Module 2. Politics. Week 3. Lesson 3. Identifying Facts and Opinions

1.

MODULE 2.POLITICS.
WEEK 3. LESSON 3.
I D E N T I F Y I N G FA C T S
AND OPINIONS
Astana IT University
​Department of General
Disciplines ​
English for Academic Purposes​
B1 level
2023-2024 academic year

2.

LESSON
OBJECTIVES:
10/1/2023
• develop reading comprehension skills in the
context of IT in Politics
• be able to differentiate and identify facts and
opinions

3.

W A R M - U P.
WORK IN
SMALL
GROUPS (5
MIN)
1.Discuss the IT-related terms or
concepts and come up with a brief
explanation of how each relates to
politics or government:
• online voter registration
• data privacy in political
campaigns
• e-government
• cybersecurity in elections
10/1/2023

4.

OUTLINE:
• Warm up
• Pre-reading
• While-reading
• Post-reading
• Discussion

5.

WAT C H T H E F O L L O W I N G V I D E O A N D N O T E D O W N T H E
MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF FACTS AND OPINIONS (5 MIN).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XibDgW_8iHM

6.

The main characteristics of Facts and Opinions:
•prove
•can't prove
•might not be true
•opposite point of
view
•Measurement
•should
•scientific data
•it's good, or it's
bad
•historical records
•persuade

7.

ASK THE FOLLOWING
QUESTIONS:
• Can I prove it in some way?
• Could someone have an opposite opinion?

8.

PRE-READING(3 MIN)
Exercise 1. Vocabulary preview: in the text, you will encounter certain words
related to AI, chatbots, and government. Before reading the text, match the
following words with their definitions:
1) AI
2) Chatbot
3) Government
Definitions:
a) An artificial intelligence system that can imitate human conversations.
b) The system or group of people that govern a country.
c) The field of computer science that deals with creating intelligent machines capable of
performing tasks that would typically require human intelligence.

9.

WHILE-READING (10 min)
READ THE TEXT FROM THE ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLE AND
DETERMINE WHETHER EACH SENTENCE REPRESENTS A FACT OR AN
OPINION. MARK AN OPINION (O) AND A FACT (F) ABOVE THE
SENTENCES.
1 The study has interesting implications for both research and practice. 2With respect to research it advances the
existing knowledge in two important areas: AI utilization in the public sector, and digital channels of communication
between citizens and government; this is achieved by combining knowledge from the areas of chatbots, natural
language processing, machine learning and data mining technologies. 3Furthermore, the study provides an approach
for the development of more advanced and intelligent chatbots, by leveraging existing data (both structured data from
operational IS, and also unstructured textual ones from documents and social media). 4It can be very useful for future
research in the area of chatbots. 5With respect to practice the study develops a novel digital channel of
communication between citizens and government, which addresses a fundamental weakness of the existing digital
communication channels currently provided by government, having higher communication richness and
expressiveness, and allowing citizens to communicate with government in their everyday natural language. 6This new
digital communication channel has the potential to transform and improve substantially the communication between
citizens and government, which has for long time been problematic. 7However, government practitioners should be
very careful in building the required ‘knowledge base’ of these advanced chatbots.

10.

P O S T- R E A D I N G
Exercise 2. Fill the gaps with the appropriate words. (5 min)
• implications
1. The a) __________ of advanced IT systems in politics
• advances
has substantial b)___________ for the
• utilization
way political campaigns are conducted.
• leveraging
2. c) __________ of political strategy are
• expressiveness
increasingly d)_________ data-driven approaches
• substantially
to understand voter behavior.
• practitioners
3. The e) ____________ of social media platforms allows
politicians to reach a f) __________larger audience than
traditional methods.
4. The range of digital tools available to political campaigns
has expanded significantly with the advent of IT
g)_______.

11.

EXERCISE 3. (15 MIN)
• Find an article on the topic "IT in Politics".
• Read the article and identify one fact and one opinion.

12.

• How can you differentiate between
facts and opinions in an article?
DISCUSSION
• How can recognizing the difference
between facts and opinions empower
individuals to make informed
decisions and engage in constructive
discussions?
• How can critical thinking skills help
you assess the validity of statements
and distinguish between facts and
opinions in various contexts, such as
politics, science, or everyday life?
10/1/2023

13.

ANY
QUESTION
S?