tesolmaster.com top 10 hoaxes jigsaw reading comprehension & speaking lesson

1

Top 10 hoaxes

Jigsaw reading lesson

tesolmaster.com

Top 10 hoaxes Jigsaw reading lesson

2 tesolmaster.com Top 10 hoaxes jigsaw reading lesson

Reading skills

You are expected to do much more reading at university than at school or college; it's not called

„reading for a degree' for nothing.

Here are five tips to help you improve your reading:

1. Styles of reading

2. Active reading

3. A tip for speeding up your active reading

4. Spotting authors' navigation aids

5. Words and vocabulary

1. Styles of reading

There are three styles of reading which we use in different situations:

Scanning: for a specific focus

The technique you use when you're looking up a name in the phone book: you move your eye

quickly over the page to find particular words or phrases that are relevant to the task you're

doing.

It's useful to scan parts of texts to see if they're going to be useful to you:

the introduction or preface of a book

the first or last paragraphs of chapters

the concluding chapter of a book.

Skimming: for getting the gist of something

The technique you use when you're going through a newspaper or magazine: you read quickly to

get the main points, and skip over the detail. It's useful to skim:

to preview a passage before you read it in detail

to refresh your understand of a passage after you've read it in detail.

Use skimming when you're trying to decide if a book in the library or bookshop is right for you.

Detailed reading: for extracting information accurately

Where you read every word, and work to learn from the text.

In this careful reading, you may find it helpful to skim first, to get a general idea, but then go

back to read in detail. Use a dictionary to make sure you understand all the words used.



2. Active reading

When you're reading for your course, you need to make sure you're actively involved with the

text. It's a waste of your time to just passively read, the way you'd read a thriller on holiday.

Always make notes to keep up your concentration and understanding.

Here are four tips for active reading.

Underlining and highlighting

Pick out what you think are the most important parts of what you are reading. Do this with your

own copy of texts or on photocopies, not with borrowed books.

If you are a visual learner, you'll find it helpful to use different colours to highlight different

aspects of what you're reading.

Note key words

Record the main headings as you read. Use one or two keywords for each point. When you don't

want to mark the text, keep a folder of notes you make while reading.

Questions

Before you start reading something like an article, a chapter or a whole book, prepare for your

reading by noting down questions you want the material to answer. While you're reading, note

down questions which the author raises.

Summaries

Pause after you've read a section of text. Then:

1. put what you've read into your own words;

2. skim through the text and check how accurate your summary is and

3. fill in any gaps.



3. A tip for speeding up your active reading

You should learn a huge amount from your reading. If you read passively, without learning,

you're wasting your time. So train your mind to learn.

Try the SQ3R technique. SQ3R stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recall and Review.

Survey

Gather the information you need to focus on the work and set goals:

Read the title to help prepare for the subject

Read the introduction or summary to see what the author thinks are the key points

Notice the boldface headings to see what the structure is

Notice any maps, graphs or charts. They are there for a purpose

Notice the reading aids, italics, bold face, questions at the end of the chapter. They are all

there to help you understand and remember.

Question

Help your mind to engage and concentrate. Your mind is engaged in learning when it is actively

looking for answers to questions.

Try turning the boldface headings into questions you think the section should answer.

Read

Read the first section with your questions in mind. Look for the answers, and make up new

questions if necessary.

Recall

After each section, stop and think back to your questions. See if you can answer them from

memory. If not, take a look back at the text. Do this as often as you need to.

Review

Once you have finished the whole chapter, go back over all the questions from all the headings.

See you if can still answer them. If not, look back and refresh your memory.

See also: Taking notes, Gathering information

http://www.studyskills.soton.ac.uk/studytips/lecture_notes.htm#notes

http://www.studyskills.soton.ac.uk/studytips/gather_info.htm



4. Spotting authors' navigation aids

Discourse markers

Heading

Subheading

Titles

Italics

Bold

Graphs

Charts

Pictures



General rules for tackling a reading

Getting the general idea or overall picture

Skimming

Read headline subtitles and first line of each

paragraph

Read the first and last paragraph

Scanning

Scan for repeated names numbers, date %‟s,

and what they refer to. Look at graphs or

pictures and what they refer to.

