Learning English for economics through the mass media

Our students of Economics have to read long texts referring to international different aspects of economic theory, trade, business organizations, the world economy, etc. The main target, according to their curriculum, is to achieve a good knowledge of a specific vocabulary which will facilitate them their understanding of a written passage dealing with an economic issue. Apart from the implementation of different reading techniques, we believe that the integration of the other three skills is the best way to achieve our aim. At the same time we provide students with a more comprehensive knowledge of the language. According to this, we show different activities we have carried out with our students at the Facul ty of Economics Uni vers idad Complutense (Madrid) - when exploiting a cover story in regard to the recent American recession. The activities we include range from exercises on lexis such as synonyms, fill-in the gaps, semantic fields, matching terms and definitions to a grammar point to be studied in depth, together with the exercises that facilitate its acquisition and finally sorne listening activities associated with notetaking and discussing and comprehension questions from a video tape.