1. Locate, save, and read 5 newspaper newspapers on the topic of global cooperation and a country of your choice.
Your goal is to gain a better understanding of what motivates your country of choice to support or oppose global efforts to combat climate change. For example, did the country support major global initiatives, such as the Paris Accord?
To find the articles, head to Nexis-Uni. (See FAQ for details). Use appropriate search terms, including Boolean terms (and, or, etc.). For example, if you picked Brazil, you could search for Paris Agreement AND Brazil; or Brazil AND , global climate change, or some other combination. When your search net good results, browse around and pick 5 articles from your search, making sure that one article comes from a major US newspaper (New York Times, The Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal); one article from a foreign newspaper of your choice; and three other articles from anywhere you like. In some cases, this may require you to set other search terms, including which newspaper you wish to search, and the date range. Be patient, and bring your best explorer attitude.
Note that the first articles that show up in a search may not be the most useful; browse around a bit before you select a piece. Very short articles, under about 200 words, are unlikely to be very revealing. Youll usually find that really insightful and detailed articles can run upwards of 1,000 words.
Save the articles and read them as PDF files. Save them using a date-title system. Identify the date of the article, and a short title. Consider using a mark-up tool when you read them. You are reading to learn, with the goal of using the articles in an essay on how your country of choice views global cooperation on climate change.
In many cases, a quick web search will allow you to quickly get up to speed on a countrys climate change policy, whether through a government website, a wiki-page, or policy report. It is worth investing some time here, and perhaps even begin there. Use such explorations as background information. You may include additional sources in your project, but there is no expectation that you do.
2. Complete a short essay
After you have read the articles, write a brief essay of about 3 pages (1,000 words) summarizing what you learned about the country you studied and its relationship to global environmental cooperation. Think of it as your report on the topic of how a country, usually in the form of its government, has chosen to approach the challenges surrounding global climate change. Start with a thesis statement (e.g. Denmark has been a big supporter of global efforts to reduce climate change.) Then add additional arguments and details in the subsequent text.
As you write, incorporate specific facts, arguments or claims from the 5 articles.
It is important that you acknowledge your sources. If you draw on facts, ideas or arguments from others without citing them, that is considered plagiarism. This is a serious violation of academic standards, so cite fairly and liberally to your sources in your essay.
Every time you use an article, provide a parenthetical citation to the article from which you got the relevant information. You must, every time you use a fact, or an argument, or a claim, from another source, cite that source at the end of the appropriate sentence. Here are two examples:
Spiderman was a major cause of destruction to the Gotham subway system (Jameson 2018, A2).
According to Jameson (2018, A2), Spiderman was a major cause of destruction to the Gotham subway system
3. Prepare an annotated bibliography
At the end of your essay, skip a line, type a boldfaced heading called References, skip another line, and provide an annotated bibliography.
This is a list of your five articles in alphabetical order by author, with a brief one- or two-sentence summary of the article immediately below each citation. More information on how to put together an annotated bibliography can be found in the FAQ.
