Paper Assignment
Assignment
Students will write an 8–10 page paper on how international relations affects some area
of interest to you. One way to approach this is to write about your proposed
course of study, major or future career. For example, if you are a business major
you can examine how international trade rules affect a certain branch of business; if you
are a pre-med major you can examine international conflict over drugs derived from
Third World plants or the actions of the influential non-governmental organization
“Doctors without Borders.†You are strongly urged to consult with one of the TAs on
what is an acceptable topic for the paper.
Length. 8-10 pages using a standard 12 point font, double-spaced, and 1 inch margins.
Due date. Papers are due at 2:00 pm on November 27. Submission time is
determined by the D2L Dropbox timestamp (see Submission Procedure
below). The penalty for late papers is two points (out of 46) per weekday. Permission is
not required for late papers, the 2 point per day penalty automatically applies. A paper
submitted prior to 2:00 pm on November 28 is one day late; after 2:00 pm it is two days
late.
Plagiarism. University rules on plagiarism will be strictly enforced. Anytime you use
someone else’s words you must use direct quotes or paraphrase those words. Either
way, you must attribute it to the author. Anything that is not attributed is claimed to be
your original phrasing. If you are unsure about what constitutes plagiarism ask a TA or
your instructor, or see the official University policy at
http://studpubs.web.arizona.edu/policies/cacaint.htm.
Sources. Any format for your citations is acceptable—MLA, APA, APSR, etc. Which
ever you choose, be consistent. Use in text citations or footnotes, and include a works
cited page at the end. A good rule of thumb: have as many sources as number of
pages. At least half of your sources should be print sources, even if you access them
online. This includes books, peer-reviewed journals, etc. As long as it exists in print
somewhere, it counts as a print source. Dot.com websites are generally not a good
source to use. Wikipedia is not acceptable as a source. You may use official
government websites for the UN, EU, CIA, etc. if it’s relevant to your paper. Don’t
overuse news sources (if all your sources are CNN, NY Times, etc., you will lose points
on the citations grade).
Grading criteria. Papers will be graded on content, organization, research and
grammar. See the “Paper Checklist†in the “Content†tab of the D2L page.
Submission procedure. Papers will be submitted electronically. No “hard†copies will
be accepted. An electronic copy must be uploaded to the “Paper†folder in the D2L
“Dropbox†in order to check for on-time submission and originality with TurnItIn. Papers
POL 202: International Relations Page 2
must be submitted in one of the following formats:
+MS Word (.doc, .docx)
+WordPerfect (.wpd)
+PostScript (.eps)
+Portable Document Format (.pdf)
+HTML (.htm)
+Rich Text (.rtf)
+Plain Text (.txt)
Writing tips.
1. Have a clear thesis statement. If we cannot figure out what your thesis statement is,
you have a problem.
2. Outline your essay. Make sure your essay is organized and clearly relates back to your
thesis. Don’t get most of the way done, then realize you need to somehow get another
3 pages in there, and start going off on random tangents until you hit the page limit.
a. On a related note, try to have clear topic sentences—I should be able to read
the first sentence of the paragraph and know what the main point of that
paragraph is.
b. Likewise, really long paragraphs are typically not a good idea.
3. Make sure your arguments are well researched.
a. Try not to say “they probably have†or “there likely is…†This tends to mean that
you didn’t do your research! It is better to write the facts and conditions behind
your arguments/statements, rather than simply guessing.
4. Do your citations correctly—there is no need to get points off for avoidable mistakes.
a. Also, please don’t quote the dictionary, and do NOT cite Wikipedia.
b. Somewhat related—please introduce quotes.
5. Edit your paper! Again, there is no need to get points off for avoidable mistakes. Some
things to double check:
a. Use punctuation correctly! This goes for apostrophes, colons, semi-colons (my
pet peeve), commas, periods, etc. (A thing on how to use apostrophes, with
pictures: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe).
b. Also, the “if you learned it in the fourth grade rule:†If you learned something in
the fourth grade, you should still know it now! This goes for correctly using words
(to, too, two; their, there, they’re), correctly using punctuation (see above), and
the like.
c. Also, try not to use “a lot,†and contractions are generally a bad idea (e.g., won’t,
can’t, don’t).
No comments:
Post a Comment