Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

8.
American soldiers should not have been sent to
Vietnam.
Our government did all the right things concern-
ing the Vietnam War.
9.
The Motion Picture Association should not be
able to rate films.
The Motion Picture Association ratings should
be taken seriously by all parents.
Movie ratings are useless.
10.
Performance-enhancing drugs should be legal.
Competitive sports would be more interesting to
watch if performance-enhancing drugs were legal.
Performance-enhancing drugs are the worst thing
that ever happened to competitive sports.
S u m m a r y
The ability to differentiate between fact and opinion is
a very important skill. Like a detective, you need to
know the difference between what people 
think
and
what people 
know
, between what people 
believe 
to be
true and what has been 
proven
to be true. Then you will
be able to see whether writers support their opinions,
and if they do, how they do it. This will allow you to
judge for yourself the validity of those opinions.
–
T H E D I F F E R E N C E B E T W E E N FA C T A N D O P I N I O N
–
4 3
■
Listen carefully to what people say today and try to determine whether they are stating a fact or express-
ing an opinion. When they offer opinions, do they support them?
■
As you come across facts and opinions today, practice turning them into their opposites; make facts
out of opinions and opinions out of facts.
Skill Building until Next Time

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I
n order to solve a crime, a detective cannot 
just
get the facts of the case,
just 
discover the motive,
just
deci-
pher difficult clues, or 
just
distinguish between fact and opinion. To be successful, a detective must do all
these things at the same time. Similarly, reading really can’t be broken down into these separate tasks. Read-
ing comprehension comes from employing all these strategies simultaneously. This lesson gives you the oppor-
tunity to combine these strategies and take your reading comprehension skills to the next level.