Inside social networks: Media literacy vs. fake news in the EFL class

Abstract

[eng] This paper offers a didactic proposal for the teaching of English as a foreign language in ESO level that deals with Media and Information Literacy (MIL) and promotes making a sensible use of social networks. For this purpose, literature about active EFL teaching methodologies such as Cooperative learning and Project-based learning has been reviewed as well as studies on disinformation and MIL. Also, a study was conducted to see how teenagers are informed, and to learn about their relationship with social networks and their prior experiences with fake news. The result is a workshop for students of 4th of ESO in which they are asked to work collaboratively to identify fake news and create their own broadcast media. They will have to be able to search for, understand, and contrast general information on the Internet as well as to create their own written and oral online content. The workshop is articulated through playful activities in which students play an active role and learn by doing and reflecting on what they have done. In this way, we expect students to develop some critical thinking skills towards social media networks and to become aware of information bias and disinformation. The proposal also includes different materials to address the topic of fake news in the EFL classroom. At the end of the paper, some future lines of work are suggested in order to integrate this workshop into the LOMLOE framework and to explore MIL potential in a cross-curricular project for linguistic subjects.