Argument: Why do People Fall for Fake News?
Overview for Instructors (“Why Do People Fall for Fake News?”)
The essay “Why Do People Fall for Fake News?” by Gordon Pennycook and David Rand can be found on The New York Times website.
This article presents two possible theories as to why people fall for fake news. Although the writers argue in favor of one theory, it is balanced, respectful, and fair. It touches on bias, rationalization, and cognitive laziness. Students relate to the topic easily and see themselves in the examples. It would pair nicely with the article, “Misinformation and Biases Affect Social Media…” The article Includes outside research and the authors’ own research. It also links to a lengthy, scholarly article.
The following instructional activities, assignments, and documents are included for this reading. They are explained in the chart below and can be found in the module.
| Course Activities, Assignments, and Documents | Goals Addressed |
| Analyzing and Answering Questions with Multiple Parts: A power point and activity to help the students annotate and analyze the directions for assignments (will need to be adapted to the directions/assignments for this particular module.)
How to Analyze a Writing Prompt and create a Strong Thesis Statement activity (will need to be adapted to the directions/assignments for this particular module.) Understanding the Relationship between the Assignment and the Rubric (will need to be adapted to the directions/assignments for this particular module.) |
GOAL 1: Understanding Academic Writing Assignments |
| Vocabulary Preview: A list of challenging words and phrases from the text is identified so that students can build knowledge of vocabulary before reading the article.
Reading Process Activity: This activity guides students through the reading process – previewing the article, actively reading and annotating the text, and reflecting on the meaning of the text and the reading process. Emphasis is placed on using the title and students’ background knowledge and experience with the content to predict ideas in the text. Summary and Response Activity: This activity provides a set of guided questions to develop a summary and reading response to the article. An example is provided to help with developing a response, as well as providing suggestions to start the writing process. |
GOAL 2: Read and understand college-level texts |
| Passive Voice and Modal Verbs: noticing and error correction activities
Recognizing hedging language to express a point of view Subject-verb agreement error correction activity Finding Independent Clauses activity asks students to locate independent clauses in complex sentences from the article. They are then asked to consider how the dependent clauses and phrases relate to and create meaning for the independent clause. Using Noun Clauses to state position activity Analyzing text for Present Perfect activity asks students to find present perfect, simple present, and present continuous verbs and discuss the author’s choice.
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GOAL 3: Develop Sophisticated Grammatical Structures |
| Vocabulary Preview: A list of challenging words and phrases from the text is identified so that students can build knowledge of vocabulary before reading the article.
Identifying Special Vocabulary in Argumentative Writing points out and defines specialized vocabulary in paragraphs 1-6 and asks students to complete the exercise for the rest of the article. |
GOAL 4: Develop Fluency with Academic Vocabulary |
| Finding Claims and Support in Argumentative Writing explains the purpose of academic argument and asks students to match claims with evidence and evaluate the evidence’s relevance to the claim.
Distinguishing between properly documented and plagiarized outside sources: Students will evaluate whether the content taken from the article has been used appropriately when documented in a sample student paper. |
GOAL 5: Strategies for Using Evidence in Academic Writing |
