Unit 2 · Values and Dispositions · NCERT Class 8 Poorvi

Biography, Fact vs Opinion & Summary

A life-story can inspire — and also slip in the writer’s own judgements. This skill is about reading a biography or autobiography: spotting the aspiration that drives a life, telling a fact from an opinion, and writing a clear summary in your own words. You will learn to read a profile critically and capture its gist. Every example here is original; we only borrow the title of the Poorvi lesson ‘I Too Had a Dream’, about Verghese Kurien, who led Operation Flood and India’s White Revolution. Tap each term to see what it means.

👥 3 topics⏱ ~25 min📝 12-question quiz

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The language of life-stories

Reading a life-story well means knowing its form and reading it critically. Tap each term to see what it means and how the pieces — biography, autobiography, aspiration, fact, opinion and summary — fit together.

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The three big ideas

Biography — the story of a person’s life written by someone else, usually in the third person (“he”, “she”).
Autobiography — a life-story written by the person about themselves, in the first person (“I”). A title like “I Too Had a Dream” signals this voice.
Aspiration — the strong hope or ambition that drives a person. In a life-story, the aspiration often explains the choices and sacrifices the person makes.
How it is organised — most life-stories move in time order, marking key milestones: early life, the turning point, struggles, and lasting achievements.

Fact — a statement that can be checked and proved true or false. “India is the world’s largest producer of milk.”
Opinion — a belief or judgement that cannot be simply proved. “Milk is the tastiest drink there is.”
Signal words — opinions often carry best, worst, should, I think, probably, beautiful, greatest; facts carry dates, measurements and recorded data.
Why it matters in a life-story — a writer who admires their subject may mix praise (opinion) with record (fact). A careful reader separates them before deciding what to believe.

Worked example. Label each part: “She founded the village clinic in 2009, and she is surely the kindest doctor in the state.”

“founded the village clinic in 2009” — checkable record → fact.

“surely the kindest doctor in the state” — a judgement with “surely” and “kindest” → opinion.

One sentence can hold both; read each clause on its own.

Common mistake: a statement is not a fact just because it sounds confident or appears in print. “Everyone agrees it is the best” is still an opinion — confidence is not proof.

What a summary is — a short version that keeps the main points and drops minor details, repetition and examples.
The steps — find each paragraph’s main idea, list those ideas, then join them smoothly in your own words.
Keep it short — a summary is usually about a third of the original or less, and includes no new opinions of your own.
Stay faithful — do not change the meaning or add what is not there; a summary reports the text, it does not argue with it.

Where you'll meet it

Reading a life, at work

Profiles and interviews

Newspaper profiles, sports interviews and award citations all blend record with praise. Reading them with a fact/opinion filter lets you admire a person’s achievements without swallowing every flattering claim whole.

News and social media

Posts and headlines mix verifiable facts with strong opinions, sometimes on purpose. The single most useful habit online is asking, “Is this a fact I can check, or someone’s opinion?” — exactly the skill in this lesson.

Note-making and revision

Summarising is how you turn pages of a textbook into a page of notes you can actually revise from. Capturing main points in your own words also fixes them in memory far better than re-reading does.