Technique Underline or highlight / Make notes on a separate piece of paper later

Dealing with unknown vocabulary

Contextualisation

Is it clear from the context what the word means?

If so guess the mean, underline it and move on. Look it up later or at another time

Is it crucial to the general understanding of the sentence? If not don‟t worry about it

If it is crucial underline it. Read the sentence before and after. Do they help understand the

sentence? This is using context.

If not.

Make a decision to leave it or look it up? Don’t look it up immediately! It might become

clear as you read on or you might decide it‟s not important. Underline it so you can find it

easily. If you decide its important look it up before you read the text more deeply.



Questions for Active reading

To help your mind to engage and concentrate on what you are reading you need to be actively looking

for answers to questions.

Before you start reading something like an article, a chapter or a whole book, prepare for your reading

by noting down questions you want the material to answer.

While you're reading, note down questions which the author raises.

A useful technique is to try turning the boldface headings into questions you think the section should

answer.

Spotting authors' navigation aids Discourse markers

Heading

Subheading

Titles

Pictures

Italics

Bold text

Graphs

Charts



Deeper reading

Organising note taking Use headings or titles from the original text but don’t use them all.

Make a decision! What do you think is important?

REMEMBER A TEXT NEEDS A READER

YOUR OPPION IS IMPORTANT. YOUR INTERPRITATION COUNTS.

1) Either use the headings as they are or

2) Join one or more titles together or paraphrase and write your own.

It is best to keep the order of the original text.

Do I copy the text or use my own words?

The choice is yours

If you like what is said and think it is important. Copy it; this is a quote. N.B. You must use quotation marks.

Don’t quote everything! If you want to simply highlight the main points or ideas rephrase them in your own

words. At the End of deep reading have a break and then quickly rescan and skim to make sure you haven’t

missed anything.



Throughout the years many people have perpetrated hoaxes – often for publicity, and sometimes just for the

hell of it. Of all the hoaxes through history, the ten in this list are the most famous. In at least two cases (the

Book of Mormon, and the Priory of Sion) millions of people have been fooled – or continue to be fooled! In

no particular order, here they are:

1. The Book of Mormon 1830

The Book of Mormon is considered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to be a divinely

inspired book of equal value to the Bible. Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, claimed that he

was directed by an Angel to a hill near his home in which he found golden tablets containing the full text of

the book. With the books he found two objects called the Urim and Thummim which he described as a pair

of crystals joined in the form of a large pair of spectacles. Unfortunately, after Smith finished his translation,

he had to return the tablets to the Angel, so there is no physical evidence that they ever existed.

The book refers to a group of Jews that moved to and settled in America where Jesus visited them. Some

segments of the Book of Mormon contain sections copied directly from the King James version of the Bible

– the Bible that was most popular at the time and used by Joseph Smith. One example is Mark 16:15-18

which is quoted nearly word-for-word in Mormon 9:22-24. In addition, the book mimics the literary and

linguistic style of the King James Bible. Linguistic experts have stated that the entire book is written by one

man, and is not written by a combination of authors (the prophets as claimed by Smith). Additionally, the

book refers to animals and crops that did not exist in America until Columbus arrived: ass, bull, calf, cattle,

cow, domestic goat, horse, ox, domestic sheep, sow, swine, elephants, wheat, and barley.

The most compelling proof that Joseph Smith was perpetuating a fraud is the Book of Abraham. In 1835

Smith was able to use his Urim and Thummim to translate some Egyptian scrolls that he was given access to

(at that time no one could read hieroglyphics). Upon inspection, Smith declared that they contained the Book

of Abraham. He promptly translated the lot and it was accepted as scripture by the church. The scrolls

vanished and everyone thought the story would end there. But it didn‟t – in 1966 the original scrolls were

found in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The scrolls turned out to be a standard Egyptian text

that was often buried with the dead. To this day the Book of Abraham is a source of discomfort for the

Mormon religion.



