READING SKILLS 2

GEC1033 ENGLISH FOR EFFECTIVE

COMMUNICATION
PPISMP MATHEMATICS
(1 PPISMP MT3)
 READING SKILLS
• Reading comprehension
– relating cause and effect
– comparing and contrasting
– differentiating facts and opinions
 Cause and effect
• Cause and effect is to demonstrate to children
that our actions have measurable results and
they need to make a link between actions and
effects.
• We teach cause and effect every time we help
a young child recognize a relationship
between two things, or when we demonstrate
that one event is the result of another.
 Cause and effect
• Question Types:
– What happens if you go outside in the rain
without an umbrella?
– What happens if you don’t eat lunch?
– "If you drink your milk, you will grow big and
strong!"
– "If you clean up your toys, you can go play
outside."
 Cause and Effect
Why does the Hitting the ball
ball move? with the club
causes the ball
to move.

Causes and effects are related.

An effect is what happens. A
cause is why it happens.
 Cause and Effect
• Clue words such as because, so, and
cause sometimes signal a cause-effect
relationship.
• Sometimes you must figure
out for yourself that one thing causes
another.
• Sometimes a cause has more than one effect.
 Good readers ask themselves why
things happen in a story. Asking why
will help you figure out cause and
effect!
When you see the hippo in the pond,
you can ask yourself why he got in
there. He is probably in the water to
cool off.

This is cause and

effect.
CauseThe hippo was hot.
Effect He got in the water.
 Think about the story.

Why is the stranger lying

in the road?
 Cause Effect

so the
Mr. Bailey hit
the stranger
stranger is
with his truck lying in the
road.
 Think about the story.

Why did the stranger try

to run away when he
opened his eyes?
 Cause Effect

The author
said the
stranger so he tried
looked up to run away.
with terror.
He must have
been afraid
 Think about the story.

What effect does the

stranger have on the
thermometer?
 Cause Effect

The doctor so the

uses the mercury
thermometer gets stuck
on the at the
stranger
bottom.
 Think about the story.

What happens when the

stranger blows on the
soup?
 Cause Effects
then a
draft is
The stranger
blows on the created
soup
and Mrs.
Bailey
says brr.
 Think about the story.

What are some details

that cause the reader to
notice that the stranger is
special?
 Causes
Rabbits allow Effect
the stranger
close.
So we
The stranger know that
doesn’t sweat or
get tired with the
hard work. stranger is
special
The stranger blows
with all his might on a
green leaf and we see
an orange leaf in the
picture.
 Think about the story.

Since the stranger’s visit, the

trees around the Bailey’s farm
stay green for a week longer
than the other trees. Then, they
change color in one night. Why?
 Cause Effect

The stranger
so the trees
uses his around the
special cold Bailey farm
weather turn
power differently.
Compare/Contrast Text Structure

Texts that compare and

contrast look at the
similarities and differences of
more than one main idea.
Compare and contrast signal words

When authors use the text

structure of compare and
contrast, they often use
special signal words to show
this text structure.

Can you find the signal

words in the paragraph?
 What is the main idea of this paragraph?
(Without reading the article, can you guess?)

Underline the signal words in this paragraph.

The cardinal and the cedar waxwing are

two common birds. Both have crests on
their heads. Both are common at
birdfeeders. But the birds have some
differences. The male cardinal is a bright
red, while the waxwing is brown. The
cedar waxwing often migrates from place
to place. On the other hand, the cardinal
stays in one place year after year.
Compare your answers with a friend’s.

Here they are!

The cardinal and the cedar waxwing are

two common birds. Both have crests on
their heads. Both are common at
birdfeeders. But the birds have some
differences. The male cardinal is a bright
red, while the waxwing is brown. The
cedar waxwing often migrates from place
to place. On the other hand, the cardinal
stays in one place year after year.
 Signal Words
Compare/Contrast Structure
• In like manner
• Likewise
• Similarly
• The difference between
• As opposed to
• After all
• However
• And yet
• But
• Nevertheless
 Compare/Contrast
Graphic Organizer

• To organize similar and

different details from a
paragraph, we
traditionally use a Venn
diagram.

