ENGLISH 8 – WEEK 1

Quarter 3- Module 1: Examining Biases (for or against) Made by the Author

Name: ____________________________________ Grade & Section: ___________ Date: _______________

MELCs: Examine biases (for or against) made by the author. EN8RC-IIIg-3.1.12
After going through this module, you are expected to:
1. tell what author bias is;
2. identify the author’s biases in a selection; and
3. examine biases (for and against) made by the author.
Note: Write your answers on a whole sheet of paper. Don’t forget to write your name, grade and section.

Having our own point of view regarding a certain thing, person, or idea is quite normal because we are
functional humans with brains and emotions. The way we look at things depends on how we interpret them
personally.
Similarly, authors, as human beings, have this kind of characteristic. Often times, they write their
pieces depending on the ongoing happenings around them or the emotion they are in. It’s normal. There are
authors who think they must avoid being subjective when they are writing, speaking, or making their pieces
so they tend to use a medium like grammar to avoid it. Anyway, they still write some subconsciously.

Note: Please read carefully the explanation about the lesson to better understand its concept.

What is Bias?
An important skill of critical reading is the ability to detect an author's bias or prejudice. The reason
you need to be able to do this, of course, is that bias or prejudice may invalidate an author's claim. Bias is
any opinion that influences a person’s thoughts, feelings, or actions. A person can be biased against
something or have a bias for something.
Bias or prejudice may be the result of national pride and chauvinism (as may be the case for Japanese
scholars' denial of the Rape of Nanking) or personal or professional rivalry (as in the Browning-Goldhagen
controversy); perhaps an author's bias or prejudice is a result of a specific agenda he or she wishes to
support, or perhaps it simply reflects the author's ignorance and resulting ignorant worldview. When writing
about history, our ability to detect and identify such bias or prejudice is a valuable and necessary skill.

Note that even secondary sources written by reputable authors are not immune to bias or prejudice.
Be sure to carefully examine any author's premise, argument, and methodology to ascertain whether he or
she has consciously or unwittingly pursued the above strategies.

You are even more likely to encounter prejudice or bias in primary sources: newspaper editorials,
political cartoons, and "private" sources such as letters, diaries, etc. are often blithely biased, as they are
generally intended for a specific audience that is assumed to share the author's view.

What are Author's Biases?

 Every author holds opinions that affect his or her discussion of an issue and that you as a reader
must try to recognize and understand. Even the most seemingly factual report, such as an
encyclopedia article, can carry an understatement or implied judgment. Such a judgment reflects an
author's bias or preference for one side of an issue over another.
 An author’s bias is any opinion or prejudice that affects that author’s writing and prevents the author
from being completely neutral about the topic or issue about which s/he is writing.
 Just because an author has a strong bias does not mean that he or she has written something invalid.
However, in the interest of being prepared to fend off attacks from those who want to challenge your
analysis or argument, it is best if you recognize, early on, what biases are.
Source: [Link]

Ways to Detect an Author's Possible Bias or Prejudice

1. The author uses inflammatory language: in the most extreme cases, racial epithets, slurs, etc.

2. The author consistently makes claims whose larger purpose is to elevate (or demean) one social,
ethnic, national, religious, or gender group as compared to another, or all others.

3. The author consciously presents evidence that serves to tell only one side of an event or issue,
purposefully withholding or ignoring information that may shed the opposing view in a more positive
light.

4. The author manufactures, falsifies and/or dishonestly cites evidence in order to present his or her
case in a more positive light.
 How to Determine an Author’s Bias
The author may state directly some of his or her biases by telling the reader his or her opinions on
certain topics or admitting that he or she has a conflict of interest or preference. But when an author
does not acknowledge his or her own bias, a skilled reader can infer what an author’s bias may be by
looking at the author’s diction and use of evidence.

 When looking at the author’s use of evidence, ask yourself:

• Does the author present more positive evidence for one side of an issue than the other?
• Does the author present more negative evidence for one side of an issue than the other?

 These are both clues that the author may be biased for or against a particular side.
 When looking at the author’s diction, ask yourself:
• Does the author use words with more negative connotations when referring to one side of an issue or
particular people?
• Does the author use words with more positive connotations when referring to one side of an issue or
particular people?

