There is only one way to legitimately incorporate opinion into news, and that is to quote a source saying something. The source has a right to be opinionated. However, if reporters only quote one side of an issue, the story is biased. They need to quote credible sources on both sides to balance the story. They should ask, where is the information from the other side?
News can be biased by citing sources from only one perspective. Use simple definitions to help kids—especially those in elementary school—differentiate between fact and opinion. You can add additional qualifiers to your explanation. Facts rely on observation or research and generally involve the use of empirical data and information. In many cases, facts also involve our physical senses, like hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, or tasting.
Opinions are based on assumptions that cannot be proven and reflect somebody's views, beliefs, personal perspectives, or values. In a news story, all opinions must be quoted from a source, and sources from both sides should be cited.
Some people prefer hot weather, whereas others do not. Opinions cannot be verified. There are many fact or opinion activities you can use to teach these critical thinking skills. Here are some ideas. Being able to distinguish fact from opinion is also related to being able to discern that a news story may be fake.
Being analytical and knowing fact from opinion is the first step to making that determination. How do you know if a news story might actually be fake? Here is a great list from Forbes :.
The facts may indeed be true, but the politician may just not like something that was said. The sources have to be credible. Be careful of politicians who make opinion statements sound like fact.
No one can accurately predict with complete certainty that we will have a vaccine very soon. How do we know if a story is factually correct? Geometrical hair-splitting aside, calling something a fact is therefore not a proclamation of infallibility. It is usually used to represent the best knowledge we have at any given time. Unaccompanied by any warrant for belief, it is not a technique of persuasion.
Then again, calling something an opinion need not mean an escape to the fairyland of wishful thinking. This too is not a knockout attack in an argument. But we can be much clearer in our meaning if we separate things into matters of fact and matters of opinion.
Matters of fact are confined to empirical claims, such as what the boiling point of a substance is, whether lead is denser than water, or whether the planet is warming. Ethics is an exemplar of a system in which matters of fact cannot by themselves decide courses of action. Matters of opinion can be informed by matters of fact for example, finding out that animals can suffer may influence whether I choose to eat them , but ultimately they are not answered by matters of fact why is it relevant if they can suffer?
Opinions are not just pale shadows of facts; they are judgements and conclusions. Facts are truth while opinions can be true but it can also be wrong.
Positive Assertion Expressing positive feelings about yourself or someone else. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.
Skip to content Home Why is it important to distinguish concepts about fact opinion and assertion? Ben Davis May 14, Why is it important to distinguish concepts about fact opinion and assertion? What is the significance of learning facts and opinions in application to writing? Whether on the news, in advertising, or in a history book, distinguishing between what is fact and what is opinion is crucial to becoming an autonomous person with the critical abilities necessary to avoid being manipulated easily.
As we mentioned above, often writers will liven up their facts with a sprinkling of opinion. Luckily the language used itself often throws up helpful clues in the forms of words and phrases that assist us in identifying statements as fact-based or opinion-based. As we can see from the above examples, the language used to introduce a statement can be helpful in indicating whether it is being framed as a fact or an opinion.
It is important for students to understand too that things are not always as they appear to be. At times, writers, whether consciously or not, will frame opinion as fact and vice versa. This is why it is important that students develop a clear understanding of what constitutes fact and opinion and are afforded ample opportunities to practice distinguishing between the two.
Context is the circumstances surrounding an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood. Facts and opinions must be placed in context to draw conclusions from. We can confidently infer he never actually ate a real truckload of sweets, but we can reasonably appreciate he ate a lot of them and wanted to emphasise that point.
Graphic organizers are a great tool to help students sort the facts and opinions in a text. Offering, as they do, a very visual means of organizing information, graphic organizers help students drill their ability to distinguish between the two types of statements until they become automatic.
This simple chart consists of two columns helpfully labelled fact and opinion beneath a topic heading. Students work their way through a piece of text, sorting statements as they come across them into the appropriate column on the graphic organizer.
At the end of this task, they will be left with a clear segregation of the statements of the text according to whether they are objective facts or subjective opinions. To become a skilled, critical reader a student must develop the ability to quickly evaluate a text for fact and opinion.
To achieve this, they must practice distinguishing between fact and opinion to a point where it becomes a subconscious mechanism. The activities below will afford your students these necessary opportunities. They can also easily be adapted to a range of ages and abilities through careful selection of the reading material. Not only does this simple activity help students hone their fact and opinion detecting abilities, it also serves as a great warm-up research activity when beginning a new topic in class.
When starting a new topic, whether on a historical period, a literary figure, or a species of animal, set students the task of listing ten facts and opinions from their background reading and research on their new topic.
Students must then form and list ten opinions on the topic based on reflection on this initial reading and research. 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?
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