1. Background Tools and Choosing a Topic How to choose a topic, narrow your topic and form an issue question.

2. Choosing a good topic Your topic must be: Specific To the point Wide enough that you can find a good selection of materials. Narrow enough that you can cover it adequately with the limited amount of writing you are doing.

3. Narrowing your topic Make a list of interesting topics Consider adding a geographical area, age, religion, time period, cultural or economic group Focus on one specific aspect of a larger topic.

4. For example: Too broad: Cloning Narrower: How Dolly the Sheep influenced cloning Too broad: Violence on TV Narrower: How violence on TV influences children under age 10

5. Form an issue question Take your topic and turn it into a question. For example: How did Dolly the Sheep influence cloning? How does violence on TV influence children under 10?

6. What are background tools? Databases and resources that give you background information. For example: Opposing viewpoints gives you backgrounds on various issues.

7. Why Use Them? To better understand an issue or a topic To find opinions on a topic To understand both sides of an issue As an important resource for your papers.

8. What are the best ones? SIRS Opposing Viewpoints CQ Researcher Watch the videos below this presentation to learn about them.