For the paper, you will provide research on one of the general aspects of your regional issues’s targeted country’s human geography — political geography, cultural geography, historical geography, economic geography or social geography.  For any needed clarification on these research areas please refer to lecture notes from the first and second classes and/or see the instructor.  The completed paper should between 1600 and 1700 words.  You may have, and are encouraged to use, personal experiences from your own travels in the area or contacts with those who live there.  While these personal touches are encouraged, they should be in addition to, rather than replacing, basic research.

The best papers will include and use at least three sources from outside class and the textbook.  You must provide proper citations for material from the textbook and any additional sources.  Please double-space your paper and include page numbers.  Grading rubrics for both the oral presentation and the paper are handed out in class and posted on Courses.

Late papers will have an automatic grade reduction.  On the due date, a hardcopy should be turned in no later than the beginning of class for which your regional issues is assigned.  Also prior to class, you will post the paper on the class Sakai’s Turnitin function.  This course uses Turnitin in order to ensure that each student 1) presents their own, original work and 2) when using outside sources properly credits that source, be it from a book, journal article, newspaper, personal interview or electronic/Internet source.

Citations should follow the MLA format for citations.  Providing the links used by search engines is not appropriate.
– http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocMLA.html – MLA

Please Note: Citations are not just for quotations, which only should be used sparingly!!  Anytime you use information from a particular source that is not common knowledge or express an idea that is not originally your own, you should give credit to the respective author.  A good test for a properly written citation is to ask, “Is the reader easily able to locate the exact source that I used with the information I have provided?”