Revista simpozionului Eficienta si calitate in educatie 2018 Revista simpozionului | Page 13

5 The teacher gives the students a matching exercise to test their understanding of
the strategies used in the clickbait headlines. They check the answers in pairs and
compare the strategies listed below with their own interpretations.
1. Man tries to hug a wild lion. You
a. Challenge to readers’ IQ
won’t believe what happens
next.
2. 21 stars who ruined their faces
b. Promises
due to plastic surgery
3. Man divorced his wife after
c. Lists with ‘jewels’
knowing what is in this photo
4. 15 hilarious tweets of stupid
d. Inducing fear
people that make you think: “Do
these people even exist?”
5. Can you solve this ancient
e. Shocking
/
amazing
riddle? 90% of the people gave
unbelievable results
the wrong answer
6. Supermodels use these simple
f. Celebrity gossip
tricks to stay young. Find out
their secrets
7. You might suffer from a serious
g. Making readers feel superior
condition if you experience these
symptoms
8. 15 perfect tweets that sum up
h. Mysterious stories
student life (no 13 is hilarious)
Key: 1e, 2f, 3h, 4g, 5a, 6b, 7d, 8c
The clickbait headings were adapted from the internet resource
https://medium.com/zerone-magazine/you-wont-believe-how-these-9-shocking-
clickbaits-work-number-8-is-a-killer-4cb2ceded8b6
/
6 The teacher directs the students to do research online and find one more
example for each of the strategies listed above.
7 Follow-up. Students are asked to reflect on why clickbait is bad journalism and
write down their opinion.
The activities listed above can be used with intermediate to advanced students in
order to not only help them practise the language effectively and communicatively,
but to engage them in exercising their critical thinking skills. This will best serve the
aim of education which, as Albert Einstein said, “is not the learning of facts, but the
training of the mind to think.”
Bibliography:
Hughes, John. Critical Thinking in the Language Classroom. 2014.
https://www.ettoi.pl/PDF_resources/Critical_ThinkingENG.pdf
Schmidt, Anthony. Critical thinking and English language teaching Pt1. 2016 in
EFL Magazine. https://www.eflmagazine.com/critical-thinking-english-language-
teaching/
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