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Fullerton College Library

ENGL 100 Whitehall/Rosen

This guide provides helpful tips for completing the evaluation assignment and the controversial issue assignment for Professor Whitehall's ENGL100 class in spring 2018.

Selecting a controversial topic and finding resources

A Controversy on Colour by John Hayter

Finding a controversial topic to write about can be difficult. In your library session, we talked about using Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context as a way to look at some brewing controversies before deciding on a topic. Open up a topic that interests you and read a bit about it to familiarize yourself with it and think about some terms you can use to narrow your topic. Use the link below to access the Opposing Viewpoints database as you firm up your focus on a controversial topic.

Once you've selected your controversial topic, a good place to search is OneSearch. Select OneSearch on the library homepage.

In our instruction session, we used the initial term "gentrification." Let's review the steps we took.

  • On the library homepage, enter your initial term into the OneSearch box.
  • Look for a Research Starter, and read it for more search terms.
  • Expand to an Advanced Search.
  • Add similar terms in the same box using or.
  • Add a second term to narrow your search results. Think back to the overview that you read in Opposing Viewpoints for additional term(s).

This is what our search looked like in OneSearch.

screenshot of OneSearch for gentrification OR "urban renewal" AND displacement

Try it with your topic.