Become a fake news-monger!
*This activity has been prepared for young and adult English learners who have a B1-B2 level.Skills: reading, writing, and speaking.
Objective: to evidence the techniques used to mislead people and improve basic critical thinking.
Are you easy to fool? Every now and then we can be misled by something we read, listen, or watch, especially on the internet. There are some fake news-mongers out there, so it is important to develop basic skills in order to identify misleading news. False information can have serious consequences (think of what happened in the US on January 6, 2021, and recently in Brazil). Therefore, knowing some characteristics of misleading information can help us to identify it. The following activities you will do have the purpose of contributing to your critical thinking while you practice your English reading, writing, and speaking skills.
Today, you are going to be a fake news creator! You are going to learn how to think like one.
ACTIVITY 1
Bad News is a 15-minutes game where you take the role of a fake news creator on Twitter who just wants to gain followers. The game will help you to do that. Read its instructions, choose your wicked content, and become a master of chaos! This game will teach you some of the techniques false content creators use to mislead people.
This is the link to the game: https://www.getbadnews.com/en/intro
ACTIVITY 2
Let's practice the techniques you have just learned. Imagine you are an influencer or a "respected" journalist. Write a very short post talking about a real event, but you need to include misleading, manipulated, and biased information. Use Canva or a different app to create your post. Employ any words or means you want to communicate your message.
ACTIVITY 3
Now, record yourself talking about what you learned with activities 1 and 2. Explain your post and say why it is misleading or biased. Finally, answer this question: how could you identify fake news and misleading and biased information? The audio should last between 1 and 2 minutes.
Send me your post and recording to jhoel.oliveros@correounivalle.edu.co
I found the activity very cool and pertinent specially for our times, in which you must be careful with what you see on internet and the news you read or watch daily through different media. This activity achieves a good spread of awareness since you yourself can try to be under the skin of that kind of scammers and somehow figure out how their modus operandi works.
ReplyDeleteThank you Juan José. I am glad that this activity helped you to be aware of the characteristics of false news.
DeleteNice task! I love how since the first activity we can play a game to know what conforms a Fake New, it is funny and catch all your attention. Then, when you go to the Activity 3, you are prepared to practice writing with a subject you already know with the game. I like how we can work on speaking too at the end, that activity is a good reflection about misleading. It changes my way to see and believe in social networks, thanks!
ReplyDeleteHi Valery. I happy that the game, the writing and the speaking activities helped to reflect on this current issue.
DeleteThank you Jhoel for sharing, I enjoyed playing the role of a fake news-monger. I liked how the activity starts with the focus on the reading skill. Since the aim of your proposal was critical thinking, I think it reached the development of sociocultural strategies because it was coherent with the intended population and level. I must say that my creativity is not that brilliant to manipulate information in a credible way but, at least, I ended the activity knowing how to be aware of the strategies unscrupulous people use. Fake news-mongers certainly know how to use multimodality!
ReplyDeleteHi Jhoel, this activity is meaningful because it teaches students something about social media and critical thinking. The activity is well designed except for not including a grading criteria and submission deadline. Consider that when you ask students to do a multimodal activity with software, you need to provide links or access to materials that will facilitate the activity. Overall, good!!
ReplyDelete