International schools often do an exercise called: Facts and Opinions . Give children a sentence, a paragraph of text, or even an article, and ask them to distinguish, is this a fact or an opinion?
Look at an example and you will understand immediately:
Left side - the ice cream is delicious. (This is an opinion)
Right - Ice cream is usually made with dairy products. (This is a fact)
In the British and American education systems, children start from kindergarten and learn to distinguish from these super simple examples what is a statement of fact and what is a statement of opinion.
This poster for children is particularly illustrative:
Fact (fact):
is a statement that can be proven true or false (for example, Penguin waddles when walking)
Opinion (opinion):
A statement that expresses a belief, feeling, or opinion without proof (for example, I think mint chocolate ice cream is the best)
Help children learn to distinguish Facts and Opinions is the starting point for cultivating children's critical thinking. Why make a distinction? Because many times, opinions and facts can easily be confused. When foreign schools teach students reading comprehension and essay writing, they particularly require students to be able to clearly distinguish which parts of the article are opinions and which are facts.
In our culture, the problem of confusing opinions and facts often occurs. Many times, what people argue about is opinions rather than facts. It is difficult to argue who is right or wrong with opinions, but it is often possible to prove the truth or falsehood with facts.
Therefore, in any discussion, we must first distinguish what is a factual error and what is a different point of view, otherwise there will be a melee when there is no need to argue.
Let’s take a look at how foreign children learn to distinguish opinions and facts...
Kindergarten to first and second grade of elementary school: Do simple distinction exercises and give examples from daily life
I have a sister and a brother. (fact)
Dr. Seuss is my favorite author. (opinion)
At this stage, the teacher will also ask the children to use some specific words to determine whether a statement is a fact or an opinion.
For example, if there are many adjectives (good, beautiful, ugly, bad...) or comparative adjectives (best, worst, greatest...), most of them are a statement of opinion.
Numbers, statistics, science, history, non-fiction...these concepts are often more related to facts.
Elementary school middle and upper grades: Further identify facts and opinions, and learn to use facts to support opinions
At this stage, let children pay special attention to those words with opinion tendencies and generalizations that appear in texts and conversations (think, believe, always, feel, never...). The inclusion of these words indicates that this is likely to be a statement of opinion.
The teacher will ask students to specifically look for these words in the articles, so as to determine which articles focus on stating facts and which ones are more focused on expressing the author's opinions.
At this stage, children will specialize in learning Persuasive Writing, which is directly translated as "persuasive writing". It is more like the "argumentative writing" here. The core is to guide children to learn to use facts to support their opinions. The following practice sheets are used a lot.
- What is my point of view (Point of View)
- Opening sentence (Lead Sentence)
- Reason (Reason)
- Evidence (Evidence)
Learn to use facts to support your opinions! This is the most basic starting point when we speak, write articles, do research, and do many things.
Junior high school stage: Know that even statements of facts will be mixed with opinions and biases
At this stage, children will be guided to understand that even when a person states facts, he will also contain a lot of biases and personal opinions. For example, if they report the same event, " The Washington Post " and " The New York Times " may both tell the truth, but the way of telling it is different, the focus of the content is different, and the impact on readers' minds will be different.
In life, similar examples abound. Although what you and I are saying is a fact, our words may be very different, and the audience's feelings may also be very different.
A school teacher asked students to do an exercise. He randomly selected the New York Times of a day and asked the students these questions:
1. How do you determine whether this article is news or an opinion?
2. What is the difference between the so-called news and news analysis?
3. Which articles mix facts and opinions?
4. Do you find it easy to distinguish between facts and opinions?
...
Students later discovered that the New York Times is actually very particular about which articles are placed where, and it is often not easy to distinguish between the factual content and the opinion content in an article.
High school stage: Understand that the real world is difficult to distinguish between true and false, and everyone’s cognition has limitations.
This stage requires students to have higher critical thinking skills. Students will be asked to identify opinions disguised as facts from news reports, blog articles and other media information, and analyze the motivations behind the authors.
For example, the recent hot topic is the US election . This is an exercise that a high school asked students to do: Please carefully analyze what the presidential candidates said to see which are facts and which are opinions, and cooperate with some relevant research to judge the credibility of these candidates.
At this time, perhaps some students with high understanding have begun to understand the ancient Roman emperor Marco Antony's famous saying in "Meditations":
What we hear is just an opinion, not the fact;
What we see is just a perspective, not the truth. How about
, is this concept both simple and complex?
From kindergarten to middle school, if a child can always consciously distinguish which are objective facts and which are subjective opinions in other people's words, will his understanding of the world become clearer?
You see, it is not difficult at all to develop such thinking habits. We can find opportunities to practice this thinking habit with our children everywhere in our lives.
Let's read another paragraph about facts and opinions, "Learning to Write in the United States"
by Blues Republic, living in Houston
When learning writing in the United States, one thing that impressed me deeply is the emphasis that teachers place on the differences between facts and opinions. Americans start learning in elementary school what statements of fact are and what statements of opinions are.For the former, you have to use credible evidence to refute it, and for the latter, you can express your opinions separately. For example, when a person says: "I think it's very hot today!" This is a statement of opinion (an appeal to experience or personal feelings, not a fact). You cannot refute him by saying "Today is only 28 degrees, so it's not hot." Because for the speaker, 28 degrees may be considered very hot, because everyone’s feelings and standards are different. But if a person says: "The temperature this summer is much higher than last year!", when it comes to factual issues, you can use the data of two years of temperature comparison as evidence to refute.
