The use of mass media as a means of learning a foreign language from the beginning of language study is discussed. Using the media enables many of the features of the natural language acquisition process to be brought into play in a way that much current language teaching material does not. This position is supported by recent research into the processes of reading and listening. The paper also discusses some of the ways in which activities preceding or accompanying the use of media texts can make the texts accessible to a wide variety of learners, including beginners. Beginners can be helped not only to understand foreign language texts but also to create and edit their own texts at a relatively sophisticated level. This approach greatly enriches the comprehensible linguistic input while also reducing affective barriers to language learning. A practical exercise built around an Italian news story and using four newspaper articles and one radio broadcast transcript in Italian as the basis for a series of activities is appended. (Author/MSE)