Media

Introduction

Media
In this theme we are looking at The Media.

What are we going to do?
We look at different forms of media and a popular theme at the moment, the concept of fake news.
We look at some measures that are being taken to ensure that young people are able to identify the difference between real and fake news.
The final article is about the effect that media has on brain development.

What about you?
Do you read a newspaper? How often do you watch news on TV? Do you think it is important to know what is happening in the world?

Need to know

What do you need to know?
At the end of this theme, you should be able to talk, read and write about Media with ease.
But you don't have to be able to do all this perfectly right away! If you take the following lessons you'll find out what you need to know!

Read the questions.
Discuss these questions about 10 minutes.

What do you think?

Where do you usually get the news from? Why do you choose that medium?
Do you think the media has the power to influence people? How so?
On the whole, do you trust what journalists in your country say?
Do you think that ‘fake news’ has become a problem? What can we do about it?
What can be done to improve the quality of the media?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of people getting the news from the internet?

Can do

In this theme you will focus on the following 'can do' statements.

Listening B2

I can understand most radio documentaries and recorded or broadcast audio material delivered in standard dialect and can identify the speaker’s mood, tone etc.
I can understand in detail what is said to me in standard spoken language, even in a noisy environment.
I can understand extended speech and lectures and follow even complex lines of argument provided the topic is reasonably familiar.
I can understand most TV news and current affairs programmes and can identify the speaker's mood, tone etc.
I can understand the majority of films in standard dialect.
I can use a variety of strategies to achieve comprehension, including for main points; checking comprehension by using contextual clues.

Reading C1

I can understand texts about current topics in which the writer takes a particular point of view.
I can understand long and complex factual and literary texts, appreciating distinctions of style.
I can understand specialized articles and longer technical instructions, even when they do not relate to my field of interest.
I can read quickly enough to cope with an academic course, to read the media for information or to understand non-standard correspondence.

Speaking B2

I can give opinions, points of view and comments on subjects.
I can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with a classmate quite possible.
I can take an active part in discussion in familiar contexts, accounting for and sustaining my views.
I can present clear, detailed descriptions on a wide range of subjects related to my field of interest.
I can explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.

Writing B2

I can write a simple essay about topics that interest me.
I can write clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects related to my interest.
I write an essay or report, passing on information or giving reasons in support of against particular point of view.
I can write letters highlighting the personal significance of events and experiences.
I can make notes while someone is talking or write a letter including non-standard requests.

To do

The theme Media contains an introduction, three sections and a final project. In the schedule below, you can see the titles of the sections and an estimate of the time required for each part.

Lesson	Title		Time
Introduction	Introduction Need to know Can do To do		0,5 hour
Lesson 1	What is fake news?	Speak and write about Media and the importance of different kind of stories. Read about fake news and write a letter of complaint to the BBC.	3-4 hours
Lesson 2	Fake news as fact?	Listen to a satirical sitcom about different newspapers. Read an article about pupils believe all the news on social networks. Grammar: present/future/past	3-4 hours
Lesson 3	Impact of media	Speak about TV watching and read about influence of media on psychosocial development. Write about the negative effects of media.	3-4 hours
Finishing touch	Final Project	Create your own fake news!	3 hours
	Oefenprogramma Engels	Practise with the 'Oefenprogramma Engels'.
	Examentraining	Prepare for exams: practise taking past versions.
	Evaluatie	Answer evaluation questions, what did you learn?
	Total		less than 20 hours

*hour = lesuur. Eén lesuur komt ongeveer overeen met 2 SLU.

Lessons

What is fake news?

Introduction

In this first section we look at what the media actually means, and aspects that it includes. We reflect upon our own interaction with media (including social media) and how important, or not these interactions are.

This first section contains 4 steps. Work them through step by step.

Step	Activity
	Introduction	Find out what you already know.
Step 1	Speaking and writing	Make a list with your partner about The Media. Answer questions. Watch a TED talk video. Before that, indicate whether sentences are true or false. Explain, considering some points, the speaker's concluding sentence.
Step 2	Reading	Indicate how confident or true news stories are. Read and watch situations and indicate fake or real. Check your answers on the sites. Read the text 'What is fake news?'. Answer questions in your own words.
Step 3	Words	Match the word and description in one exercise. In the other you complete the sentences with the words from Exercise 1.
Step 4	Task	Write a letter of complaint to the BBC in 150-200 words. Read some tips.
	Evaluation	Reflecting on what you have learnt.

