courses in the U.S. to enhance students' reading and listening comprehension of Japanese news on TV, radio, and in the newspaper. Exposing intermediate and advanced students to news articles and TV news programs synchronically and diachronically has proven to be effective in improving comprehension of Japanese news media. This will be discussed based on research findings in syntactic and lexical information across the news media, and some suggestions on classroom design for Japanese instruction, in which activities in all linguistic skills may be incorporated, will be presented.
