Countrywatch Tutorial
What is Countrywatch?
CountryWatch provides country specific information on each of the 192 countries of the world.
CountryWatch also provides Country Wire Headlines, which gives you up-to-date breaking news and headlines, as well as developing stories from around the world. Also provided are Country Overviews: including information on such topics as politics, economics and environmental aspects of the countries.
If you need up-to-date information and news on the countries of the world, this is the resource for you!
Starting Point
Take a look at the starting page down below.
There is a different country highlighted on the main page everyday. You may notice that today's featured country is Cyprus.
To get started, select a country from the drop-down menu above or from the "World Regions" menu on the left to sample our information. When choosing from the "World Regions" menu, make sure you select the appropriate continent where the country of your choice is located.
Not sure what country to research? Try browsing through the "World Regions" menu on the left.
Selecting a Country
If you already know what country you want to do, CountryWatch makes it very easy for you. All 192 countries of the world are listed for you in the drop down menu. Scroll through the menu until you find your country and click on it... Note: Countries are listed in alphabetical order.
Browse by World Regions
For those of you who want to do a little research before deciding on a country, try browsing through the "World Regions" menu on the left.
When you click on a region, you get an alphabetical list of all the countries in that region.
Exploring Your Chosen Country
Ok, let's explore the country you have chosen to research: the country of Japan. The first thing to notice are the current top stories, a map of the country (which can be enlarged), the name of the capital, current date and time.
As you can see, you are also given lots of statistical information including, but not limited to: population, capital, languages, currency, holidays, average daily temperature, and religions. There are also links to sites about Japan.
Finding Articles
News Archive / Search engine says there are 17,572 articles about Japan in the CountryWatch database. On the first page, they show you the top 10. Each additional page also displays 10 articles. You can click for more by clicking on News Archive/Search Engine, or do a more direct search. This will be explained very clearly and comprehensively, down below, where we discuss the CountryWire Search Engine.
You can filter the results by month and year going all the way back to April 2003. This will allow you to limit your results to articles from a certain month and year.
The CountryWire Search Engine is used to search for articles. Here, you enter your keywords or title. Make sure you search in the country of your choice. You can also determine how many articles (or documents as CountryWatch calls them) you want the search engine to get for you. Here the student is looking for articles written about princesses in Japan in the year 2004.
Doing this search resulted in 1 article, which is shown below. The article is short and clear, very easy to read and comprehend. Your keyword, "Princess" is bolded so that you can find it in the article easily. At the bottom of the page, the article offers a link to a printer friendly version of the page.
Download a Copy of This Tutorial
If you would like a hard copy of this tutorial, please follow the link.