2. The Cottingley Fairies 1917

The Cottingley Fairies are a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two

young cousins living in Cottingley, near Bradford, England, depicting the two in various activities with

supposed fairies. Elsie was the daughter of Arthur Wright, one of the earliest qualified electrical engineers.

She borrowed her father‟s quarter plate camera and took photos in the beck behind the family house. When

Mr. Wright, upon developing the plates, saw fairies in the pictures, he considered them fake. After the taking

of the second picture, he banned Elsie from using the camera again. Her mother, Polly, however was

convinced of their authenticity.

In the summer of 1919, the matter became public and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes)

wrote an article for a leading magazine claiming that they were authentic. Not everyone was taken in by the

fraud, as this statement from a leading Doctor at the time attests:

“On the evidence I have no hesitation in saying that these photographs could have been `faked‟. I criticise

the attitude of those who declared there is something supernatural in the circumstances attending to the

taking of these pictures because, as a medical man, I believe that the inculcation of such absurd ideas into the

minds of children will result in later life in manifestations and nervous disorder and mental disturbances…”

For fifty years the girls avoided publicity and the hoax continued to be believed by many. In late 1981 and

mid 1982 respectively, Frances Way (née Griffiths) and Elsie Hill (née Wright), who took the photographs

admitted that the first four pictures were fakes. Speaking of the first photograph in particular, Frances has

said: “I don‟t see how people could believe they‟re real fairies. I could see the backs of them and the hatpins

when the photo was being taken.” Both of the girls claimed, right up to their deaths, that the fifth photo was,

in fact, authentic.



3. Alien Autopsy 1995

In 1995, Ray Santilli instigated a wide reaching “alien autopsy” controversy when he claimed to possess

footage taken in a tent by a U.S. military shortly after the 1947 Roswell UFO incident. Santilli first presented

his film to an invited audience of media representatives, UFOlogists and other dignitaries at the Museum of

London on 5 May 1995. Although the broadcast version did not show the actual “autopsy”, video editions

have the complete and unedited film, plus previously unreleased footage of wreckage presented as the

remains of the alien craft reported to have crashed in Roswell. The show features interviews with experts on

the authenticity of the film.

On April 4, 2006, two days prior to the UK release of Alien Autopsy Ray Santilli and fellow producer Gary

Shoefield announced that their film was only partially real (a “few frames,” in their words), while the rest

was a reconstruction of twenty-two rolls of film, averaging four minutes in length, which Santilli had viewed

in 1992 but which had subsequently degraded from humidity and heat. According to Santilli, a set was

constructed in the living room of an empty flat in Rochester Square, Camden Town, London. John

Humphreys, an artist and sculptor, was employed to construct two dummy alien bodies over a period of three

weeks, using casts containing sheep brains set in jelly, chicken entrails and knuckle joints.



4. Piltdown Man 1912

The “Piltdown Man” is a famous hoax consisting of fragments of a skull and jawbone collected in 1912 from

a gravel pit at Piltdown, a village near Uckfield, East Sussex. The fragments were thought by many experts

of the day to be the fossilised remains of a hitherto unknown form of early human. The Latin name

Eoanthropus dawsoni (”Dawson‟s dawn-man”, after the collector Charles Dawson) was given to the

specimen.

The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous archaeological hoax in history. It has been prominent for two

reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that

elapsed from its discovery to its exposure as a forgery. It was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the

lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man. The identity of

the Piltdown forger remains unknown, but suspects have included Dawson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and

Arthur Conan Doyle as well as numerous others.