Difficult words? Search these on Cambridge Dictionaries

Step 1 - Speaking

With your partner, answer these questions.

Have you read any news stories today? Why did you read those particular items?
(interesting headline/photo.. other?)
What were they were about?
Where did you read them?
Can you name any large news agencies?
If you commented on them, how did you do it? (e.g. repost on social media/comment to friend?)
How many of those news items will actually matter in the next 50 years or so?

You’re going to watch a TED talk video about news.
Before you watch, read these sentences and decide if they are True (T) or False (F).

		True	False
A.	Reuters reports on over 3.5 million news stories a year.
B.	Some stories will not matter in the future.
C.	The top story from the past year was about the economy.
D.	The speaker says that stories about the economy will always be important news.
E.	There are over 2 billion hungry people in the world.
F.	GMO crops are essential for some developed countries to survive.
G.	The USA is the world’s biggest car market.
H.	A microbe can wake up after 120,000 years.

Now watch the video and check your answers. (Watch until 3:17).

To what extent do you agree with the speaker’s concluding sentence, ‘In the long run, some news stories are more important than others’? Consider the following points:

What is the story about?
Who is involved in the story?
Which country is involved?
Is the story about science? Does that make a difference? Why/why not?

Step 2 - Reading

You are going to read an article about fake news.
First, thinking about where you read news stories, how confident are you that the stories actually are true?

1 not at all confident
3 not really sure
5 they may or may not be true
7 pretty sure they’re true
10 100% sure they are true

Do you generally believe what you read?
Can you think of something you read and thought to be true, and then you discovered that it wasn’t true?

Read the following situations and decide whether or not you think they are true or fake.
What are the implications of these news stories being accurate?

Situation 1

The following sign displayed on a London underground station after the Westminster Bridge attack in March 2017.

True or fake?

Situation 2

In the run-up to the US presidential elections in 2017, it was claimed that a paedophile ring involving high-profile members of the Democratic Party was operating out of the basement of a pizza restaurant in Washington DC.

True or fake?

Situation 3

This image shows a man rescuing a cat from London docks.

True or fake?

Now follow the links below to find out whether these situations are real news or fake news.

Read the article entitled ‘What is fake news?’.
Answer the questions in your own words.

What is fake news? Its origins and how it grew in 2016

by James Carson

It was at Donald Trump’s first press conference as President-elect when the term "fake news" broke out of media discussions and into the mainstream. "You are fake news!" he pointed at CNN’s Jim Acosta while refusing to listen to his question.
Since then, the now President of the USA has been calling out major media outlets several times a week for being ‘FAKE NEWS’ via his Twitter feed - particularly CNN and the New York Times. But why is Donald Trump using the term ‘fake news’ so frequently and where did it come from?
Bending the truth for political gain is certainly nothing new. In the Second World War, the propaganda machine was used relentlessly by all sides across the media spectrum. This sort of propaganda was largely funded and controlled by governments, but the blatant bias it carried waned as the ideological struggles became less apparent. Added to that, as populations became more used to mass communication, they could more easily see through it.
The rising trend of fake news during 2016 was very different to largely state controlled analogue modes of 20th century propaganda. What we saw oftener here were small groups of people taking advantage of social media interaction and algorithms through creative hyperbolic articles around a major political event: the US presidential election.
Propaganda and Internet fake news do, however, hold similarities: both are methods of distorting the truth for emotional persuasion, seeking to drive action. Although this action appears to be political, the motivation in the 2016 US election was not necessarily. Many creators of it were moreover looking for a path to quick dollars by distributing content and gaining an audience that would view advertising. Before the Internet, publishing fake news and gaining an audience that could be monetised was nearly impossible for three reasons:

Distribution and cost: Distributing information on any kind of scale needed a prohibitively expensive logistics operation.
Audiences and trust: Building a large audience took much longer, and because it was expensive to acquire and built on trust of information, publishing fake news would be damaging to reputation and thus have economic consequences.
Law and regulation: Because it was expensive to distribute information, there were far fewer players. These abided by media law and could be regulated. Publishing fake news would likely end up with the publisher being sued. But this gate of information exchange was unlocked around 2007, with the beginnings of the social media revolution. The creation of social networks like Facebook and Twitter allowed people to exchange information on a much greater scale than ever before, while publishing platforms like WordPress allowed anyone to create a dynamic website with ease.

