With fake news all around us, the ability to critically analyse the things we see and read and to distinguish what is real or fake has never been more important! But, how can you be a critical thinker? Find out more while you improve your English listening and vocabulary. Are you good at critical thinking? Join the conversation 👇👇👇
Key vocabulary
✔️spin - the presentation of, for example, negative information in a positive way
✔️to cherry-pick - to use only the details that support your view and ignore other information
✔️bias - a belief that something is good or bad which is not based on evidence
✔️critical thinking - the skill of looking at information objectively, without bias, prejudice or spin
✔️a sceptic / skeptic - someone who uses logic and evidence rather than emotion when judging information
✔️gullible (adj) easily tricked or deceived because you believe uncritically what you see or hear
✔️media literacy - awareness of the modern media environment and how information and disinformation are spread
This programme was first published on our website in 2020.
There's a quiz and a FREE pdf transcript on our website 👉https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/course/fakenews/unit-1/session-6
Click these links to watch more programmes in this series:
Episode 1: What does 'fake' really mean? 👉 https://youtu.be/8X5B93C6OKI
Episode 2: Where does 'news' come from? 👉 https://youtu.be/Dp3IhBM2e-4
Episode 3: Information or disinformation? 👉 https://youtu.be/OLu4AcRaK_o
Episode 4: Fake news in the age of coronavirus 👉 https://youtu.be/E0PKtf1hfvc
Episode 5: Why do people share fake news? 👉 https://youtu.be/KWorjSQH3-c
Episode 6: How to be a critical thinker 👉 https://youtu.be/E_2CwOpt0NY
Episode 7: Can you trust online images? 👉 https://youtu.be/KAgsck4bVyE
Episode 8: Don't get caught out! 👉 https://youtu.be/BEbQTZLXwOM
And click here for our study skills video on critical thinking 👉https://youtu.be/FMt_RIR_JHo
🤩🤩🤩 SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel for more English videos and podcast English to help you improve your English 👉 http://tinyurl.com/ps3hplv
✔️ Visit our website 👉 https://www.bbclearningenglish.com
✔️ Follow us on Instagram 👉 https://www.instagram.com/bbclearningenglish
✔️ Find us on Facebook 👉 https://www.facebook.com/bbclearningenglish.multimedia
✔️ Join us on TikTok 👉 https://www.tiktok.com/@bbclearningenglish
#fakenews #learnenglish #criticalthinking
Hi, I'm Hugo. And I'm Sam. And this is Fake News: Fact and
Fiction from BBC Learning English. In the programme today we look at the topic of critical thinking
with our special guest Dr Steven Novella. Being able to evaluate the information
that we have access to critically is now probably the most important
skill any individual can have. Hear more from Dr Novella later. First, Sam, do have some vocabulary for us? Yes I do. So, today I'm going to be talking about:
spin, cherry-picking, bias a
nd the phrase 'critical thinking' itself.
Let's have a look. See that It's a ball. To turn it quickly is to spin it. Now if we put the truth on this ball
then spin it, can you still see the truth? It's still there somewhere but
difficult to see clearly. Spin makes the truth difficult to see. And this is a bit like political spin,
a term first used in the 1970s to talk about the way politicians and
their spokespeople present information. They will present information in a way that
makes thi
ngs seem as positive as possible without always telling you the whole truth
or the whole context. They might highlight the most
positive details but ignore the other details that
don't make them look quite as good. Selecting which facts are chosen to
publicise is known as 'cherry-picking' and it often doesn't give a full or
accurate picture of the whole story. And it's not just politicians,
of all sides, who do this. It happens in the media too,
mainstream and social media, and very often w
e do it ourselves. To explain why, I'm
going to need another ball, like a bowling ball. Bowling balls don't roll straight. They curve to the left
or right when they're rolled. One reason for this is
that their weight is not centred. They have what is called a bias. Bias is the same word we use to
describe an opinion that is not impartial. One that is not based fairly on facts but
which may turn one way or another because of personal feelings, political
preferences or ideology. So we might
disagree with someone
and think that they're wrong not because of evidence or facts but just because they have a different
way of looking at the world than we do. And when it comes to the spread of fake news something called 'confirmation bias'
is incredibly important. This is when we ignore or dismiss anything
that doesn't support our own beliefs and only pay attention to information
that confirms the views we already have. We like to read and see opinions
that reflect our own beliefs. We
might want to share something
that we really agree with, something that makes us really angry or upset and
not stop to think whether it's actually true. The challenge is to be open to trying
to understand opinions that are different from our own and not ignore any evidence
that doesn't confirm our own view. This is where critical thinking
becomes very important. The skill of looking at information
objectively and impartially and trying not to be
persuaded by our own biases. So that was m
y balanced
spin on spin and now back to the studio. Thanks Sam. I may be biased but
