Conflicting Accounts

​Conflicting Accounts

• Analyze how authors writing about the same topic reveal their purpose, message, and perspective.

• Discuss how authors use different strategies and communicate different information on the same topic.

​

​Objectives:

​

​In the old days . . .

Most Americans had access to only a few newspapers or a few TV channels. But today, people have a lot of choices when it comes to media. They can carefully pick the sources of information they see so that the sources all fit a particular perspective.

The result is that many Americans are trapped in "bubbles" of information. They only see one perspective, and never others.​

​When giving opinions or presenting arguments, authors also try to convince readers to agree with their points of view. To strengthen their positions, authors sometimes point out a viewpoint or piece of evidence that disagrees, or conflicts with, their own.

​Purpose, Perspective, Message

We worked with these before......

​

When we evaluated an informational text in the last unit, we discussed these three, and we were supposed to give evidence from the text to support our inferences. ​

​Purpose

The author's reason for writing the piece.

​It could be to:

• entertain

• to inform

• to persuade.​

​Perspective

​The author's overall outlook....

how he or she sees the world.

​Message

The big idea the writer wants to leave you with.​

​Woman Suffrage:

Granting the Right to VOTE

Captain E. Constantin

Sojourner Truth

Hamilton Wilcox

​Bias-

Prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.​

Agenda

When a text has a bias, it may not be deliberate. Sometimes authors may simply not be aware how their perspective influences the purpose and message of a text.

Other times, an author might have an agenda: a deliberate purpose besides the obvious one. For example, an author may write a book that looks like it's meant to inform but actually has a persuasive agenda. These kinds of texts often present information in a biased way.​

Look for words that
express more
meaning.

Look for words that
express more
meaning.

Look for words that
express more
meaning.