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Welcome COMM 1301 students!
This guide is intended to help students with informative and persuasive speeches. Each tab contains links to useful sources as well as hints and tips.
There are many information resources at your disposal; however, it is important to follow the specifics of your particular class assignment in terms of how many - and what type of - resources you need.
Choose a Topic
Great research topics are all around us! Start with your professor's instructions - is there a particular subject area you must stay within?
You may want to consult:
- Course materials - textbook, handouts
- Personal interests and experiences
- Various news outlets (TV, print, online)
- Library databases:
- Issues & Controversies This link opens in a new window Featuring a dynamic design and a wealth of features, Issues & Controversies helps researchers understand today's crucial issues by exploring hundreds of hot topics in politics, government, business, society, education, and popular culture. Issues and Controversies provides up-to-date, in-depth and objective information on prominent and hotly debated issues. It combines objective analysis with clear explanations of opposing points of view. Chronologies, illustrations, maps, tables, sidebars, bibliographies and contact information augment the balanced, accurate coverage of current and historical events.
- In Context: Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window Opposing Viewpoints offers material to support differing views to help develop critical thinking skills on thousands of current social topics in the forms of primary source documents, statistics, websites and multimedia. Find overviews, news, and opinions on hundreds of today's important social issues, including racism, capital punishment, global warming, and voting rights with reference sources, newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly journals, court cases, government documents, viewpoints, maps, images, audio, video and websites.
- In Context: Global Issues This link opens in a new window Designed to support global awareness, In Context: Global Issues ties together a wealth of authoritative content that empowers students to critically analyze and understand the most important issues of the modern world. Explore issues within government, law, health, science and technology, society and culture; it contains 250 country pages and more than 400 issue pages along with 6,000 viewpoint commentaries.
Middlesex Students have free access to the NYTimes - follow this link for information on how to set up your account: