News Item

News Item is factual text which informs the readers about events of the day which are considered newsworthy or important.

Social function of news item is: to inform readers, listeners or viewers about events of the day which are considered newsworthy or important.

Generic structure:
• Newsworthy Event(s): recounts the events in summary form
• Background Event(s): elaborate what happened, to WHOM, in WHAT circumstances.
• Sources: comments by participants in, witnesses to and authorities’ expert on the event.

Significant Grammar Features:
• Short, telegraphic information about story captured in headline
• Generally using Simple Past Tense
• Use of Material Processes to retell the event
• Using Action Verbs, e.g.: were, run, go, kill, etc.
• Using Saying Verbs, e.g.: say, tell
• Focus on Circumstances
• Use of projecting Verbal Processes in Sources stages

There are some rules that can help to make newspaper headlines more comprehensible.
1. The passive voice is used without the appropriate form of “be”.
Example: Town ‘Contaminated’
Complete Sentence: Town is contaminated.
2. It is unusual to find complex forms, generally the simple present form is used
Example: Fire Destroys over 2,511 acres of Forest in 2003-2004
Complete Sentence: Fire has destroyed over 2,511 acres of forest in 2003-2004.
3. The present progressive tense is used, usually to describe something that is changing or developing, but the auxiliary verb is usually left out.
Example: World Heading for Energy Crisis
Complete Sentence: The world is heading for an energy crisis.
4. To refer to the future, headlines often use the infinitive.
Example: Queen to Visit Samoa.
Complete Sentence: The Queen is going to visit Samoa.
5. Headlines are not always complete sentences.
Example: More earthquakes in Japan.
Complete Sentence: More earthquakes happened in Japan.

Example of News Item:


A finite verb is a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs. Finite verbs can form independent clauses, which can stand by their own as complete sentences.

For example
• I walked, they walk, and she walks are finite verbs
* (to) walk is an infinitive.
• I lived in French.
* "I" is the subject. "Lived" describes what the subject did. "Lived" is a finite verb.
"Finite verbs can be recognized by their form and their position in the sentence. Here are some of the things to look for when you are trying to identify the finite verbs in a sentence:
1. Most finite verbs can take an -ed or a -d at the end of the word to indicate time in the past: cough, coughed; celebrate, celebrated. A hundred or so finite verbs do not have these endings.
2. Nearly all finite verbs take an -s at the end of the word to indicate the present when the subject of the verb is third-person singular: cough, he coughs; celebrate, she celebrates. The exceptions are auxiliary verbs like can and must. Remember that nouns can also end in -s. Thus the dog races can refer to a spectator sport or to a fast-moving third-person singular dog.
3. Finite verbs are often groups of words that include such auxiliary verbs as can, must, have, and be: can be suffering, must eat, will