So every time I chat with Americans, I feel more relaxed, because they can distinguish the difference between the two and will not get into a mess when there is no need to argue. When teaching the argument chapter, the teacher's first question was: "Can you tell me what issues do not require reasoning?" Everyone answered unanimously: "Personal preferences, traditions, religious beliefs, ..." It can be seen that everyone has a basic consensus on which topics can be argued with and which are unnecessary (of course, this is all on the premise of not hurting others and not breaking the law. If a person says he likes to hit people, it is not a matter of personal preference).
But in the country, this consensus is often not available. For example, when you express a personal preference that has nothing to do with the interests of others, someone will always come out and try to argue with you. It should be understood that most personal preferences are unreasonable. For example, if a person likes a person's zodiac sign and blood type or just hates a person, it's useless for you to tell him a bunch of reasons. The same goes for traditions and beliefs. For example, if you ask a Muslim woman: "Why do you always wear a scarf?" If her answer is: "It's tradition" instead of explaining it, you should be aware that there is not much room for discussion on this topic. You can analyze how traditions are formed and what values they embody, but you should realize that resorting to tradition itself is not making sense. "This is tradition" actually means "we just like it". The same goes for sensitive religious issues. Reasoning with believers is foolish and useless. Unless you just like it.
Refuting a fact is often relatively simple, especially when the fact is generally known. For example, Qingdao is located in Shandong. This is a statement of fact. There is no need to debate or quote data to explain. But if it is not a common sense fact or an opinion (except for the above three), it becomes complicated. You must demonstrate it, otherwise it will not be convincing enough. For example, once I wrote an article appreciating Martin Luther King . King, I said that most of the readers of his book "Stride Toward Freedom" (1958) are black people. When the teacher commented, he marked most: "You can say many, but if you use the word most, you must prove it." Indeed, I am just making assumptions without finding any evidence. I thought it was just an ordinary analytical composition, so it didn't need to be so rigorous. But no, our teacher’s attitude is serious, because what she wants to cultivate is a good writing habit, and her opinions should be supported by evidence.
Use this standard to read Linda 's Close Look at America series. I have to say that he has quite a lot of subjective assumptions (of course, to make this point convincing, examples must be given, but I am really too lazy to read his book again, so I just put forward an opinion. Since there are no examples to demonstrate, it is obviously not convincing enough, so I accept it). If he just writes random online articles as an individual and is not a publication, then that's it. Because readers’ trust in online articles is limited and they won’t take them too seriously. But once it becomes a formal publication, the readership changes and the reading scope expands, the requirements for the rigor of the article are completely different. This is why many articles seem good when read online, but once they are turned into books, they feel more palatable, because the readership has changed and the quality requirements have also changed.
Regarding how to argue (argument), the chapter "writing an argument" in the textbook we use "The little, brown reader" is very good. It lists 9 areas where mistakes are easy to make. For example, it says that false authority should be avoided when debating.For example, quoting someone who is not an expert in the field (a cardiologist's speech on political topics is not very credible), or quoting a former academic authority (his views have long been overturned by new evidence, or times have changed and cannot adapt to today's society). Also pay attention to proper citation (False quotation). For example, in an article about persistence in learning, I quoted Churchill's "Never Give Up" speech. The teacher said it was inappropriate because he was talking about the specific situation of and World War II , not the general situation, and the context was different. When quoting famous quotes, not only the meaning should be appropriate, but the context should also be as similar as possible. At the teacher’s suggestion, I changed the quote and adopted a writer’s words: “When the world says, ‘Give up,’ Hope whispers, ‘Try it one more time.’” In this way, it is much more relevant. There is another very important reminder in the
book, which is suppression of evidence. What this says is don't ignore reasonable evidence in a relative view. Seemingly opposing concepts often have something in common. Pointing out these reasonable factors in your argument will strengthen your argument. Otherwise readers will wonder why you say nothing about certain aspects? Every time I see Fang Zhouzi questioning others, I think of this. Many of the pieces of evidence that he considers to be irrefutable evidence often clearly have other explanations, but he almost never mentions that there may be other explanations, which in turn weakens the persuasiveness of his views.
The other one is my own opinion. In public discussions, I often see some people talk about "qualifications" and then start to go astray in comparing morality and character. As Wang Xiaobo said: "Chinese people often do not argue with reason, but often gamble on their lives. They bet on character, morality, and try to catch the other party."In fact, there is no qualification for public topics, and anyone can speak. Experts can speak, and ordinary people can speak; people with high moral character can speak, and people with low moral character can also speak. No one needs to ask any agency or department to identify the qualifications and say: "You meet the requirements and can enter the debate field!" The qualifications we often talk about actually refer to whether you are persuasive. It is much more reasonable to change "What qualifications do you have to say this, you yourself..." to: "Of course you can say this, but because of yourself... you are not convincing." Anyone can speak, but it does not mean that the effect of their speech is the same or that their persuasiveness is the same. People who have not gone through the investigation have every right to speak, but their arguments are not convincing.
