Many of you have asked me how to go about learning how to form your opinions. Thus, I have written a post to explain some critical steps to you. Yes, the key word here is learning to form your opinions. Thus I am not expecting a regurgitation of others' opinions when I ask you to read others' blogs to learn.
Here are a few critical steps that diligent Trustians do to ensure that they learn how to form indepth & valid opinions:
1) Read others' opinions (especially the good ones) to learn:
- thought process (i.e. the questions they asked themselves while thinking through, how they focus on the big picture before narrowing down to the details etc)
- the skills (i.e. how they put their views across logically, how they sequence ideas, the type of research they did to learn more about the issues, etc.)
-the things to avoid (i.e. read others' comments on the post's opinions to understand how to improve.)
-apply your thinking skills to comment on others' opinions (i.e. to practise self questioning during the thought process)
Remember: You do not need to make all the mistakes yourself. You can learn from others' mistakes as well as strengths.
2) Then select another piece of news you are interested in and do the following to practise the application of your newly-acquired thought process and skills.
- Listen to the news and read up on all related news articles in the newspapers. (e.g. Reduction of public smoking areas in 2009)
- Write down your main ideas/argument (e.g. Reduction of public smoking areas next year is good. It discourages smoking in public.)
-Elaborate on your main ideas by giving examples (i.e. Then discuss why this discouragement is good. E.g. Smokers will not be able to smoke in public. As a result, young children will have lesser chance of seeing people smoking in public and so will less likely pick up smoking later in life.)
- At this point, you can also bring in some health related issues on smoking. Research on the key issues mentioned in the news. E.g. Why is smoking bad? You can comment on the bad effects of smoking and passive smoking after doing your research. If you are not sure how to research, try doing an internet search on the questions you want to ask on google or wikipedia (i.e. Links are found on the right side of this page under the cbox) Do remember that you should not regurgitate or copy from the source of your info too. Always summarise and select the main points that help you in explaining your views. In addition, if you are able to use specific or good vocabulary (i.e. picked up during reading or research) in your opinions, you should make a conscious effort to practise doing so.
By following the above steps, you will be able to acquire more extensive generally knowledge and vocabulary on the issues that interest you. Thus, you will have more opinions to give when asked about the issues. I hope this post helps you. For those who have already finished all the 8 pieces of news & opinions before reading this post, it will be great if you could do another 2 pieces as a form of practice. Do drop me feedback on the usefulness of this post and any enhancements that you would like to see in the comments page.
