Accelerating Progress English Challenge walkthrough 2 A 4

Accelerating Progress: English Challenge walk-through 2 A 4 Improve your ability to identify facts and opinions • Find a news article about something where the writer is offering an opinion • Identify the language used to show opinions • Explain what the opinion is

Task 2: Choose two news articles about the same topic Pick two articles from a news site. You could use newspapers, magazines or internet articles. Useful news sites: • https: //www. bbc. co. uk/news • https: //edition. cnn. com/world • https: //www. thetimes. co. uk/ • https: //www. independent. co. uk/ Look for something that is about someone’s opinion and significantly longer than the example that follows. These don’t tend to be main news articles – look out for editorial or comment sections.

Task 2: Identify language that shows opinion Example: These are facts. They are definite things that happened. This is shown by the past tense. It is stated as something that happened, so it suggests a fact. Tomorrow is an important day for the pop group Look. ATme. They release their third single tomorrow. Their last two singles went straight into the charts at number 1. The new single, however, is an awful mix of pop and rock music. It’s not as good as their previous two hits. It certainly seems to me that Look. ATme should ask for their day jobs back at the bookshop. “It …. seems” is vague and suggestive. So again an opinion This is an opinion. “awful” and “good” are someone’s view of something, they are emotions.

Task 3: Explain what the opinion is Example: Tomorrow is an important day for the pop group Look. ATme. They release their third single tomorrow. Their last two singles went straight into the charts at number 1. The new single, however, is an awful mix of pop and rock music. It’s not as good as their previous two hits. It certainly seems to me that Look. ATme should ask for their day jobs back at the bookshop. In this short article the opinion is that the pop group Look. ATme’s new single is not very good. It doesn’t show that the author dislikes the band in general as the article states their successes first.