Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion in Reading Comprehension
DISTINGUISHING Between FACT AND OPINION
For higher-level reading comprehension, it is essential that students are able to accurately distinguish between fact and opinion. To practise this successfully students must begin with solid definitions of the two concepts. One time this has been achieved, students must gain practice applying these definitions through activities that engage with a wide range of reading cloth.
Let's take a look at defining these ii all-of import concepts:
WHAT IS A FACT?
A fact more often than not refers to something that is truthful and can be verified every bit such. That is, a fact is something that can exist proven to be true.
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WHAT IS AN Stance?
An opinion refers to a personal belief. Information technology relates to how someone feels about something. Others may agree or disagree with an opinion, but they cannot testify or disprove information technology. This is what defines it every bit opinion.
Why Are Fact and Opinion So Important?
The ability to distinguish betwixt fact and opinion helps students develop their critical and belittling skills in both their reading and their listening. Fact and opinion are frequently woven together in texts and speeches. Information technology is therefore imperative that students are able to unravel the threads of what is true from what is mere belief if they are to successfully navigate the deluge of media they will come across in their lifetimes.
Whether on the news, in advertising, or in a history volume, distinguishing between what is fact and what is stance is crucial to becoming an autonomous person with the critical abilities necessary to avoid being manipulated easily.
The Language of Fact and Opinion: Indicate Words and Phrases
Equally we mentioned to a higher place, often writers will liven up their facts with a sprinkling of opinion. Unfortunately, it tin can at times be difficult to extract the verifiable truths from the writer'south preferences and biases. Luckily the language used itself often throws up helpful clues in the forms of words and phrases that assistance us in identifying statements as fact-based or stance-based.
Let's now take a look at some examples of those betoken words and phrases existence used in the judgement fragments that often precede a statement of fact or stance:
FACT
● The annual report confirms …
● Scientists take recently discovered …
● Co-ordinate to the results of the tests…
● The investigation demonstrated …
OPINION
● He claimed that…
● It is the officeholder's view that…
● The written report argues that…
● Many scientists doubtable that…
As nosotros can see from the higher up examples, the language used to innovate a statement can be helpful in indicating whether information technology is beingness framed as a fact or an opinion.
It is important for students to understand also that things are not always as they announced to be. At times, writers, whether consciously or not, volition frame opinion equally fact and vice versa. This is why it is of import that students develop a clear agreement of what constitutes fact and opinion and are afforded ample opportunities to practice distinguishing between the two.
WHAT IS CONTEXT?
Context is the circumstances surrounding an event, argument, or idea, and in terms of which it can exist fully understood. Facts and opinions must be placed in context to depict conclusions from.
For example, a immature boy who tells his mother "I ate a truckload of sweets at the party terminal night" needs to be placed in the context of his age, and audience.
Nosotros can confidently infer he never actually ate a real truckload of sweets, simply nosotros tin can reasonably appreciate he ate a lot of them and wanted to emphasise that point.
His female parent might ask a clarifying question to turn that opinion into a hard fact.
USING GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS
Graphic organizers are a bully tool to assist students sort the facts and opinions in a text. Offering, equally they do, a very visual means of organizing information, graphic organizers assistance students drill their power to distinguish between the two types of statements until they become automatic.
Let's take a look at ane especially useful format for developing this skill:
The Fact and Stance Chart
This simple nautical chart consists of ii columns helpfully labelled fact and opinion beneath a topic heading. Students work their way through a piece of text, sorting statements every bit they come across them into the advisable column on the graphic organizer. At the cease of this chore, they volition be left with a articulate segregation of the statements of the text according to whether they are objective facts or subjective opinions.
Fact and Opinion Activities: Honing the Skills
To get a skilled, disquisitional reader a educatee must develop the ability to quickly evaluate a text for fact and opinion. To achieve this, they must practise distinguishing between fact and opinion to a point where information technology becomes a subconscious machinery. The activities below will afford your students these necessary opportunities. They can likewise hands be adapted to a range of ages and abilities through careful selection of the reading material. READ OUR GREAT Commodity ON LITERACY GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS HERE
Fact and opinion activities for students
Pupil Activity 1. Tiptop 10 Facts and Opinions
Not simply does this uncomplicated activity help students strop their fact and opinion detecting abilities, it also serves as a great warm-upward research activity when beginning a new topic in class.
When starting a new topic, whether on a historical catamenia, a literary effigy, or a species of animal, set up students the job of list ten facts and opinions from their background reading and research on their new topic. Students must and then form and list 10 opinions on the topic based on reflection on this initial reading and enquiry.