From the outset, there were scientists who expressed skepticism about the Piltdown find. G.S. Miller, for

example, observed in 1915 that “deliberate malice could hardly have been more successful than the hazards

of deposition in so breaking the fossils as to give free scope to individual judgment in fitting the parts

together.” In the decades prior to its exposure as a forgery in 1953, scientists increasingly regarded Piltdown

as an enigmatic aberration inconsistent with the path of hominid evolution as demonstrated by fossils found

elsewhere.



5. Feejee Mermaid 1842

The Feejee Mermaid was presented as a mummified body of something, supposedly a creature that was half

mammal and half fish (like a grotesque version of normal mermaid stories). The original exhibit was

popularized by circus great P.T. Barnum, but has since been copied many times in other attractions,

including the collection of famed showman Robert Ripley. The original exhibit was shown around the

United States, but was lost in the 1860s when Barnum‟s museum caught fire. The exhibit has since been

acquired by Harvard University‟s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and is currently housed

in the museum‟s attic storage area.

The Fiji mermaid came into Barnum‟s possession via his Boston counterpart Moses Kimball, who brought it

down to Barnum in late spring of 1842. On June 18, Barnum and Kimball entered into a written agreement

to exploit this “curiosity supposed to be a mermaid.” Kimball would remain the creature‟s sole owner and

Barnum would lease it for $12.50 a week. Barnum christened his artefact “The Feejee Mermaid”.

In reality, the mermaid was a gaff, the work of an Indonesian craftsman using either papier-mâché and

materials from exotic fish, or the tail of a fish and a torso of a baby orangutan, stitched together with the

head of a monkey.



6. The Priory of Sion 1956

The Priory of Sion has been characterized as anything from the most influential secret society in Western

history to a modern Rosicrucian-esque group, but, ultimately, has been shown to be a hoax created in 1956

by Pierre Plantard, a pretender to the French throne. The evidence presented in support of its historical

existence is not considered authentic or persuasive by established historians, academics, and universities,

and the evidence was later discovered to have been forged and then planted in various locations around

France by Plantard and his associates.

Between 1961 and 1984 Plantard contrived a mythical pedigree of the Priory of Sion claiming that it was the

offshoot of the monastic order housed in the Abbey of Sion, which had been founded in the Kingdom of

Jerusalem during the First Crusade and later absorbed by the Jesuits in 1617. Plantard hoped that the Priory

of Sion would become an influential cryptopolitical irregular masonic lodge dedicated to the restoration of

chivalry and monarchy, which would promote Plantard‟s own claim to the throne of France.

The priory recently gained interest again (despite easily obtainable proof that it is a fake) through the

publication of the book The Davinci Code which the author, Dan Brown, claims to be fact (proving that he

lied outright about his alleged years of research for the book).



7. The Turk 1717

The Turk was a fake chess-playing machine of the late 18th century, promoted as an automaton but later

proved to be a hoax. The Turk made its debut in 1770 at Schönbrunn Palace. Its owner, Kempelen addressed

the court, presenting what he had built, and began the demonstration of the machine and its parts. With every

showing of the Turk, Kempelen began by opening the doors and drawers of the cabinet, allowing members

of the audience to inspect the machine. Following this display, Kempelen would announce that the machine

was ready for a challenger.

Kempelen would inform the player that the Turk would use the white pieces and have the first move.

Between moves the Turk kept its left arm on the cushion. The Turk could nod twice if it threatened its

opponent‟s queen, and three times upon placing the king in check. If an opponent made an illegal move, the

Turk would shake its head, move the piece back and make its own move, thus forcing a forfeit of its

opponent‟s move. Observers of the Turk would state that the machine played aggressively, and typically beat

its opponents within thirty minutes.

