Abstract:

The discipline of Country Studies (British and American) has always been the important integral part within the curriculum of training would-be translators/interpreters both as the way to widen the general scope of the learners and also to enrich their language skills by a more ambitious vocabulary through the extensive close reading of authentic texts.

Among other widely popular media, texts in the form of hard-copy and online newspaper articles are still an important source of information for immediate use in the learning/teaching environment for comparative and critical reading of never ending flow of facts and breaking news.

It seems obvious that foreign language undergraduate students should approach newspaper texts not as mere carriers of up-to-date information about political, economic, social events and changing life styles, etc., but perceive and assess its significance in the light of global developments.

This paper is focused on the following lines of argumentation: the potential of online newspapers not only as the electronic source of information but also in terms of the level of intertextuality they may provide as compared to hard-copy newspaper texts; the analysis of the online newspaper texts in greater detail from a critical perspective seems relevant in view of the political controversies and widely spread double standards in presenting and interpreting the facts and latest world events; teaching / learning through critical reading of online newspapers contributes to better and timely understanding of frequent ambiguities in the international politics and creates the feelings of trust and respect to the pursuits and guidelines suggested by the national government.

Among possible conclusions to the paper may be the following: traditional approaches to online newspaper texts combined with critical reading skills allow the learners to take differing judgements (from neutral to biased) within the critical language analysis acting as justification and rationale for the adopted reading position.

Keywords:

Intercultural literacy, media, Information Communication Technology (ICT), critical reading.