Create a Venn Diagram to organize the

information from the previous paragraph.
 Using a Matrix vs. Venn Diagram

• A Venn Diagram only allows

you to compare 2 things

• Matrix allows you to compare

several things with several
different characteristics.
 Let’s Practice
• How would you set up a matrix to compare &
contrast inside activities and outside activities,
comparing activities that you do in middle
school with what your grandparents did in
middle school?
 Review
• Set up a matrix to explain the similarities and
differences between the Description and
Compare and Contrast text structures?

• How can signal words help you as a reader?

 Answer the question:

• How do you determine whether or not an

article is an example of the Compare/Contrast
text structure?
 Let’s read an article together
• “Sharks Use Serial Killer Tactics”
• Before we read:
– Based on the text features (title, bold faced words, italics,
headings, graphics), predict what this article will be about and
what text structure the author will use.
• During Reading:
-First Read: Read for fun! 
Was your prediction right? Do you need to change it?
-Second Read: Annotate article, circling signal words, and
underlining information that we might add in a matrix.
Fact and Opinion
How to Tell the Difference
 Facts
Facts are statements that can be proven.

Facts may be true or false.

But facts can be proven.

Examples
1. Statistically, women live longer than men.
2. Most buses weigh more than most cars.
3. There are ten inches in a foot (false).
 Opinions
Opinions are statements that cannot be proven.
Opinions can be argued.
Opinions may be supported with facts.
Opinions cannot be proven.
Examples
1. Golf is boring.
2. Pizza is delicious.
3. Math is the hardest subject.
 Fact or Opinion?
1. According to sales records, strawberry ice-
cream is the worst selling of all flavors.
2. Therefore, we can conclude that strawberry is
the least popular major ice-cream flavor.
3. This is because strawberry ice-cream does not
taste as good as vanilla and chocolate.
 Practice
1. Write down whether each example is fact or
opinion.
2. Explain your answer.
 1
The Family Guy is not appropriate to watch
during school.
 2
There are fewer panda bears in the world than
grizzly bears.
 3
Drinking orange juice right after brushing your
teeth tastes bad.
 4
Justin Bieber deserved to win the Grammy for
best new artist.
 5
Chicken that has not been properly prepared
and cooked may cause salmonella.
 6
Cheating on your boyfriend or girlfriend is
wrong.
 7
The Xbox came out before the Wii.
 8
Super Mario is one of the greatest video game
characters of all time.
 9
Chocolate milk tastes better than regular milk.
 10
Charter school students are scheduled to
attend school more often than students who
attend neighborhood schools.
 Answers
1. Opinion
2. Fact
3. Opinion
4. Opinion
5. Fact
6. Opinion
7. Fact
8. Opinion
9. Opinion
10. Fact
Defining Terms: Factual Statements

Statements of fact
• can be verified, or checked, for accuracy.
• often include dates, numbers, and statistics.
• do not vary from person to person or place to place.
• describe events in language that has little
or no emotional effect on the listener or reader.
• don’t make predictions, express value judgments,
or offer interpretations.
• aren’t subject to change, except in cases where previously unavailable
information or new technology arrives on the scene.

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 47

The following are all statements of fact

1. Rapper Eminem said in an interview on 60 minutes that he

only uses profanity in his music, never at home.
2. In 1950, the leader of South Korea, Syngman Rhee
threatened to invade North Korea.
3. The Australian Julian Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks.
4. Singer and songwriter Alicia Keyes is a classically trained
pianist.

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 48

Defining Terms: Opinions

Statements of Opinion
• are influenced by the writer’s or speaker’s experiences,
training, interests, and context.
• use language that often packs an emotional punch.
• frequently make value judgments, e.g., “Rachel Ray is
much more likable than Martha Stewart.”
• often predict future events.
• are likely to provide interpretations of events, e.g., “ In his
brutal treatment of Rihanna, Chris Brown was repeating
what he had learned from his father.”
• cannot be checked for accuracy.

