EN_H2_CH1_Reading G

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 2

Hello!

Wat are we going to do today?

- Chapter 1 - Read Text G "Fake-ations"

- Practice orally

- Do some exercises

What's a good reading strategy?

Fake-ations - Vocabulary

TO TRUST

TO PRETEND

IMAGE

ACCOMPLISHMENT

TO AFFORD

TO CLAIM

SOLUTION

DESGUISE

DECEIT

FAKE

TO FIRE SOMEONE

MEAN

PEAK

TO PROVE

Reading G: Fake-ations!

Introduction:

If a round-the-world trip is just too dangerous or too expensive, there is a solution: fake your journey. Here are a number of ‘travellers’ whose trips were nothing but flights of fancy .

Not topping it 

Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rothid – both police officers – were the first Indian couple to reach the top of Mount Everest together. At least, that’s what they claimed. They proudly posted images of their accomplishment: they were holding an Indian flag on the summit of the mountain – in full climbing gear.

However, fellow mountaineers were quick to point out that some things were off: the couple’s outfits, for example, changed in between shots and the shadows in the picture didn’t match the time the couple claimed to be on the peak. Apart from being shamed by mountaineers and random strangers on the Internet, Dinesh and Tarekeshwari experienced another sad consequence of their deceit: they were both fired from their police jobs because their employers felt that the couple could no longer be trusted.

A joke come true 

When Sevelyn Gat from Kenya could not afford the trip to Asia that she had dreamed of, she decided to simply copy-paste herself into holiday pictures, and posted these on Facebook. You could, for example, find her smiling and posing next to a plane heading for China or standing on the Great Wall. The photoshopped images were so badly done (and therefore quite adorable) that they went viral, leading to the hashtag #whereissevegatsnow. 

Sevelyn had become a meme as other people started to put her in many different kinds of photographs: from pictures with the American president to pictures on the moon. At some point her pictures caught the attention of Sam Gichuru, a Nairobi businessman who started a fundraiser to send Sevelyn on her dream trip to China. He managed to get enough donations for all her travelling expenses and so she went – this time for real!

Dutch girl visits Thailand… from home 

Zilla van den Born, a Dutch graphic design student, proved with her art academy project about truth and lies in the virtual world just how easy it is to fool people through social media. For her project, she spent five weeks hiding in her apartment while pretending to the world she was backpacking around Southeast Asia. 

How did she pull it off? She went for tanning sessions at the sun parlour, wearing a disguise every time she left the house. She used software to manipulate holiday pictures and she had Skype calls with her parents. For these calls she built an actual Thai hostel décor in her home. Zilla even took care to add new (fake!) friends on Facebook and to ‘bring home’ souvenirs (which she bought at the local flea market). In this way, she managed to mislead even her closest friends and family. 

At the final stage of her project, she recorded her friends and family as she shows them the truth behind her fake travels. Needless to say, they were surprised – some even shocked! However, they all thought she had done a good job of pointing out the main idea behind her art project. 

As Zilla put it in her statement: ‘We live in a visual culture in which information and reality are intertwined’. After her graduation she did in fact pack her bags and made exactly the trip that she had faked. After all, after spending 5 weeks at home she really needed a vacation.

- Do exercises 41 to 45 (Chapter 1, Reading G)

- Homework: Do exercise 45 on a separate sheet of paper and hand it in!

Let's work!

Write 3 words you learnt today

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See you next time!