VOAのSpecial Englishが、先日時を同じくして亡くなった北朝鮮の金正日総書記とチェコのハベル前大統領について、記事を載せている。

いろいろな英語の教材が出ているが、英文の内容を自分で抜粋してまとめてみることで、
(1) 内容を簡潔に理解できる
(2) 関連語彙や表現、英文の組み立てについて学習できる

VOA　Special Englishの英文は、そういう使い方をするのに最適な気がする。
抜粋するだけではなく、自分の言葉を使って要約(summarize)するとさらに良いが、時間がかかる。
身近まとめた英文を音読するとさらに効果的。
こうすることで、「聞く」、「読む」、「書く」、「話す」力を総合的に伸ばすことができるお薦めの学習法だと思う。
それに、最大のメリットは「安上がり」

以下、サイトの英文を抜粋して短くまとめた。

Kim JongIl and Vaclav Havel died one day apart, strange timing for two such 

differentlives.


Mr.Havel led his country's "Velvet Revolution" as the communistgovernments 

of Eastern Europe collapsed.
 

Mr.Havel was elected president and supervised Czechoslovakia's move to a 

free-market economy and democracy.  The country peacefully split into the 

Czech Republic and Slovakiain nineteen ninety-three.

 

Mr.Havel was elected president of the Czech Republic two times and held the 

position until two thousand three.
 

VaclavHavel died last Sunday of respiratory problems at the age of 

seventy-five.  OnFriday, world leaders attended his funeral at the end of a 

week of honors.  The American delegation included Secretary of State 
Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
 

Kim JongIl's funeral is set for Wednesday in Pyongyang.  

North Korea waited two days to announce his death.  
It said he died Saturday of a heart attack during a "field guidance tour" on 
his train.  He was sixty-nine years old.
 

The bodyof North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is laid in a memorial palace in 

Pyongyang, North Korea.

OnThursday, North Korea officially recognized his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, 

as thecountry's next leader.

 

Kim JongIl expanded North Korea's nuclear program while millions of his 

people were starving.  His forces tested nuclear weapons and launched 

missiles.  His actions deeply worried his neighbors and the United States.

 

Kim JongIl rarely appeared in public.  He had ledNorth Korea since his 

father died seventeen years ago.  
North Korea has the world's fifth largest army.  

But the economy suffered as the North facednatural disasters.  

It also faced theloss of aid after the official end of the Soviet Union twenty 

years ago this Sunday.
 

BRUCEKLINGNER (senior research fellow for northeast Asia at the Heritage 

Foundationin Washington)

"His legacy will be of an impoverished nation where a million or more of his 

citizens died of starvation and starvation-related diseases in themid-nineties, 

because North Korea was reluctant to allow aid to come into his country.  

Hislegacy will be of a brutal regime that used gulags, hundreds of thousands of 

people languished in concentration camps in his country."

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