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Writing 122

Composition: Argumentative and Analytical Essays

Instructor: Steve Mainville

Librarian: Stephanie Debner
stephanie.debner@pcc.edu

Spring Term 2008

Brainstorming and Browsing

  1. News item: Teacher Fired: Assigned Acclaimed Novels
    Alt Press Watch: PeaceWork, November 1995
  2. Browse magazines
    • Look for search terms: e.g., school board; secondary schools; censorship; book selection
    • Look for concepts, questions, points that are interesting
  3. Wikipedia is a great place to find ideas and key terms, but not a good place to do all your research.
  4. Browse websites (for news items, resources) of organizations that deal with issues of censorship, such as the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Find background material

  1. Online Catalog
  2. CQ Researcher and Opposing Viewpoints are databases that provide analysis and opinions on controversial subjects.CQ Researcher tries to present the arguments in an unbiased form. Opposing Viewpoints offers a variety of arguments written by people who care deeply about the issues at hand. Both provide links to useful web sites. Opposing Viewpoints also provides some related magazine artilcles and statistics.

Focus topic

  1. Specific aspects?
    • Public high school education
    • Evolution or Creationism
    • Patriotism
    • Novels (fiction)
    • "in loco parentis"
    • Reading lists
    • Textbook selection
    • Collection development
    • Intellectual freedom
    • Academic freedom
    • Diversity
    • Religious tolerance
    • Morality
    • Book challenges
  2. Local, or national focus? Political, legal, moral, religious, economic focus?
  3. Which aspects interest you?
  4. What are the components (key terms) of a question you would like the answer to?

Form a Research Question

  1. What is important about the topic?
  2. What are people concerned about?
  3. What do you think? Why?

Find sources to support your point of view

Magazine Articles Online (EBSCOhost):

Many magazine article databases are available through EBSCOhost. In each case some of the articles will be available in full text . Others will have a summary only, with details about where to find the complete article. You can choose one database or search several at once. The MasterFILE Premier and Academic Search Premier databases are good starting points for many topics; for this topic you might also consider Legal Collection, Newspaper Source, and/or Psychology and Behavioral Science Collection.

Oregonian -- for a local focus like the author Diana Abu-Jaber.

World Wide Web

Associations, Organizations for statistics, FAQs

Special Interest Groups

For more help

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