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Writing Paper

           Information Power/Refining Your Topic*

EXAMPLES

Assignment: 10 minute persuasive speech
Topic: Drugs and Athletics
Questions you might ask yourself:

• who? what audience are you addressing? on which athletes is your focus?
• what? steroids, or other drugs? use or enforcement? health or ethical issues?
• when? historical perspective or only recent cases?
• where? United States, international, or local?
• why? reasons drugs are used? effects on athletes or the sport?
  relationship to the rest of society? what should or shouldn't be done?

Slant:
If the assignment is a persuasive speech, you will need to come up with something engaging. What might catch the audience's attention? You might take an unusual position and advocate lifting bans on steroid use. Or if your audience includes athletes, you might concentrate on the lethal effect of steroids to persuade the audience not to use them.

Assignment: 5 page paper
Topic: Censorship
Questions you might ask yourself:

• who? institutions targeted: libraries, bookstores, broadcasters, publishers?
  groups initiating action: community or religious groups, legislators?
• what? books, TV, radio, art works, films, music lyrics, children's materials?
• when? historical perspective or recent cases?
• where? United States, international, or local?
• why? racial, sexist, obscenity, violence, religious or moral reasons?

Slant:
Depending on the course, you can come up with many different slants. In an education course, your topic could be "Censorship in American School Libraries Since 1950." For a mass media course, the topic could be "Are Motion Picture Ratings a Form of Censorship?" For a history course, the topic could be "Book Burning in Nazi Germany." All these topics have to do with censorship, but the papers would be very different.

*Author: John Henderson, Ithaca College Library

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