Foreign Languages

Many times, your instructor will assign a project for which you will choose a topic. Often, this can be just as difficult as preparing for an assigned topic. There is so much information out there. How do you begin to choose?

This guide will help you answer that question by providing tips and tutorials for selecting a research topic that both you and your instructor will find interesting and beneficial for the course.

Techniques for coming up with a research topic include

•   Reflecting on topics that interest you
•   Reflecting on topics which are you are passionate about
•   Brainstorming
•   Thinking about current events of interest

Below are some links to fun brainstorming exercises

Most reference resources are considered "tertiary" souce materials. These books and websites provide background information and an overview and analysis of a subject or concept/  Unlike a secondary source book or journal article, tertiary sources are not intended to be read in their entirety. Instead, they are most often used to clarify terms and concepts about a topic.Tertiary sources include:

• Almanacs and Factbooks
• Bibliographies*
• Chronologies
• Dictionaries and Encyclopedias*
• Indexes and Abstracts
• Manuals
• Textbooks*

*Also considered secondary

CREDO Reference
CREDO Reference gives you a complete reference collection from over 50 publishers, powered by a network of cross-references that cut across topics, titles and publishers to provide answers - and new connections - in context.General Encyclopedias include: 

• Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
• The Columbia Encyclopedia
• The Crystal Reference Encyclopedia
• The Macmillan Encyclopedia
• Philip's Encyclopedia

CREDO Reference also provides access to a number of specialized dictionaries including:

• The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language
• Chambers 21st Century Dictionary
• Collins English Dictionary
• The Macquarie Dictionary
• Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary
• The Penguin English Dictionary
• The American Heritage® Abbreviations Dictionary
• American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms, The
• The Browser's Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases
• Chambers Dictionary of Eponyms
• Dictionary of Contemporary Slang
• Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Abbreviations, H.W. Wilson
• Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics
• How We Talk: American Regional English Today
• The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary
• Rawson's Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk

Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.

As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from those of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You’ll still find these in the OED, but you’ll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through 3 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to films scripts and cookery books.