Mata kuliah : reading
Dosen pembimbing : Arif Hidayatullah M.pd
Oleh :
Apriyadi Sudirman (12355 11111)
Azizul (12355 11105)
Rendra Dwi NC (12355 11094) Kurrotul ayun L (12355 11104)
SEKOLAH TINGGI KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN
PGRI BANGALAN
PROGRAM PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS
TAHUN PELAJARAN 2014
READING IV
Evaluating an Author’s Opinions
The ability to distinguish between the statements of fact and statements of opinion is an important skill to develop because it can help you decide wether or not an author’s opinions are justified. When we say that opinion is justified we mean that the author has provided a number of covincing facts to support his or her personal belief. Justified opinions are worthy of your serious consideration. You may event want to make them your own. Beware, however, of statements of opinion that lack all factual support. We call these
unjustified opinions, and they should be treated with skepticism. You certainly do not want to take them seriously without doing further reading on the subject.
To help you see the differences between justified and unjustified opinions, we offer the following pair of paragraph. The first one expresses a justified opinion while the second of does not.
“The National Bureau of Standart investigated the Hyatt Begeney accident in Kansas City, where many people died when skywalk collapsed. Through that investigation, it was discovered that the original design of the skywalks had been changed during the construction of the building. As a result, the loads those structures could carry were greatly reduced. In addition a second study by the international Conference of Building Officials concluded that the building inspection prosedures at the time of construction were not adequate. Given the results of these two studies, I would make the following suggetion: the design of buldings, especially if they incoporate novel features and are used by large crowds, should be carefully examined and evaluated at all stages of construction.”
The last sentence of this paragraph is a topic sentence expressing an opinion: from now on, building with the new features that are not to be used by large crowds should be carefully evaluated throughout the entire procces of construction.
But the author knows that his readers may not share that opinion. From their point of view, the exitsting system of inspection may be just fine. In order to convince them, he offers some specific facts about the construction of the Hyatt Regeney. This is his way of showing you that his opinion is justified and therefore worth sharing.
Now read the second paragraph.
rather than forward. All of our highly touted technological progress has not brought us contenment.”
The author of this paragraph clearly believes that life was much better one hundred years ago that it is today. However, she does not offer one specific fact in support of that belief. She might said, in support of her opinion, that the divorce rate was lower and that is the reason why she believes peoplewere happier. or she might have pointed out that larger families were more common and parents could live wit either children. Thus, old age did not meanentry into a nursing home and isolation. But she does not say anything like this. Instead she simply presents her opinion and expects us to accept it.
But we would have to say, in response to this paragraph, that the opinion is not justified, and we wonder if people actually did feel that much better a century ago. Maybe they did, but to find out, we would have to do more in reading. Above all, we would have to see the specific facts on which the opinions is based. Otherwise, there is no reason to believe that the author’s pinion has any basis in reality, pat or present, and we have to reserve judgement untill we know more.
In the following exercise, you are to judge a series of paragraphs, deciding if the opinions expressed are justified or not. To make that desicion, consider two important questions.
1. What opinion is the author offering?
2. Does he or she offer relevant facts in support of that opinion?
Directions : each of the following paragraphs contains a topic sentence that expresses a definite opinion. Underline that sentence. Then on the blank line that follows, put a j for justified, if you think the author provides relevant facts. Put u for
unjustified, if you think the author has not provided any facts or has provided only irrelevant ones.
Example : it is just not fair for smokers to be allowed to smoke when nonsmokers are present; there should be more regulations forbidding people to indulge in smoking if nonsmokers are present. In recent stud, the American Cancer Association has reaffirmed and strengthened its original position on smoking sigarettes and the incidence of lung cancer. In addition, smokers are three times more likely to get heart disease and emphysema. U.
doubt the notion that animal can “talk” like human being. After four years of teaching Nim, a baby male chimp named for the linguist Noam Chomsky, Terrace wrote an account of his experiments, and that account does not support popular claims for animal language. As Terrace points out in the book, Nim, by himself, seldom used any sign language at all. Instead, he confined himself to responding to his trainers. Fifty percent of the time his signs imitated part or all of his trainers original signs. In addition, whenever he never began to string together more than two or three words, he would become confused and simply repcat signs over and over again, never developing the ability to construct sentences.
Explanation : in the first paragraph, the author firmly states his belief that smokers should not be allowed to smoke if nonsmokers are present. From his point of view, it is not affair to those who do not smoke. To support that opinion, he offers several statements of fact, and you could easily check the American Cancer Association’s most recent position on the dangers of smoking. However, those facts are not relevant to the opinion expressed. They do not support the idea that smoking in the presence of nonsmokers is not fair. Instead, they support the opinion that smokers are endangering their lives by not quiting. For this reason, we have put a U on the accompanying blank line. Opinions need to be supported by facts, but those facts have to be relevant to the opinions expressed. That means they have to be related to that opinion.
CONCLUSION
In this part we discuss about how to decide an opinion that is justified and unjustified. An opinion can called jsutified if the the author’s opinion s supported by facts. Not only facts but with relevants and related to that opinion. When we say that opinion is justified we mean that the author has provided a number of covincing facts to support his or her personal belief. Justified opinions are worthy of your serious consideration. You may event want to make them your own.
Beware, however, of statements of opinion that lack all factual support. We call these
