At the end of the lesson, you will be understand the difference between fact and opinion, and how to use facts as support for your thesis.
In the following video, you’ll learn the difference between a fact and an opinion. Opinions are the starting point of an academic essay, but you must use factual evidence to support your opinion, to create an argument in your essay. However, that doesn’t actually make the opinion a fact.
Here are some examples of opinions in academic writing:
Everybody has opinions about a lot of things. Opinions are usually formed by experience, observation, and popular ideas in the news and social media. Are they always true and accurate?WIn order to be able to present and support an opinion in academic writing, it has to be backed with evidence. An opinion without evidence is good for casual conversations but isn’t acceptable in academic writing. Evidence is any kind of credible resource online and offline that helps you back your opinions with facts. The process of providing evidence to support an opinion is what we call research. Not all types of resources can be used as evidence in academic writing.
An updated version of the slides seen in the video can be found here.
As was mentioned in the video, not all of the information is reliable. Avoid using the following sources of information to support your ideas in academic writing:
Complete the tasks below to check your understanding of today’s lesson.
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Select all of the acceptable sources for supporting your opinion in as essay.
Fill in the blank with the correct answer.
The most reliable source you can use is an article from an A
J .