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 49

Spot Quiz on Fact and Opinion

What makes statement 1 a fact and statement 2

an opinion?
1. In 2010, three teenage boys from the Fiji
Islands were adrift on the ocean for fifty days.
2. God was watching out for the three teenage
boys who were rescued in 2010, after being
adrift on the ocean, with no food or water
supplies, for a total of fifty days.

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 50

What makes both of these statements facts rather than opinions?

1. The blues singer Etta James was born Jamesetta Hawkins

on January 25th, 1938.

2. Beyoncé Knowles played the blues singer Etta James

in the film Cadillac Records.
• How might you re-write each of these statements to make them
opinions rather than facts?

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 51

Here are two possible ways those
facts could become opinions.
• Jamesetta Hawkins born January 25, 1938 went on to
become Etta James, the greatest blues singer of all
time.
• When Beyoncé Knowles played Etta James in Cadillac
Records, she proved, once and for all, that she could
act as well as sing.

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 52

Blending Fact and Opinion
Writers don’t necessarily keep facts and opinions in separate
sentences. Often the two are blended together. Where in the
following sentence does the fact leave off and the opinion
begin?
• Grizzly bear deaths neared record levels for the
region around Yellowstone National Park in 2010, but
government biologists said the population is robust
enough to withstand the heavy losses.
What word would need to be changed to make the
opinion part of the statement a little more obvious?

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 53

 Sometimes one word makes all the difference.

Note how the change of one word makes it

clearer when an opinion is being inserted:
Grizzly bear deaths neared record levels for the
region around Yellowstone National Park in
2010, but government biologists believe the
population is robust enough to withstand the
heavy losses.

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 54

Be alert to words that make value judgments; they are
signs of opinions being mixed in with facts.

Where in the following statements are words

that evaluate the person or action described?
1. Surprisingly, only five per cent of the students
attending charter schools performed better than
students attending public schools.
2. Understandably, the park service employees had to
shoot grizzlies that had approached human beings.
3. Out of necessity, the university launched a new
program focused on preventing plagiarism.

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 55

Spot Quiz: Recognizing Facts, Opinions,
and a Mix of Both
Identify each of the following statements as a
fact, an opinion, or a blend of both:
1. In August 2006, the International Astronomical Union voted to demote
Pluto from a full-fledged planet to a “dwarf planet.”
2. Inside Job, a movie about the financial meltdown of 2008, is a
documentary that should be seen by everyone interested in knowing how
such a disaster could happen.
3. No one under the age of thirty uses e-mail anymore; it’s too slow.
4. In 2010, the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano spewed clouds of
ash into the sky as high as 33,000 feet.
5. In 2010, Joao Silva, one of the most talented and respected
photojournalists working in the world today, lost both of his legs when he
stepped on a plastic land mine in Afghanistan.
copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 56
Informed and Uninformed Opinions
• You can’t verify an opinion. If someone says, Apple’s iPhone is a better cell
phone than Google’s Android, you can’t disprove that person’s opinion
because what you think of as better- say the ability to add apps from
developers not approved by Apple—might not be be shared by the iPhone
lover, who favors high tech, good-looking design and ease of use.
• In other words, it’s very hard, sometimes impossible, to verify why one
thing is better than another because the criteria, or standards, for that
judgment vary from person to person. There’s no outside source to check
for accuracy.
• However, you can decide, or even say, aloud that the other person’s
opinion is informed or uninformed. Here’s the difference between the
two:

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 57

Defining Terms: Informed and Uninformed Opinions

Informed opinions are

• backed by reasons.
• supported by facts.
• based on up-to-date evidence.
Uninformed opinions lack all of the above. In addition,
they are
• often expressed with great confidence.
• frequently voiced in a way that discourages the
expression of opposition.

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 58

Example of an Informed Opinion

Informed
• If you think you have to become muddled and soft-headed as
you age, think again. As we grow older, the two sides of the
brain become more connected, allowing us to recognize
patterns more easily and draw more original conclusions
about the world around us. To get some insight into how the
brain’s hemispheres become more cooperative over time,
Gene Cohen’s book The Mature Mind is a superb resource. As
Cohen writes, “The neurons themselves may lose some
processing speed with age, but they become ever more richly
entwined… making way for greater creativity.”

