USEFUL WEBSITES FOR ARGUMENT AND PERSUASION
(Compiled by William Peirce. Updated January 2006)
GENERAL INFORMATION
Dictionary.com
http://dictionary.com
Links to these and other resources: Ask Dr. Dictionary, English
Dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, Strunk’s Elements
of Style, Bartlett’s
Familiar
Quotations, and grammar, usage, and style.
Martindale's: The Reference Desk
http://www.martindalecenter.com/
Award-winning website contains links to thousands of reference
resources; more
efficient for some searches than using web search engines.
My Virtual Reference Desk
http://www.refdesk.com/
My Virtual Reference Desk: encyclopedias, newspapers, dictionaries,
fact
sources.
The Virtual Library
http://vlib.org/
"The VL is the oldest catalog of the web,
started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web itself. . . . The VL pages are widely recognised
as
being amongst the highest-quality guides to particular sections of the
web."
Voice of the Shuttle: General
Humanities and Social Science
Resources Page
http://vos.ucsb.edu/
A very comprehensive guide to searching the
World Wide
Web for information in the humanities.
Social Sciences Information Gateway
http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/
Social Sciences Virtual Library
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/socsci
RESEARCH SITES FOR PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES
Websites for many argumentative essay topics.
http://www.gc.maricopa.edu/English/topicarg.html
Public Agenda
Online
http://www.publicagenda.org/
"The inside source for public opinion and policy analysis. Our
guides offer a nonpartisan briefing on policy and polling."
Project Vote-Smart
http://www.vote-smart.org
Articles on both sides of public policy issues. Click on Issues and
Legislation
at the top, then on Issues Organizations on the dropdown menu.
Frontline
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/
The PBS program Frontline has produced television documentaries
on a range of issues including business/economy, criminal justice,
foreign affairs/defense, government/elections,
health/science/technology, and social issues/race/religion. Since
1995 for each program, there are companion websites with
additional information and perspectives.
US State and Local Government
Gateway
http://www.firstgov.gov/
Links to a huge number of sources, including links to federal agencies,
state,
and local governments.
Federal Web Locator
http://www.infoctr.edu/fwl/fedweb.new.html
Searchable list of Web sites of federal agencies, including the House
and
Senate
Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/
MEDIA
MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com
Public Broadcasting Service
http://www.pbs.org
National Public Radio
http://www.npr.org
Ecola
Newsstand Searchable Newspaper Archives
http://www.ecola.com
A directory with links to newspapers on the web that allow back-issue
searches.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
Click on "Archive" to search back issues.
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com
Click on "Archives" to search back issues.
WRITING RESOURCES AND ONLINE WRITING LABS (OWLs)
Dave's ESL Cafe
http://www.eslcafe.com
Designed by Dave Sperling; offers many
resources for
ESL/EFL students and teachers.
Online Writing Lab at Purdue
University
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
Online Writery at University of
http://www.missouri.edu/~writery
Common Errors in English
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/index.html
Arts and Humanities Resources
(Yahoo)
http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/
CRITICAL THINKING
Stephen’s Guide to Logical Fallacies
http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/welcome.htm
Mission: Critical
[interactive tutorials teach critical thinking] (
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/
Philadelphia Association for
Critical Thinking
http://www.phact.org
An organization dedicated to the debunking of astrology, alien
invasions,
psychics, recovered memory, crystal healing, and similar notions.
Provides
links to other organizations of skeptics.
Critical
Thinking Books and Software
http://www.criticalthinking.com
Bookstore that sells instructional materials primarily to K-12
educators and
parents.
GUIDANCE FOR WEB SEARCHERS
Finding Information on the
Internet: A Tutorial
http://lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html
Excellent introduction to Web searching basics; materials come from the
University of California, Berkeley Teaching Library's Internet
Workshops
series.
Thinking Critically about World
Wide Web Resources
http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/critical
Brief guidelines by Esther Grassian, UCLA
College
Library
Checklist for evaluating Internet resources is at the University of Maryland University College library at http://www.umuc.edu/library/guides/evaluate.html
Search Engine
Showdown
http://www.notess.com/search/
by Greg Notess. Summarizes,
reviews, and
compares the search features and database scope of Web search engines
and
finding aids.
CITING INTERNET SOURCES
The website of The Bedford Handbook has excellent material
in Diana Hacker’s Research and
Documentation in the Electronic
Age (a supplement to The Bedford Handbook) at http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/hacker/resdoc/
To Peirce Faculty page
at PGCC
Go to WWW Links to Resources for Teaching Reasoning and Critical Thinking