-- 07 -- Opinions, Evaluations; Details, Inferences

-- 07 -- Opinions-- What's Believed? ,TFY-C6; Evaluations -- What's Judged?

Details, CRCB-C6;

TFY Chapter Summaries

Chapter Six Opinions
This chapter explores that familiar word opinion and examines the way it affects our ability to think critically. Again we have a familiar but confusing word that can be used in many different ways. Exercises are offered to help you assess your understanding of the different varieties of opinion. Writing applications ask you to test and expand what you know into essays that articulate, support, describe, or analyze opinions. Readings show you how professional writers can present support for an opinion; in one case through direct statement, and in a second case through a satirical sub-statement.

Glossaries

Chapter 6
Advice	Advice is to recommend an opinion to someone else.
Infer	To use imagination and reasoning to fill in missing facts. To connect the dots.
Judgment	Judgment is a final opinion, decision, conclusion or evaluation about something.
Opinion	Opinion is a word used to include an unsupported belief, a supported argument, an expert’s judgment, prevailing public sentiment, and a formal statement by a court.
Personal taste or preference	Personal taste or preferences are forms of opinions that express likes or dislikes. They can be irrational and need not be supported with reasons.
Principal claim and reasons	These are the two parts of an argument. The principal claim is the thesis or conclusion. The reasons support this claim through evidence or other claims. A claim is an assertion about something.
Thinking	Purposeful mental activity such as reasoning, deciding, judging, believing, supposing, expecting, intending, recalling, remembering, visualizing, imagining, devising, inventing, concentrating, conceiving, considering.
Glossary

Web Links

Web Links
Chapter 6	back to top
EPINIONS
Who says your opinion doesn’t count? Consult a popular site consisting of reviews on cars, books, movies, music, computers, sports, travel etc. made by "real people."
http://www.epinions.com/
READERS’ OPINIONS
Consult this daily section of the New York Times that prints readers’ responses to featured articles.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/readersopinions/index.html
WORLD-WIDE OPINION
Here are links editorials appearing in an international array of newspapers.
http://www.uwb.edu/library/guides/SelectionWorldNews.htm
WRITING YOUR OPINION TO NEWSPAPERS
This excellent site offers specific information about how to write letters to editors and op-eds that will be published. It is especially designed for non-profits.
http://www.ccmc.org/oped.htm