The Republia Times

Educational Games

 

Age: Mature teens+
Levels: Medium-Difficult

Ever wondered what it's like to be the editor-in-chief of a national newspaper?  Students and teachers alike will enjoy printing positive articles which depict the glorious and free nation of Republia in a positive light.  Your job is to print as many articles as possible for the Republia Times that will help make Republia great again! ;)

In the current age of post-truth politics, Facebook bubbles and unscrupulous mainstream media doublespeak this game from Lucas Pope is topical and a fun way for students to get some authentic topic-related language input related to media propaganda and the main stream media.  Fostering critical reflection is an important aspect of educational programs and what Richard Kern specifically calls critical semiotic awareness.

A critical semiotic awareness of how meanings are made, framed, and transformed in particular contexts of language use is essential to twenty-first-century learners because they face a singularly pervasive mediascape that is potentially as exploitative as it is emancipatory (Kern, 2015:233).

This entails raising awareness of how conventions are used to shape texts to construct discourse toward social ends.  Making learners aware of their own agency to use these conventions but also in critiquing them and potentially shaping them.

Which stories were the most outlandish?
Which stories were the most unbelievable?
Which stories were just silly?

Which positive stories might have contributed to a greater Republia readership?
Which negative stories may have contributed to a lower Republia readership?

Were there any stories that were scarily similar to real-life news stories?

Richard Kern, (2015) Language, Literacy and Technology.