The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master to hide inside and operate the

machine. With a skilled operator, the Turk won most of the games played. The apparatus was demonstrated

around Europe and the Americas for over 80 years until its destruction by fire in 1854, playing and defeating

many challengers including statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/turk-engraving5.jpg



8. Loch Ness – the Surgeon‟s Photo 1934

One of the most iconic images of Nessie is known as the „Surgeon‟s Photograph‟ which many consider to be

good evidence of the monster, although doubts about the photograph‟s authenticity were expressed from the

beginning. The image was revealed as a hoax in the 1990s. The photographer, a gynecologist named Robert

Kenneth Wilson, never claimed it to be a picture of the monster. He merely claimed to have photographed

“something in the water”. The photo is often cropped to make the monster seem huge, while the original

uncropped shot shows the other end of the loch and the monster in the center.

Just a year before the hoax was revealed, the makers of Discovery Communications‟ documentary Loch

Ness Discovered did an analysis of the uncropped image and found a white object evident in every version

of the photo, implying that it was on the negative. “It seems to be the source of ripples in the water, almost

as if the object was towed by something”, the narrator said. “But science cannot rule out it was just a

blemish on the negative,” he continued. Additionally, analysis of the full photograph revealed the object to

be quite small, only about two to three feet long.

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/nyol98005312048.jpg



9. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion 1890

The Protocol of the Elders of Zion is a text that purports to describe a Jewish and Masonic plot to achieve

world domination. It is one of the most well known and discussed examples of literary forgery. Numerous

independent investigations have concluded it to be either a plagiarism or a hoax. The Protocols is widely

considered to be the beginning of contemporary conspiracy theory literature, and takes the form of an

instruction manual to a new member of the “elders,” describing how they will run the world through control

of the media and finance, and replace the traditional social order with one based on mass manipulation.

Continued usage of the Protocols as an antisemitic propaganda tool substantially diminished with the defeat

of the Nazis in World War II. It is still frequently quoted and reprinted by some anti-Semitic circles, and is

sometimes used as evidence of an alleged Jewish cabal, especially in the Middle East. Elements of the text in

the Protocols appears to be plagiarized from an 1864 pamphlet, Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and

Montesquieu, written by the French satirist Maurice Joly. Joly‟s work attacks the political ambitions of

Napoleon III using Machiavelli as a diabolical plotter in Hell as a stand-in for Napoleon‟s views.

Interestingly, many of the protocols aims have been achieved. For example: Universal suffrage, wide

acceptance of pornography, the spread of Darwinism, Socialism, and Materialism.

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/history-wing-assets-room1-elders-of-zion-protocols-1.jpg



10. The Cardiff Giant 1869

The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous hoaxes in American history, was a 10-foot-tall (3m) “petrified

man” uncovered on October 16, 1869 by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. “Stub”

Newell in Cardiff, New York. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by P.T. Barnum are still on display.

The Giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Hull, an atheist, decided to

create the giant after an argument with a fundamentalist minister named Mr. Turk about a passage in Genesis

that stated that there were giants who once lived on earth.

Hull hired men to carve out a 10-feet-long, 4.5 inches block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, telling them it

was intended for a monument of Abraham Lincoln in New York. He shipped the block to Chicago, where he

hired a German stonecutter to carve it into the likeness of a man and swore him to secrecy. Various stains

and acids were used to make the giant appear to be old and weather beaten, and the giant‟s surface was

beaten with steel knitting needles embedded in a board to simulate pores. When the giant had been buried for

a year, Newell hired two men, Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, ostensibly to dig a well. When they

found the Giant, one of them has been attributed to saying “I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!”.

The giant drew such crowds that showman P.T. Barnum offered $60,000 for a three-month lease of it (in his

memoirs he said he wanted to buy it). When the syndicate turned him down he hired a man to covertly

model the giant‟s shape in wax and create a plaster replica. He put his giant on display in New York,

claiming that his was the real giant and the Cardiff Giant was a fake. On February 2, 1870 both giants were

revealed as fakes in court. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling a fake giant a fake.

Original text Sourced from: http://listverse.com/2007/08/30/top-10-famous-hoaxes/

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/cardiff-giant-exhumed-1869.jpg

tesolmaster.com top 10 hoaxes jigsaw reading comprehension & speaking lesson

Documents