Objective　To explore the English newspaper reading activities which are well-suited for medical students. Methods　At the end of an optional course News in English， a question-naire investigation was conducted among 86 enrolled students on their degree of preference for the 8 kinds of news reading activities designed for this course. Questionnaire data were processed by SPSS 13.0 software. Percentages were calculated and ANOVA tests were employed to compare the prefer-ence degree between different activities. P<0.05 signifies statistical differences. Results　The prefer-ence degree for all the 8 activities were above 3 out of a total of 5. The score for most activities fell between 3 and 4. Each activity was ‘liked’ or ‘loved’ by more than half of students. There was no significant difference either between the scores for the 8 activities， or between the scores of each activ-ity for different semesters（P >0.05）. Conclusions　The eight types of English news reading activities are well suited for the interest of most medical students. Nevertheless， they still need improving in several aspects to increase students’ interest in newspaper reading and further motivate them in relat-ed English learning activities， including selection of text material.