 These connotations are another clue to what or whom the author may be biased for or against.
Source: [Link]

Activity 1: A. True or False

Directions: On the blank before each number, write T if the statement is true and F if the statement is false.
________ 1. Everybody is biased in some way.
________ 2. Bias is mainly a fact that influences a person in deciding some matter.
________ 3. Using negative or positive connotations when referring to a side of an issue is already a bias.
________ 4. Having a strong bias as an author does not mean that he or she has written invalid ideas.
________ 5. Primary sources of information are more likely the only means where you can encounter prejudice
or bias.
________6. An author has good credibility when you can prove that they have used valid facts and materials
and that you cannot trust their writing.

B. Filling in the Blanks

Directions: As presented earlier, read the text below and fill in the blanks with the missing words using the
words inside the table below.
fantastic beliefs opinions unfair bias
one-sided lucky awful supports

Bias is when someone has a 7. ________ opinion about something. We can recognize bias by finding 8.
__________ opinions. Bias is useful because it helps us find out a person’s 9. _______ or 10. _________. If
someone 11. _________ a particular football team, they might show 12. ___________ when describing a match.
Everything their team does would be described as 13. ________, but everything the opposing team does would
be described as 14. _________ or 15. _________.

Activity 2: Island Hopping

We are now on the pier of an island. To be able to go to another island, we need to clear some challenges. The
challenge is to examine the author’s biases on the excerpt by reading them and answering the questions after
each.

Excerpt 1
Maybe the cyclist in the park, trim under his sleek metallic blue helmet, cruising along the dirt path at
three miles an hour. On his tricycle.
Or perhaps, today’s playground, an all-rubber-cushioned surface where kids used to skin their knees.
And wait a minute, those are not little kids playing. Their mommies--and especially their daddies--are in there
with them, co-playing or play-by-play coaching. Few take it half-easy on the perimeter benches, as parents
used to do, letting the kids figure things out for themselves.
According to a recent survey, they use sanitizing gels for over a third of parents who send their kids to
school. Presumably, parents now worry that school bathrooms are not good enough for their children.
Consider the teacher new to an upscale suburban town. He was struck by the exhaustive, well-written costly
girl who was already proving among the most competent in her ninth-graders. Shuffling through the sheaf of
reports required for his history students. Certifying the educational accommodations, “he is somewhat
neurotic”, he confides, “but, she is bright, organized, and conscientious—the type who would get to school to
turn in a paper on time, even if she were dying of stomach flu.” He finally found the disability he was to make
allowances for difficulty with Gestalt thinking. The 13-year-old “couldn’t see the big picture.” That cleverly
devised defect (what 13-year-old can construct the big picture?) would allow her to take all her tests untimed,
especially the big one at the end of the rainbow, the college-worthy SAT.
Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without skinned knees or the occasional C in history. "Kids
need to feel badly sometimes," says child psychologist David Elkind, professor at Tufts University. "We learn
through experience and we learn through bad experiences. Through failure, we learn how to cope."
- Excerpt from the beginning of an article by Hara Estroff Marano that looks at current trends in
parenting and their effects

Analyze the excerpt you just have read then answer the given question below. (For 10points)
1. How does the writer feel about the situations she describes? How can you tell?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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What I Have Learned

Bias is the author’s subjectivity towards the subject or topic such that it impacts the accuracy of
the information. An author’s bias is an opinion or prejudice that affects that author’s writing and
prevents the author from being completely neutral about the topic or issue he or she is writing
about.
For you to easily find out if the author’s bias is for or against the literature, you can ask yourself the
following questions:
When looking at the author’s use of evidence, ask yourself:
• Does the author present more positive evidence for one side of an issue than the other?

• Does the author present more negative evidence for one side of an issue than the other?

When looking at the author’s diction, ask yourself:

• Does the author use word with more negative connotations when referring to one side of an issue
or particular people?

• Does the author use word with more positive connotations when referring to one side of an issue
or particular people?

Activity 3
Directions: Using the graphic organizer below, cite your learning about the topic written at the center of
it. (For 20 points)