In short, the barriers to creating fake news were undone:

The five types of fake news
Stories classified as fake news can generally be put into five categories, as experts try to develop a way of warning readers what they may be encountering.

Intentionally deceptive
These are news stories created entirely to deceive readers. The 2016 US election was rife with examples claiming that “x celebrity has endorsed Donald Trump”, when that was not the case.
Jokes taken at face value
Humour sites such as the Onion or Daily Mash present fake news stories in order to satirise the media. Issues can arise when readers see the story out of context and share it with others.
Large-scale hoaxes
Deceptions that are then reported in good faith by reputable news sources. A recent example would be the story that the founder of Corona beer made everyone in his home village a millionaire in his will.
Slanted reporting of real facts
Selectively-chosen but truthful elements of a story put together to serve an agenda. One of the most prevalent examples of this is the PR-driven science or nutrition story, such as 'x thing you thought was unhealthy is actually good for you'.
Stories where the ‘truth’ is contentious

On issues where ideologies or opinions clash - for example, territorial conflicts - there is sometimes no established baseline for truth. Reporters may be unconsciously partisan, or perceived as such.

Is fake news actually influential?
While often used statistics - 62 per cent of Americans using social networks as a source of news, and 44 per cent primarily using Facebook - could be used to reinforce that fake news has real influence, they are really quite general figures. We simply don't know what the large interaction numbers that are attributed to fake news really mean in an "influence" sense: what does a Facebook Like mean in this context, for example.
Fake news as we have come to know it on Facebook is more of a menace than a game changing influencer. However, the term has now jumped from the referral of a small scale menace into one often used to refer to the established mainstream media, accounting for thousands of professional journalists.

What is happening now?
Some claim that the term has now been co-opted by politicians and commentators to mean anything they disagree with - making the term essentially meaningless and more of a stick to beat the mainstream press with than a phenomenon in itself. Donald Trump said recently that "any negative polls are fake news".

^{Source: www.telegraph.co.uk}

Step 3 - Words

Drag the word to its definition.

Complete the sentences with the correct word from Exercise 1

Step 4 - Task

You are going to write a letter of complaint to the BBC.
You saw the item about the underground and you believed it to be true.
You now know that it isn’t and you are very disappointed.
You feel that you don’t have enough time to be constantly fact checking and that is why you subscribe to ‘quality’ news channels.

Write a letter to the company outlining these problems and the action that you want them to take. Here are some tips for writing a letter of complaint:

Begin: Dear Sir or Madam
End: Yours faithfully
Divide your work into paragraphs.
Begin by saying why you are writing.
Give details about what happened.
Explain how you feel.
Next outline the action that you would like the company to take.
End your letter politely.

Write your letter of complaint in about 150-200 words.

Possible Answer

Evaluation

Fill in this schedule and answer the questions below.

(Copy to Word or write down in your notebook)

Activity		Needs Improvement	Satisfactory, good	Excellent
Step 1 - Speaking and writing	I can make a list with my partner about The Media and answer the questions. I can indicate whether sentences are true or false and explain, considering some points, the speaker's concluding sentence.
Step 2 - Reading	I can indicate how confident or true news stories are. I can read, understand and watch situations and indicate fake or real. I can read and understand the text 'What is fake news?' and answer questions in your own words.
Step 3 - Words	I can match the word and description in one exercise and complete the sentences with the words in the other exercise.
Step 4 - Task	I can do the writing task.

What have you learnt in this period?
Answer the following questions:

What was the easiest part of this lesson?
What was the most difficult part?
What did you already know?
What was new to you in this lesson?
What do you have to ask your teacher?