04 Assignment Instructions
Remember that the culminating project in Module 5 will be a position paper that you will write to help Chen, a cultural geographer, with his dissertation. The opinions and evidence you present to Chen will be an invaluable resource. As you work to complete your project, Chen will send you requests for project milestones to complete. These milestones will be the building blocks you use to compose your final paper. For this project milestone, Chen would like you to complete the following steps:
Review the Grading Rubric for this lesson.
In a previous lesson, you chose one of the questions below to focus on in your position paper. Review the question you chose and decide if your answer to the question has changed:
How significant is the diffusion of religion in shaping place?
Does every religion have the potential to become a global religion? Or are some religions destined to remain local?
Which influence is stronger: religion’s influence on the environment or the environment’s influence on religion?
How significant is regional geography as a cause of religious conflict?
Choose two world religions. Imagine that 1 million adherents of one religion and 1 million adherents of the other religion moved within the borders of the same country. How high would the level of religious conflict be in the country given your knowledge of the religions’ past interactions and understanding of the religions’ belief system?
Review the working thesis statement you wrote in a previous lesson. Make any necessary tweaks to the thesis as a result of new information you have learned.
In a position paper, it is important to use facts, not opinions, to support your thesis statement. Remember that a fact is a piece of information that can be verified or proven, while an opinion is a personal belief or judgment about something. When faced with the task of supporting a thesis with evidence, it can be helpful to start by building your bibliography. Work through the following interactive to learn more about completing research, which will help you build your bibliography.
Now that you have a better grasp about how to find sources and evaluate them, begin to research your topic and build your bibliography. Visit RefSeek or WolframAlpha to launch an online search for sources to add to your bibliography. The Yale University Divinity School Library also provides a list of free online resources on religions. You may also want to visit the library to find print resources that support your topic. Be sure to include a variety of resource types in your bibliography, including: