GEOG 140 guidelines for first report: Dr. Rodrigue, S/2004

GEOG 140 First Report Guidelines

Introduction to Physical Geography

I'm not having you read all of the Smithson, et al. textbook. If you examine the table of content, you'll note that the last five chapters bring together physical geographic science principles to describe and explain the character of five very distinctive environments: polar, mountain, Mediterranean, dryland, and humid tropical. I am going to spare you from reading all five of these more descriptive and integrative chapters. Instead, I want you to choose one of these last five chapters to read on your own and then write a brief précis. It is very important that you do your report only on one of these last five chapters: I cannot give you credit if you summarize some other chapter.

The purposes of this report are:

To expose you to a scientific understanding of a particular type of world environment
To give you practice in distilling the highlights from a complex presentation of ideas (something virtually all of you will be doing in your future careers, no matter your discipline)
To give you an opportunity to develop your writing skills

Basically, you are trying to convince me that, in fact, you did read the chapter you chose and thought about what you learned. While reading the chapter, take notes on the following:

What makes this group of environments unique in a physical science sense?
Does this group of environments affect other parts of the world? How?
How have various human groups made use of these environments, and which sorts of unique problems and opportunities do people in those areas face from their natural environment?

Then, in about three pages, I would like you to use your notes to cover these, while discussing the five most interesting, surprising, or controversial concepts you took from the chapter (being sure to cover those three general areas above). Your report should be double-spaced and very carefully edited. Writing mechanics count for about a third of the points on this report. Click here for a list of specific writing standards.

A very important part of writing mechanics is acknowledging your intellectual debts! That is, you must avoid plagiarism or even the appearance of plagiarism. If you quote the authors, enclose their words in quotation marks and indicate the page from which you took the words. Even if you paraphrase or reword them, you must still indicate the page on which you found the idea you used: Cite your sources, and you are borrowing from them and acknowledging their influence on you; neglect to cite them, and you are, instead, stealing from them. You do not need to cite items of common knowledge or your own unique ideas and frameworks. When in doubt, cite.

This report is due Monday, 1 March. Reports submitted late without written documentation of a serious emergency or without prior arrangement will be penalized 1 point of the 15 possible for each working day they are tardy.

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