Assignment:
Assignment 1: Newspaper Opinion Article
Brief description of assessment task
This assignment is a 1,000 word opinion article, based on the kind of opinion articles that appear daily in broadsheet newspapers. Have a look at some examples from The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald or The Australian to see how they are structured and written.
You are trying to persuade the reader to your point of view using evidence, analysis, argument and conviction. You are arguing your case.
There is no "correct" position to be taken. The challenge is to respond to the statement coherently, concisely and persuasively in 1,000 words.
In this assignment only, there is no need for footnotes, citations, references or a bibliography unless you are quoting someone else directly in your article, in which case you must acknowledge the author.(Harvard style if needed)
When marking this assignment, the assessor will be looking for:
a) an awareness of more than one side of the argument;
b) the ability to construct a coherent, lucid, well informed and brief article; and
c) the ability to argue persuasively using well chosen evidence and examples.
Detail of student output
Students should respond to one of the following statements:
(1) Has Washington's recent "rebalancing to Asia" increased friction and instability in the region?
(2) Western intervention in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria suggests it is counter-productive and rarely achieves it objectives.
(3) The global financial crisis demonstrates that capitalism is inherently unstable and crisis-prone.
(4) Recent fighting between Ukraine and Russian-backed rebels reminds us that territorial disputes are still the most intractable conflicts in international politics.
(5) The rise of China and India as global powers suggests the era when Western states dominated geo-politics is rapidly passing.
(6) Revelations about surveillance by security agencies such as the NSA in the US and the ASD in Australia suggest that Western states are becoming increasingly totalitarian.
(7) The West is always the innocent victim of terrorism, never its perpetrator.