Purpose of the Assignment

1. The research paper is designed to assess the extent to which students:

• are able to apply the critical thinking skills and knowledge acquired in the course;
• are able to locate, evaluate and use information;
• have fulfilled the requirements set by ZU regarding global awareness, information literacy and language fluency.

Instructions

2. Your research paper is based on one of the in-class presentations and discussions. You may choose to write on any of the topics, EXCEPT the one on which you presented. In other words, the topic of your research paper and your group presentation must be DIFFERENT. The aim is to ensure that you graduate from the course with a wide-ranging field of expertise.

3. The research topics are as follows – choose ONE:
a. “Taiwan is more important to the USA's national interest than China." Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Provide three well-discussed reasons for your response.
b. “It is in the national interest of the USA to pull back from the Arabian Gulf region.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Provide three well-discussed reasons for your response.
c. "Russia is more important to the USA's national interests than China." Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Provide three well-discussed reasons for your response.
d. Imagine you are a liberal. Write a letter to President Trump arguing that “Principles must always trump Power in guiding US foreign policy.” In your letter, you must explain which three principles are especially to you and how upholding these principles will promote America’s national interests. Make sure you include a discussion of relevant examples.

4. In your paper, you must:

• Provide a brief but relevant context / introduction about the subject matter;
• State your thesis statement CLEARLY and then provide well-founded reasons/topic sentences to support your thesis statement. You must ensure that your position throughout the paper is CONSISTENT (this means that your topic sentences must support your thesis statement);
• Illustrate your reasons with relevant examples, statistics and/or quotations, to make your argument as convincing as possible. You should draw from our course materials and presentation discussions as much as possible.

Paper Guidelines

5. Your paper, double-spaced and using Times New Roman sized-12 font, should be at least 2,500 words (around 7 pages) in length (this excludes the bibliography). It must be a well- polished piece of work that reflects a high standard of competency in the English language.

6. Plagiarism will NOT be tolerated, as per ZU’s policy (this is outlined in your syllabus). Plagiarized papers (whole or in part) will automatically receive a failing grade.

7. Proper and consistent in-text citation according to the APA style (or MLA style) must be provided for sentences, facts or ideas borrowed from external sources. All bibliography used during research must also be listed accordingly. A guide on citation styles is available from the library. Papers with improper citations will be penalized.

8. Research for this assignment must demonstrate that you have used, understood and included a wide variety of sources including academic articles available through the Library’s electronic online database (Lexis-Nexis, ProQuest, JSTOR etc), magazine/newspaper articles, books or encyclopedias. Blogs, yahooanswers, wikipedia
etc are NOT academic sources. You must use AT LEAST ten academic sources.

9. The paper is worth 15% of your total course grade.

10. The assignment must be submitted electronically via ‘Safeassign': this icon is located on the Contents page of BB.

11. The paper represents an individual effort, unlike the presentations which are group work. While you may share resources with a classmate who is working on the same topic, you must write the research paper yourself.

12. The deadline for submission is Wednesday, 29 November, 11.59pm. Late submissions will be penalized with a deduction of 5 points per late day.