Classical Sociological Theory and Contemporary Issues SOCL 2012

INSTRUCTIONS :

Due Date : 13^thFebruary

Step 1:Find a news article from the preceding 6 months.This means that your article must be written no earlier than August 2024. The article can be selected from anywhere in the world and does not need to be from a major news source. Some suggested websites to help with this are: CBC News, Global News, CTV News. You must use a news article for this assignment, and not an academic/scholarly/peer reviewed journal article. If you are not sure about the difference in articles, please check with your main contact person in the course. Failure to select a news article may lead to a failing grade on this assignment.

Step 2:Identify one theorist from the relevant pathways and try to think about what they would say if they read the article.The relevant pathways for this assignment are Pathway 1 and Pathway 2.This means that you must choose to apply the ideas of: John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman, or Talcott Parsons.Papers that fail to apply one of the theorists from the first half of the course will receive a grade of zero. Consider the following key questions:

• How does the topic of the article relate to their field of study?
• What terms and concepts did you learn from them that might apply?
• What would the theorist think about the issue that is featured in the article?
• In what ways would they be supportive or critical of the article and reporting of the issue itself (versus the issue that is being reported)? For example, are there particular ideas or perspectives that they may think are missing from the article?

Step 3:Brainstorm some important points that you would like to raise in your paper and plan out the organization of your paper. You should be using a proper paragraph structure in your paper, so this means that you need to ensure your paragraphs are organized according to the points that you plan to raise in the paper.

Step 4:Write your paper. Within the paper, be sure to summarize the news article, and write about what the theorist would say if they were to provide their own interpretation of the news story that has been presented. This interpretationmustinclude the terms and concepts that you learned about in the lecture and readings that have been provided in the course. While you may expand upon the ideas and materials provided through this class by using external sources, this must be done in addition to referencing and using the key ideas from the assigned reading and lecture content. You may choose to write from their perspective first-hand, or you can write as yourself stating what you think they would say.You should also be including a fun and creative title for the assignment that also describes what you are focusing on in your paper.

This assignment is probably different than others you have had. Have some fun with it and think creatively!

Your paper should be between 1.5 - 2 pages, double spaced, using a standard 12-point accessible font and normal margins. ( 500 Words)

Step 5:Remember to include your citations. Since you are using a news article and including a summary of this article, this should be cited properly in your paper. References to course concepts and information provided in the lecture and readings should be cited properly as well.Failure to include citations (both in-text and in a reference list) may result in an Academic Integrity violation.

All references should be done in APA formatting for your in-text citations, and for the references listed on your reference list. For more information on using APA formatting, please see the following Trent Academic Skills resource:https://www.trentu.ca/academicskills/documentation-guide/apa-style/apa-7-style-referencesand the other referencing material that has been posted on our course page.

Step 6:Edit your work. Please make sure that you are editing your work prior to submitting your assignment. If possible, take a day between writing your assignment, and editing your assignment so that you can edit with a clear head and fresh eyes. When editing, you should be looking for proper capitalization, spelling, grammar, paragraph structure and the logical flow of ideas from one paragraph to the next.

Step 7:Review the assignment instructions again, double check that you have met the expectations outlined in the grading rubric, and then submit your assignment. The dropbox for the paper will be open starting at 9am on February 8th and can be found after this instruction page.When uploading your assignment, it is your responsibility to ensure that the correct assignment is uploaded.Your written work and references should be included as one document. Please title your document appropriately so that you can confirm the correct document is being uploaded to the SafeAssign dropbox (plus as instructors, we can see what you title your file!)

Integrating Course Content and Paper Organization:

A good approach would be to introduce the news article at the start of your assignment by providing a short summary, and then getting into the analysis of how your theorist would view the article and the social situation that is presented in the article. The summary of your article is helpful in terms of providing a starting point for your analysis, but the focus of this assignment is the application of the theorist and their ideas, so you should not be spending more than a couple paragraphs summarizing your article. The main focus is on demonstrating your understanding the course material in relation to the news article as a topic for analysis.

For your analysis, when you are integrating the concepts from the course and showing their application to the article,a good approach is to identify the term, define the term as it is understood sociologically, and then cite where that definition comes from. Remember that you need to acknowledge where information is coming from as a matter of academic integrity, so if the terms definition comes from either the lecture content or the reading, you need to cite that information.Then, you also need to explain the term in relation to the article or issue that you are focusing on for your paper. This is your application of the concept, so it does not need to be cited. Be clear in your writing with your citation placement and sentence structure so it is clear what information is taken from another source, and what information consists of your own ideas. Do not assume that the reader would understand the connection that you are trying to make. You should try to write assuming that your audience has never taken a Sociology course before.

When citing the course content, make sure that you are referencing, butbe careful with your citation placement. While the concept definition is likely found in the lecture material or reading content, your application of that concept to the article is not something that was presented in class. Therefore, the concept and definition can be cited, but the application should not be attributed to the theorist or the lecturer. Have a look at the APA instructions or other academic sources if you are not sure how to place your citations to make this distinction clear. Your instructor is also available to assist if you have questions.

When you are dealing with lots of information from another source, and therefore including multiple citations in one paragraph, the proper format when a citation is needed is to include this at the end of each sentence, so it is clear where the information comes from. If you have one source that you are using consistently throughout the paragraph, this constant citing can impact the flow of your ideas and can take up a lot of space. For example, if you are summarizing your news article and all the information is paraphrased from the same source. In this case, if you are citing one author throughout the paragraph, there are ways to phrase your ideas, so all the information comes from the same source and then you dont need to include as many in-text citations. Check out the following source and the sections on Citing One Author Throughout One Paragraph and Using Signal Phrases for some additional tips for citing information but ensuring a good flow to your writing:https://libguides.massgeneral.org/APA7/text-citations. Be careful if you switch to a different source later in the paragraph that you are distinguishing that information with a clear citation (for example, when you are applying the concepts from lecture and the readings).

Grading Rubric:

The paper will be given a mark out of 25. Here is the mark breakdown for this assignment:

• Length is between 1.5-2 pages, double spaced (1 mark)
• Formatting (e.g., typed, double spaced, size 12-point accessible font, title page with creative title) (2 marks)
• Spelling/grammar/paragraph structure (5 marks)
• Identifying a relevant news article from the past 6 months (1 mark)
• Providing a concise summary of the news article (2 marks)
• Correct alignment of theorist and the issue/sociological topic (1 mark)
• Degree of inclusion of the theorists own terms and concepts in an accurate way (5 marks)
• Independent thought and demonstrating an understanding of how the theorist would interpret the article, beyond the direct application of course content (5 marks)
• Including proper and accurate citations and a reference list to acknowledge all sources used (3 marks)