Topics for Writing  These writing topic suggestions are intended to assist faculty and students in selecting appropriate topics for various writing assignments. Each topic has numerous links to web sites which provide resources and information about the topic. Read our introduction to GCC's library or connect directly to the library to find additional materials on these topics. Use the Web Search to find more information on the World Wide Web.

Index of Topics Click on a topic name to jump to that topic.  ENG101 Common Final Topics Argumentative Essay Topics  Self Assessment: A Tool for Achieving Career Goals  Propaganda and Advertising   Describing Other Places and Times  Documents for Summary and Analysis

This writing topic is suitable for a reflective essay, particularly in the example or compare/contrast mode.

The job search process begins with an identification of your values, interests, skills, accomplishments, experience and goals. How can you seek a position if you don't know what you want from a job and what you have to offer prospective employers?  Self-assessment, though a time-consuming process, provides invaluable information to facilitate career decisions and to prepare you to market your background effectively.

Tests or scales have been developed to aid in the process of self-assessment. Click on the name of the test to take the test and have it scored in Netscape:

• Keirsey Temperament Sorter the questionaire is from _Please Understand Me, Character & Temperament Types_ by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates, ISBN 0-9606954-0-0.
• Keirsey Character Sorter new online personality quiz
• Employee Assistance Personality Profile take part in a psychological research project by completing this 144 item questionnaire.(in Netscape) Your scores on eight Personality Traits will be Email back to you within a few days. For a limited time, the cost is Free.

After completing one, or more, of the tests, analyze the results to form a description of your own personality. Do the results from the test(s) confirm or conflict with how you would have described yourself before taking the test(s)? Do the tests seem accurate or useful? Why? Read more about personality testing in the following links:

• Learn about The Keirsey Temperament Sorter Personality Assessment by viewing this web presentation. Links to the quiz and descriptions of the types are included in the presentation.
• Why do people study personality? Read Different Drums and Different Drummers, an excerpt from Please Understand Me, which describes the theory of personality typing.
• Click on your type in this list of the sixteen personality types to read about your personality
• Read descriptions of the Four Temperaments.
• Read about the careers most and least favored by the different personality types.
• The Keirsey Personality: Character and Temperament website
• Personality Processes Bill Revelle's review adapted from his chapter in the Annual Review of Psychology, 1995.
• The DDLI Page a thorough discussion of personality types.
• Alt.psychology.personality and sci.psychology.personality are newsgroups which discuss personality characteristics and testing. Read in the newsgroup for a few days before joining into the conversations!

What are the differences between propaganda and advertising? Do they use different strategies and techniques? Do they have different goals?

• Propaganda
• Ad Age's Marketing 100 (1996) by Product  Advertising Age presents its fifth annual salute to the people who represent the very best in brand building
• The Advertising Parody a list of some of the worst advertising
• Better Business Bureau promoting honest advertising
• Better Business Bureau  National Advertising Review Board

Letters are one form of evidence we can use to construct descriptions of people and events. They can help us understand what it was like to be a soldier in the mid-nineteenth century or a traveler in early California. What problems might a historian encounter in constructing a narrative of the career of a Civil War soldier? What was California like then? How are people and places similar or different, then and now?

• Letters from an Iowa Soldier in the Civil War  letters from Newton Scott, a young man fighting in the Civil War
• Letters from California  Harriet Harper of Maine paid a six-month visit to California with another young woman in 1888. Letters from California (1888) describes their travels within California via rail and coastal steamship to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Tijuana, and the San Pedro wineries.
• "Home Is Where You Dig It": (Observations on Life at the Khe Sanh Combat Base) by Peter Brush

"Think tanks" like the Rand Corporation produce research reports on issues of public policy. While these reports are already summaries of longer pieces, they can be shortened further for some audiences. What might be the effects or implications of the findings in these reports?

• Student Performance and the Changing American Family
• Projecting Future Cocaine Use and Evaluating Control Strategies
• Towards an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail