Introduction, Thesis Statement, and Annotated Bibliography

Reflect: Reflect back on the Week 1 discussion in which you shared with the class the global societal issue that you would like to further address. Explore critical insights that were shared by your peers and/or your instructor on the topic chosen and begin your search for scholarly sources with those insights in mind.

Write: For this assignment, review the Annotated Bibliography Formatting Guidelines and address the following prompts:

• Introductory paragraph to topic (refer to the Final Paper guidelines for your topic selection).
  
  
  
  • Write an introductory paragraph with at least 150 words that clearly explains the topic, the importance of further research, and ethical implications.
  
  
  
  


• Thesis statement.
  
  
  
  • Write a direct and concise thesis statement, which will become the solution to the problem that you will argue or prove in the Week 5 Final Paper. (A thesis statement should be a concise, declarative statement. The thesis statement must appear at the end of the introductory paragraph.)
  
  
  
  


• Annotated bibliography.
  
  
  
  • Develop an annotated bibliography to indicate the quality of the sources you have read.
  
  
  • Summarize in your own words how the source contributes to the solution of the global societal issue for each annotation.
  
  
  • Address fully the purpose, content, evidence, and relation to other sources you found on this topic (your annotation should be one to two paragraphs long—150 words or more.
  
  
  • Include no less than five scholarly sources in the annotated bibliography that will be used to support the major points of the Final Paper.
  
  
  • Demonstrate critical thinking skills by accurately interpreting evidence used to support various positions of the topic.
  
  
  
  

The Introduction, Thesis Statement, and Annotated Bibliography

• Must be 1,000 to 1,250 words in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style, as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s APA Style (Links to an external site.) resource. 


• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  
  
  
  • Title of paper
  
  
  • Student’s name
  
  
  • Course name and number
  
  
  • Instructor’s name
  
  
  • Date submitted
  
  
  
  


• For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.).


• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.


• Must use at least five scholarly sources.
  
  
  
  • The Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for an assignment. The Integrating Research (Links to an external site.) tutorial will offer further assistance with including supporting information and reasoning.
  
  
  
  


• Must document in APA style any information used from sources, as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper. (Links to an external site.)


• Must have no more than 15% quoted material in the body of your essay based on the Turnitin report. References list will be excluded from the Turnitin originality score.


• Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style. See the Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.

MY WEEK ONE DISCUSSION POST

GEN 499 Week 1 Discussion 1

• Identify a global societal issue from the following list that you would consider researching further for your Week 5 Final Paper:

 A global societal issue that I have chosen and very interested in resourcing is unemployment and lack of educational opportunity.

• Describe effective methods you used in identifying and narrowing down to just one of the topics to further research for your Final Paper.

There were several reasons why I choose unemployment and lack of educational opportunity as my topic to do my research on out of all the other topics. I believe in society today this is a major concern in our country. I am very interested in learning more about how it affects the American people living in the world today.  All the topics sound very interesting, which made it difficult just to narrow it down to just one. I chose this topic because I would like to really go into debt on what causes the unemployment rate to be so high and are there any programs that are around for young adults or whoever doesn’t have a high school education to get them back on track to have a successful career opportunity.

• Explain three ways you can critically analyze sources to determine if they are scholarly.

There are several ways to check to know if the information you provide is a scholarly source. First, check the credentials of the author. If the author is a professor or part of a university’s research staff. Second,  all scholarly sources are usually “peer-reviewed”, which means other experts in that subject area have most likely have written their own analyses. Finally, look to see if the author has provided citations for the sources, they used in writing

Summarize information from at least two scholarly journal articles from the Ashford University Library that will support your claims for your chosen topic.

The first, article I found was named “ Two Sides Of The Same Coin: The Employment Crisis And The Education Crisis” author Forbes Ashoka Contributor. The article mainly talks about how the author Ashoka started an organization. The organization focuses on enables economically disadvantaged high school students to enter and thrive in the economic mainstream by providing them the knowledge and work experience required to succeed as professionals.”

The second article that I came across was named “The Ugly Side To Today’s Low Unemployment Rate”. This article was written by Forbes media contributor and talks about how the country is seeing the lowest employment rate in roughly 30 years. The article also mentions tons of jobs that have been created, but the workers don’t have the skills for the job position to be filled which, is one of many problems. It also talks about how automation is changing the work field as well as employers are having a difficult time finding the right employee to fill a qualified position. It is also true that employees are walking off of low paying jobs to find employment elsewhere.

• Explain why scholarly sources should be used to support your writing on the selected topic.

When using scholarly sources to report information about an essay, you don’t have to worry about the information is false. The information is verified and accurate. The source supports my essay with true facts.