“What do you think?”
It’s one of the most common questions native speakers ask one another, but it’s a challenging question for beginner learners of English to ask and answer. At Level 46 (CEFR B1), the Global Scale of English (GSE) suggests students Can give or seek personal views and opinions in discussing topics of interest although students may answer opinion questions earlier.
One reason opinion questions are challenging is that they are often open-ended. The opposite—closed-ended questions—usually have limited possible answers. For example, closed-ended questions might be yes or no or some other binary choice. Sometimes there is a slightly larger set of choices. The answers to “Do you like bananas or oranges?” could be “Oranges.” or “Bananas.” or “Both.” or “Neither.” Even a question such as “What’s your favorite fruit?” has a limited set of responses; “Egyptian pyramids.” is not a reasonable option for an answer.
The range of possible answers to open-ended questions is far broader and requires more critical thinking. Open-ended questions are less likely to be answered with a single predictable word. For this reason, teachers may feel uncomfortable with them, as fractured or faulty answers might require a lot of unpacking and error correction. “What do you think about bananas?”
“I like them.”
or
“Banana cultivation is the most horrific insult to the planet, as the process has been subject to a narrowing of commercially-viable species that threatens both the ecosystems in which they are grown and the genetic diversity of both the banana plant and related species of flora and fauna.”
Whew.
But while these two answers seem quite different, they share one thing in common: They are both opinions. When teaching students about opinions, it helps to differentiate between facts, opinions, and valid opinions.
Facts
Facts are generally accepted truths. An idea becomes a fact through a long process of research that generates some kind of evidence. This evidence doesn’t need to be firsthand. No one alive witnessed the building of the pyramids of Egypt, but we still accept that ancient Egyptians built them. Some people may hold the opinion that giant super-smart aliens visiting the Earth constructed the pyramids, but this conflicts with a common critical thinking principle: Occam’s Razor.
Named after a 14th-century philosopher, William of Ockham, Occam’s Razor basically says that if you have two theories, the simpler, less-complicated one is likely to be the more truthful one. For example, someone in favor of the alien approach to pyramid construction might go further and suggest that the super-smart aliens looked like giant floating octopus-armed bananas. That’s even less likely than a plain aliens theory, and Occam’s Razor would push it aside; but, of course, that would not stop some people from still believing it.
Opinions
In this case, a belief in aliens is not a fact but an opinion, which is how you feel about something when you have no other support for your ideas. I may say I believe eating bananas is good for you because I like them, and you may say eating bananas is bad for you because you dislike them. You are entitled to your opinion in this case, and neither opinion about bananas is wrong. They are statements of personal preferences and do not need to be argued.
This does not stop people from arguing about opinions, but there is no point listening to them unless there is support in the form of facts. Facts move a conversation about opinions into a more interesting area: valid opinions.
Valid Opinions
Valid opinions are opinions backed up by facts. Until recently, for example, many people (and Hollywood movies) assumed Egypt’s ancient pyramids were built by slaves. Someone else might say, “No, I think they were built by paid workers.” Consider the effect of adding facts to the second opinion:
“The pyramids were probably built by paid workers because graffiti found on the blocks of stone shows workers chose for themselves fun names such as, “The Friends of Khufu Gang” and “Drunkards of Menkaure” (Shaw, 2003, para. 29). These examples of graffiti, along with other evidence about the expensive food they ate (lots of beef, based on butchered cattle bones), suggest they were well-fed workers, not slaves.”
These facts can be researched to ensure they are complete, up-to-date, and unchallenged, but they can’t otherwise be argued.
Why and How?
Why and how do we teach about facts, opinions, and valid opinions in the language classroom?
To answer the why question first, the main reason is that teachers increasingly offer content-based language learning in which students learn important ideas along with new vocabulary. Among the best ways to make language learning memorable is to add a critical thinking component so students internalize new language along with the content they learn. Asking students to identify facts, opinions, and valid opinions is a critical thinking task. Asking them about their opinions forces them to personalize new ideas.
The how question varies based on age and level. General approaches include teaching students to recognize words that signal facts such as numbers and dates. Opinions are usually marked by adjectives, comparatives and superlatives, like most horrific in the above description of banana cultivation. Questioning whether something is an opinion or a fact engages students in identifying these terms as well as other words and phrases such as I think.
Is everyone entitled to any opinion? No, not really. Not everyone. When someone has access to the facts but chooses to ignore them, then that person isn’t worth listening to. This leads to another task for language teachers. We seldom teach students the strategies to challenge or shut down uncomfortable conversations. It leaves language learners vulnerable to people with strong opinions or who voice their opinions in forceful ways. Separating strong opinions from persuasive presentation skills is another of the many useful conversational skills that we should teach.
If only we had super-smart giant floating octopus-armed banana-shaped aliens to help us.
Tasks for Teachers
1. Reflect on the opinions you hear from friends and family as well as read in the news for a day or a week. Examine the common expressions that signal facts and opinions and the types of topics they cover. In each case, ask the writer’s intention in sharing facts and/or opinions. Do your students encounter similar facts and opinions? Which would they have difficulty decoding?
2. Consider the following quote from Max Planck, father of quantum physics. You can imagine it applies to concepts such as the idea that the Earth goes around the sun and not the opposite, and that the Earth is round, not flat. Reflect on whether or not the principle is true for current topics in the news:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. (1949, pp. 33–34)
Tasks for Learners
1. In a group, have each student write a list of six statements on slips of paper. Three of the statements should be facts and three should be opinions. Mix and share them with the rest of the group. Ask other group members to agree on which are opinions and which are facts and explain their reasons.
2. Have a debate. Have two or more students take a common issue on which they can have opposite points of view. The students debating the topic take time to prepare. They then support or attack that point of view with a mix of facts and opinions. Other students listen and identify the facts, opinions, and valid opinions, then decide why one side is more convincing than the other.
References
Pearson. (2016). Pearson Toolkit. London: Pearson. Retrieved from https://www.english.com/gse/teacher-toolkit
Planck, M. (1949). Scientific autobiography and other papers, F. Gaynor (trans.). New York: Philosophical Library.
Shaw, J. (2003). Who built the pyramids? Harvard Magazine. July-August. Retrieved from http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html
Willis, K. (2015, December 7). The secret history of bananas, and what it tells us about climate change. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/12033704/The-secret-history-of-bananas-and-what-it-tells-us-about-climate-change.html