An opinion refers to a personal belief. It relates to how someone feels about something. Others may agree or disagree with an opinion, but they cannot prove or disprove it. This is what defines it as opinion. The ability to distinguish between fact and opinion helps students develop their critical and analytical skills in both their reading and their listening. Fact and opinion are often woven together in texts and speeches. It 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 encounter in their lifetimes. 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. Unfortunately, it can at times be difficult to extract the verifiable truths from the author’s preferences and biases. 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. Let’s now take a look at some examples of those signal words and phrases being used in the sentence fragments that often precede a statement of fact or opinion:
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
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 of 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. For example, a young boy who tells his mother “I ate a truckload of sweets at the party last night” needs to be placed in the context of his age, and audience. 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 emphasize that point. His mother might ask a clarifying question to turn that opinion into a hard fact. 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.
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