I thought it was really interesting. And it takes us nicely into our topic today. Critical thinking. Why is this something that is
important when it comes to fake news? Yeah well one of the ways that news
spreads is when it's shared and if it's fake news, that can be a problem. Thinking critically is a bit like
social distancing for fake news. If we know how to spot fake news,
we are less likely to spread i
t. And in order to spot fake news you
have to be a little bit of a sceptic and not believe everything
you read on the Internet. So what does it mean to be a sceptic? Let's turn to our guest
today Dr Steven Novella. Dr Novella is a clinical neurologist
at Yale University. He's a science communicator who
presents a weekly podcast called "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe"
and he's also written a book with the same name. We spoke to him earlier and first asked him
about what being sceptic
means and why he believes it's important. A sceptic is somebody that wants
to believe only things that are actually true. We want to use facts logic and
evidence to base our beliefs on. Now the opposite of being a sceptic
is being gullible and I don't think anybody would want, would
self-identify as gullible or want to be gullible. But you know we're
advocating scientific scepticism, using a formal method, using a process
to evaluate the information that we encounter. We're deluged with in
formation,
we have to filter it somehow. We have to figure, have some way of figuring
out what's likely to be true and what's not true. If someone's trying to deceive me;
if someone is trying to sell me something; if someone else has been deceived
and they're trying to pass that along to me; if the government is trying to maintain
some fiction to maintain control. I mean it's all sorts of reasons why people
would give me information that's not correct or that's biased or that's inaccurate.
And sometimes people just make honest mistakes. We're flawed. Our brains are flawed,
our memories are terrible. We sort of construct an approximation
of reality as best we can but it's never totally accurate. And we have to be aware
of all those biases and flaws. Well good to hear Dr Novella using one
of your vocabulary words there, Sam, bias. But did you pick out any
other interesting words there? Yeah, so the word
'gullible' is interesting. We use this word for someone
who is willing t
o believe things without questioning. It makes them really easy to trick. So, I remember when I was at school
a teacher told me that the word gullible wasn't in the dictionary. Did you believe them? Well I thought about it for a second
because it was a teacher who told me and I trusted them and then I was
going to tell my friends because I thought it was interesting but I
thought I should probably check it out first. And of course the word was in the dictionary. So being a sceptic and a crit
ical thinker
means not believing everything you see or hear, not liking and
sharing somethingeven if we agree with it or it feels right to us until we
have evidence to support it. It may not be important whether a
word is a dictionary or not but it is when thinking about the areas
of science, health and politics. It does take a little bit of an effort. It's easy to check a dictionary to
see if a word is in there but it is more difficult with
more complex issues. So how do we start with th
is? Here's Dr Novella again. So whenever I come across a question or
a topic that I want to wrap my head around, I make sure that I look for,
specifically look for information on all sides. There may be more than two sides
but all what I think are at least viable opinions. If there is any large group of
people or respected professionals or whatever who are saying something, I want to at least understand what
their point is, what is their side. And until you sort of sort through
the back an
d forth of different arguments, you don't really have a good sense of
who has the better position. And if I follow a good process, I look for
as many differing opinions as I can, keep a genuinely open mind, don't prejudge
the conclusion and then see, 'Ok who has the better evidence'. And when you do that habitually, you do
that all the time, you get pretty good at it, just like anything, you do it all the time
and you'll get better at it. It still takes work to wrap your head
around any co
mplex issue but you have a fighting chance if you do that process. It seems to have some
similarity with what journalists do, looking for different sources
and analysing the evidence. And it's important to look not only
at different sources but also at different points of view. Of course this isn't something you
need to do for everything. Some things are easy to check and
some things are not that controversial. But when it comes to science,
medicine and health, for example, there are many
claims that we might
like to believe but which may not be accurate. So it's a good idea to develop
some of those research skills if you want to be a critical thinker. This is something that Dr Novella thinks
is essential for students and adults to develop but it's not the only thing. So here's a look at what else
he thinks is important. I do think that we need to teach
critical thinking as a core skill set to all, all children and adults
and what's called media literacy. I think media liter
acy is more
important than it ever was. It's only going to get even more
important so people need to understand not just scientific
literacy but critical thinking and media literacy. That is the currency now of the modern world. We all have access to
