This week’s post deals with an explosive report from The Guardian from 7 years ago titled “The Nauru Files.”  The post asks students to explore how the news media, as well as social media, use language and images to make a point. 

For a 16-year-old student, this “news” is quite old.  It happened when they were in elementary school!  But the issue of immigration, migration, and refugees is still pertinent today.  By examining how language and images are used in news headlines, PSAs, statements by politicians, Facebook posts, and more, students will be better positioned to understand how words (and images) are used to influence the reader. 

And understanding how words and images are used is the bread and butter of our course.  As always, if this is too political, or too controversial, or too hard for you to teach in your context, adapt, modify, or change what you need to make it work.  And if it’s not right for you, that’s okay too.  We have a lot of other resources on the site!   

You can find the link to the resources here.

Finally, and on a very different note, don’t forget to check out the changes to the grading of Paper 2.  You can find a post about that here.

Best,

Tim and David