It may also be a useful exercise for students to look back over their opinions at the end of the topic. Have they changed their opinion in any areas of the topic? Why did they change, or maintain, their opinion? This can work as a great review activity to wrap things upwards.
Student Activity 2. Evaluate an Editorial
Newspaper editorials can exist a superb resource for students to practice recognizing facts and opinions. They are filled with the editor'south opinions on the problems of the twenty-four hour period, intermingled with facts that are selected to support that opinion.
Showtime, give students copies of a paper editorial. And so, working in pairs, take students go through the editorial identifying the facts past underlining them and the opinions by highlighting. Remind them to look for the indicate words nosotros covered earlier to assist identify facts and opinions.
When they accept finished, students can then compare their answers and hash out the reasons for the decisions they made. This will assist to identify any areas of defoliation within the class; providing you with useful information to inform your future planning on this topic.
FACT AND OPINION ACTIVITIES FOR STUDENTS
If you are looking for a broad range of engaging tasks to teach students about fact and opinion, you have found it.
ThisHUGE 120 PAGE resource combines four distinct fact and stance activities you can undertake equally aWHOLE Group or equallyINDEPENDENT READING GROUP TASKS in eitherDIGITAL orPRINTABLE TASKS.
Student Activity 3. Fact vs Opinion Survey
This activity tin can initially be undertaken using statements compiled on a worksheet. After, students can work through passages of text, or fifty-fifty through the textbook itself directly. Students just work through a series of statements marker either F or O beside each to identify that statement as a Fdeed or an Opinion.
This activity is an effective report preparation do every bit it helps students to filter factual content from stance. It besides makes information technology easier for students to piece of work out the underlying purpose of a text, whether it is designed to inform, persuade, or entertain. Students will soon begin to recognize that passages of text that contain more than facts than opinions are most likely intended to inform, while a text that is more opinion-based will most likely be intended to persuade or entertain.
Educatee Activeness 4. The Great Fact or Opinion Sort
Organize students into reasonable-sized groups of four or five students. Provide each group with a jar containing a prepare of cards, each with a fact-based or an opinion-based statement printed on it. Students take turns picking a carte from the jar and reading it to the group. The group discusses each statement before deciding if it a fact or an stance.
Students tin can then record the statements accordingly on the Fact and Stance Chart described in a higher place or merely sort them into two piles.
This activity serves as an effective method to support struggling students as they become to learn from those students who have already developed a firmer grasp of the two concepts.
Extension Exercise: Identifying Bias
One reason it is so important for our students to larn to differentiate between fact and opinion is that this ability is a stepping rock to detecting bias in a text. Students begin to evaluate a text for bias by first identifying how much of the text is fact-based and how much is based on opinion.
Once this is washed, students must then analyse whether the opinions expressed in the text are biased by considering whether the writer has:
● Provided incomplete information
● Intentionally ignored or left out information to persuade the reader
● Allowed their own personal experiences to cloud any sense of objectivity.
In Conclusion
Not only is the ability to identify bias in the writing of others essential, only this knowledge will also be of smashing benefit to students when it comes to forming and expressing their own opinions.
Taking the time to prepare and evangelize discrete lessons on how to recognize fact and opinion in reading is essential. No thing how confident students are in distinguishing betwixt the two, they are still likely to benefit from further practice. Even the virtually reflective of us can remain ignorant of our own biases at times!
To get the critical readers that our students aspire to become begins with the formation of clear definitions of the terms in the students' minds. These definitions must be supported past examples and illustrations to achieve this. Student understanding must be further underpinned by exercise in the classroom and at home. The activities in a higher place serve every bit a good starting point, but they are non sufficient on their own.
Information technology will be necessary to further support students to gain a deeper understanding of fact and opinion (and related concepts such as bias) by making regular reference to these concepts when engaged with students in lessons with other explicit objectives that are seemingly unrelated to fact and opinion. Reinforcement should be persistent to ensure students develop firm skills in this surface area.
With ongoing advances in technology, assessing the reliability and truthfulness of the media nosotros consume on a daily basis has never been more challenging – or of import.
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Content for this page has been written past Shane Mac Donnchaidh. A former principal of an international school and university English lecturer with 15 years of instruction and administration experience. Shane's latest Book the Complete Guide to Nonfiction Writing can exist found hither. Editing and back up for this article take been provided past the literacyideas team.
Source: https://literacyideas.com/teaching-fact-and-opinion/
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