English or Writing 101

Researching in LexisNexis Academic

Quite possibly, your first encounter with LexisNexis Academic will occur during your freshman English or Writing course. Sometimes these are not only the courses that teach you new techniques, but those that introduce you to college paper-writing protocol. A Freshman English or Writing class is a requirement in most colleges or universities for this exact reason – to advance students’ research and writing skills from a high-school to university level.

Usually a graduated improvement on students’ writing is at the core of these freshman English/Writing courses. Often, at least one assignment is to write an opinionated essay. LexisNexis Academic will allow you to limit your search to opinion/editorial information. Under the Power Search Form, click the link to Add Index Terms to your search. Add the index term “Editorials & Opinions” to your search to find out what others think about a particular issue. By using these sources, you can read others’ opinions and arguments to merit our counter your own.

Next is possibly a report on a current event or a local interest story. To gather local information from surrounding news sources, use the Sources Tab and click “News” to browse the sources. From there, pick the country and specific state to view all of the news sources.

For Teaching Faculty and Librarian Use

The faculty member teaching the course may also use the URL API to direct their students to search a particular source in Lexis Nexis Academic. For example, to search the New York Times the link would be: http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/api/version1/sf?shr=t&sfi=AC00NBGenSrch&csi=6742