massive amounts of information. I mean it's unbelievable
when you think about it, at the touch of your fingers you have
access to the collective knowledge of humanity. It's amazing. And so the real currency is in being
able to find the inform
ation that you want and evaluate it critically. Being able to evaluate the information
that we have access to critically is now probably the most important
skill any individual can have. And that's what now
I think the science communicators are shifting towards. That's what we have to teach people. They can find the facts online. We need to teach them how
to know it when they find it. So, Sam, as well as critical thinking,
what else does Dr Novella think is an essential skill? That would be
'media literacy' which
is an understanding of how the media and social media works and how it's
being used for good and for bad. And it's also about being aware of where
you get your information from, people on social media, blogs
and websites you follow. So, Sam, can you just please recap
today's vocabulary for us. Absolutely. So we started off with 'spin' which is a way to present information in
a positive way, as positive as possible, even if it's not actually particularly good news. Ch
erry-picking details is to choose
only the information that agrees with your views
and ignore any inconvenient facts. A bias is a belief that something is
good or bad which isn't based on evidence but is based on prejudices
or our own beliefs and our own ideology. Critical thinking is the skill of
evaluating and judging how accurate something is objectively,
without bias, without spin, and without cherry picking data. A sceptic is someone who wants to
use logic and evidence and not emotio
n when judging how
accurate something is. The adjective 'gullible' is used for
people who aren't sceptical, who easily believe what they're told
and what they read. And finally, media literacy is an awareness
of our modern media environment and an understanding of how media and social media works and how fake news and
disinformation can spread. Thank you very much Sam, I
think you deserve a rest after that. And thank you for watching. Until next time, goodbye. Bye.
Comments
Hello everyone. Our channel is a safe space to help you learn English. Please be polite and respectful in your comments. Comments that don’t follow our house rules or comments that are off the topic may be deleted. You can see the list of our house rules here: bbc.in/2TnggMc
Thanks BBC, From time to time, I cherry - pick information and fall in bias. I am preparing for being a critical thinker using accurate sources and media literacy. It is important to become in a skeptical person in those times.
Nice topic selection for discussion!😊
These have been perfect times to talk about "bias"......
Thanks BBC so much!!!Critical thinking is of great value today!
Indeed best English source for English learners on the internet. Thanks, mates!
Thank you . Undoubtedly, open-minded and broad minded individuals must have critical thinking. The dark side is that sometimes, with the guise of critical thinking, some individuals try to impose a wrong idea to others. For instance, a speaker may say that diabetes is good for health because a diabetic must avoid foods that contain sugar and carbohydrates, and therefore, diabetics are more lively and healthy than others. To say concisely critical thinking is a decent trait, but sometimes, with the pretext of critical thinking ,some politicians try to distort the reality .
Exceptional 👏
Very nice topic and video ! It was very pedagogical 🎉 . I agree we need this skill to be taught in schools .
I really love this channel!!!❤❤❤🎉 It's so interesting to listen and also improve your English. Thank you 😊
Cherry-Picking: Very often we do our self. BBC Thanks for honest confession.
Thanks for rising this issue in this specific time where the whole world need to be aware and critical by the amount of feak news spreads wildly ,,, I wish you can add the Media blackout in the next lesson
I usually write on social media platforms and try to cherry pick about things without critical thinking and end up in recieving a skeptic responses from people .
I try to have critical thinking and media literacy.
Thanks SAM and BBC Learning English for this amazing lesson. Critical thinking and open mind are the solutions. 👏👏👏
Great lesson of English
This will be great for teaching my grade 12 students.
There's some overlap b/w spin, cherry picking and bias. Cherry-picking could be used to spin information because a person has a biased view on a certain issue or topic or event or piece of info. Similarly, cherry-picking facts to suit our own beliefs could result in us spinning facts and being biased. Is there a distinguishing line b/w the three? Pls educate me. Or are these three actually part of an intertwined process?
Sam is so pretty and beautiful! 🌺 Thanks for information! In my country many people don’t use their critical thinking at all. Especially, if the information comes from television: news, political tv programs and that. I think it’s the terrible tendency 🤦♀️ nowadays. They just blindly believe all of those cherry-picking information without figuring out if it’s true or false. I think it happens due to human laziness although it’s a really important skill to develop the brain. They don’t want to analyze and check information just swallowing it without thinking.
BBC is master in Cherry-Picking 🤣🤣🤣🤣