Facts vs. Opinions

          Last Tuesday, we tackled about on how can we enhance our reading comprehension skills. Sir Mabu, asked what is enhancing for us? and why is it enhancing reading skills important to us being a university student?. He presents power point presentation during that day on what the important lesson we will cover today, some of this are: recognizing facts vs. opinions, making inferences and drawing conclusions, making predictions, making assumptions, noting details.

          To start our proper discussion, he called some students to ask what is the meaning of the following words: What is FACT? it can be proven by direct experience or objective verification. What is OPINION? expresses someone's attitude, feelings, preferences, or biases toward something or someone. What is INFERENCE? it is a conclusion or judgement that something happened without actually seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling or tasting it, but it makes sense to think that it had happened. What is PREDICTIONS? made by using previous knowledge based on experience, together with the clues from the story. What is ASSUMPTIONS? are not always true and false assumptions can get one into all sorts of trouble. What is NOTING DETAILS? noise originating from the speaker is a communication barrier that includes different factors.

          We start in Facts and Opinions, our professor gave us sentence from Baruch, Bernard M 1870-1965 American Financier saying, "Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions. But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.". For me this sentence explain that opinion is just opinion it is just came from the judgement, view or feeling of some one person, it can't be proven by evidence or scientific method like facts. Opinion= Belief/Judgement, there are different opinions like:

1. VALIDITY OPINION- can be supported facts.
2. FAULTY OPINION- illogical and does not not followed the standard.
3. INFORMED OPINION- some information. A fact is something that can be proven by reliable authority such as:

A history book, statistics, proven scientific law, measurements, government law, mathematics, an observation. There are types of opinions:

1. Statements of Hypothesis- a hypothesis is an assumptions made in an attempt to explain an observation. though an Observation is a fact, a Hypothesis is an Opinion.
2. Statements of Theory- a theory is an opinion that is widely believed explanation for a group of observations. Here are two well known examples: The Theory of Relativity and The Evolution Theory
3. Statements of Assumption- an assumptive statement is an opinion that is an improvable prediction
4. Statements of Value- a value statement is any claim that is based on someone's beliefs.
5. Statements of Exaggeration- an exaggerated statement is one that embellishes the facts, often to sway the reader.

There are also certain words that will warn you that you are being given an opinion and not a fact!: maybe, perhaps, best/worst, experts agree, successful, necessary, apparently, probably.

Distinguishing facts and opinions it is a little bit hard, some of us has a different opinions and we don't know if it is fact or opinion based on his/her saying but always respect the opinion of other people.