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 59

Example of an Uninformed Opinion
• Since the 1980s, the United States has rapidly been taken over
by the wealthiest one percent of the population. The rich
have gotten richer, and the poor have gotten poorer. In many
ways, we have seen the hands of time turn backward, and the
country today resembles the Gilded Age of the late
nineteenth century when the country was ruled by the
wealthy industrialists who emerged following the Civil War.
Note: The opinion expressed here has no back up. It’s not
informed by any reasons or evidence for the claim. The
reference to the Gilded Age of the past starts to provide a
reason for the opinion, but lacking any details about the
resemblance, the allusion adds nothing to the author’s
original statement.
copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 60
 Final Wrap
1. What’s the key difference between facts and opinions?
2. Is the following statement a fact or an opinion: “Without
doubt, feminism has made women unhappier now than they
were before the second wave of feminism began in the
1960s”?
3. Fact or Opinion? In the United States, bullying in the schools
has become an epidemic at all grade levels.
4. Fact or Opinion? Thomas Jefferson issued repeated warnings
against the dangers of a centralized government.
5. Fact or Opinion? In 2009, the World Health Organization
issued a statement saying that swine influenza had become
a pandemic, meaning the virus could be quickly spread
throughout the world.
copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 61
 Final Wrap
6. Are the following statements fact, opinion, or a blend of
both?
a) In 47 B.C. Cleopatra took a trip down the Nile with Julius
Ceasar.
b) Jay-Z, born Shawn Corey Carter in 1969, exemplifies the
American belief that people can make their own success
with a mix of luck and hard work.
c) When Louis Brandeis was nominated to the Supreme Court
in 1916, his nomination was attacked, and Brandeis was
called a troublemaker, a hypocrite, and a socialist, but what
his critics really meant was that Brandeis was Jewish.

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 62

 Final Wrap
7. Is the following opinion informed or uninformed?
• Grizzly bear deaths in the region around Yellowstone National Park rose to
record levels in 2010. According to government biologists, we should not
be concerned that this endangered group of animals took such a hard hit.
But I, along with other wildlife groups like the Greater Yellowstone
Coalition, have my doubts. Two dietary staples of grizzlies are declining,
the cutthroat trout and nuts from whitebark pine cones. The more their
food supplies decline, the more likely it is the bears will push into human-
inhabited areas, where they are likely to be killed. In addition, the human
population in the area surrounding Yellowstone is growing, making it more
likely for bears and humans to collide, a meeting that is likely to end with
some bears dying. As Chuck Schwartz, a U.S. biologist has pointed out
“Eight-five plus percent of independent bears that die, die because of
people.” In other words, the more bears come into contact with people,
the more likely they are to die. Given that fact, the government’s
optimism for the grizzlies future is hard to fathom.
copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 63
 Final Wrap
8. What about this one?
• Many of us hope to see the economy return to normal and
the jobless rate to be cut in half, but that hope is much too
optimistic. What we are experiencing is structural, rather than
cyclical, unemployment i.e. the economy no longer needs
specific jobs requiring a particular set of skills. For example,
now that print can be set via computers, jobs for manual type
setters, people who actually moved letters around to create
printed pages, no longer exist. This kind of structural
unemployment cannot be fixed. Government intervention is
useless. The jobs are obsolete and won’t come back. Instead
the people who have lost their jobs have to learn new and
marketable skills, because the expertise that got them hired in
the past won’t get them hired in the future. It is this kind of
structural unemployment that we are currently facing.
copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 64
 What Do You Think?
The government is appealing a ruling that put grizzly bears
back on the list of endangered species after they had been
removed. The bears were returned to the list due to a law suit
filed by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, an organization
that believes the bears should not be “delisted.” The
organization filed the suit because it believes that the bears’
being on the list offers them a greater number of protections,
which will encourage their survival. Create a search term for
a Web search that will give you some insight into the
controversy and be prepared to offer, in class or on paper, an
informed opinion in response to this question: Should grizzly
bears be removed from the list of endangered species?

copyright© Laraine Flemming 2012 65