USEFUL WEB SITES FOR ARGUMENT AND PERSUASION
(Compiled by William Peirce. Updated January 2005)
GENERAL INFORMATION
Dictionary.com
http://dictionary.com
Hotlinks 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 Web site 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.
U. S. 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
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.
Evaluation Techniques of Internet Resources
http://www.teachercertification.org/teach/evaluation-techniques-of-Internet-resources.php
List of websites and various materials that teach how to evaluate web
pages.
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.
"Search Engine Reviews Chart"
http://searchenginewatch.internet.com/reports/reviewchart.html
Compares how search engines have scored in various reviews. Published on Danny
Sullivan's "Search Engine Watch" Web site, which contains links to
other search engine resources at http://searchenginewatch.com/
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