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In 2018, there were 52 Daily News articles that got over 10,000 views each! To get a feel for our students’ interests, we decided to take a look at these top performers and explore some reasons behind their popularity.

Whether you’re searching for articles to discuss with new students or are just curious about our students, keep reading!

The complete list of top Daily News articles is provided at the end of this post.

Health and Diet

Health and diet are among the most popular Daily News topics, at 15 articles:

Notably, six articles were about sleep. The interest in sleep might be related to how common sleep deprivation is in Japan and South Korea, where most of our students are from. People in these countries tend to sleep less, on average, than most of the developed world. In addition, about half of people in Japan may have insomnia.

At this point, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that our students are health-conscious people trying to sleep more and stay healthy. But our tutors shared a different picture.

“Most of my students say they need more sleep,” said one tutor (🇵🇭). “But they don’t think it’s possible for a working person to get the recommended seven to eight hours every night.”

Another tutor (🇷🇸) shared, “You know how at the end of the article, there are discussion questions like, ‘Will you apply the advice from this article to your life?’ Most of my students usually say, ‘Probably not.’”

So if our students aren’t going to act on the health tips, why do they like reading about them? Tutors believe that students find these topics more accessible – especially compared to articles on world politics. After all, everyone can relate to eating and sleeping!

At any rate, it’s clear that our students like thinking and talking about health, so be sure to recommend our “Staying Healthy” series, which covers all the health-related vocabulary they’ll need in their daily lives.

Work and Lifestyle

Work and lifestyle were also popular topics, at 15 articles:

A few of these articles were related to quality of life. Research has shown that many people from our students' countries aren't satisfied with their quality of life. For example, both Japanese and South Koreans report below-average life satisfaction.

Specifically, the “Why Do Americans Work So Much?” article overturns a common perception that Americans enjoy a higher quality of life. It also contradicts the view that Americans are lazy. In fact, only 25% of Japanese consider Americans hardworking!

In addition, the countries our students call home have some of the most populated cities in the world. People from these places often complain about how crowded their cities are, which might explain the interest in “The World’s Least and Most Crowded Places.”

Interestingly, there were also two articles on the benefits and disadvantages of working from home, which may reflect two things:

Many of our students have long commutes. For example, workers in Tokyo spend an average of 1 hour 42 minutes commuting every day. So students may be interested in the idea of working from home because it would save them a lot of time!
“Work life” is a big part of life in East Asian countries. Your company isn’t just where you work; it’s also a community (whether you like it or not). For example, in Japan and Taiwan (our third largest source of students), there's a sense that companies need to take care of their employees. For this reason, companies are often hesitant to fire people and may even provide money to employees who have lost a family member to help cover funeral expenses.

Language and Learning

Finally, it's no surprise that articles on language and learning are popular, considering that our students pay for a language-learning service. There were eight articles in this category:

At first, “Fasting May Improve Your Memory” doesn’t seem directly related to language or learning. However, Tutor J.V. (🇵🇭) notes, “None of my students who took this lesson were actually interested in fasting, but they want to improve their ability to remember vocabulary.”

📌 Takeaways

To summarize, these were the most popular Daily News topics in 2018:

Health and Diet
Work and Lifestyle
Language and Learning

So if you ever can’t decide on a conversation topic, or you want to suggest a Daily News article, try one of these!