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ELA 6: Yo, Yo, Yo! 135 Views
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Description:
Discerning fact from opinion is one of the most important skills a person can learn. If you can't master it, though, that's okay--just go into politics.
Transcript
- 00:01
No So by now you probably understand the difference between
- 00:04
facts and opinions In fact you probably think you could
- 00:08
tell them apart as easily as cats and dogs However
- 00:11
sometimes they're not that easy to tell apart like this
- 00:14
cat with floppy ears or this dog with whiskers a
Full Transcript
- 00:17
long tail and a penchant for knocking glassware off countertops
- 00:22
Anyway Let's get to the facts As you might remember
- 00:24
facts are statements that air indisputably true like the earth
- 00:28
is round on the other hand Opinions air judgments based
- 00:31
on someone's feelings No a statement like earth is the
- 00:35
prettiest planet isn't a fact but it's an opinion no
- 00:38
matter how many love struck astronauts try to convince you
- 00:41
otherwise while facts and opinions are different beast they can
- 00:45
sometimes mingle making things up a bit messy We often
- 00:48
see it in memoirs which are told from someone's perspective
- 00:51
about their own life When you look back at your
- 00:54
memories it's tough to do it with the clinical objective
- 00:57
precision of a laboratory scientist and more likely than not
- 01:01
some of your opinions are going to sneak into your
- 01:03
writing to see how this mingling of fact and opinion
- 01:06
Happens let's consider this sense Brad was the biggest meanest
- 01:10
kid in our grade All right well the sentence starts
- 01:13
out being well pretty factual Based on the heights and
- 01:16
weights of the kids in the narrator's grade you could
- 01:18
tell whether or not brad was In fact the biggest
- 01:21
kid would explain all the forehead bruises but opinion starts
- 01:25
to creep in with the word leanest being mean is
- 01:28
well definitely not nice but the extent of brad's nastiness
- 01:31
depends on personal judgments rather than on fax Maybe the
- 01:35
narrator thanks brad's the meanest kid in their grade because
- 01:38
of his habit of shoving kids into ditches But someone
- 01:41
else might think the narrator's the meanest kid in class
- 01:43
because of his habit of writing mean stuff about the
- 01:45
other kids Well either way it's a matter of opinion
- 01:48
So whenever you're reading keep an eye out for stray
- 01:51
opinions and it's not too much trouble Also keeping an
- 01:54
eye out for jimmy's eyeglasses lost in the last time 00:01:57.039 --> [endTime] brad shoved him into a ditch
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