All general education courses at SDSU require a "writing component." The writing component in World Music in Contemporary Life represents 10% of the student's course grade. Submission of the paper will be on the due date (see course Event Schedule) and will be handed in during class.

Details of Writing Component

• SDSU requires its students to read, write, and understand English.
• The minimum length of the "writing component" should be 1,000 words. Please do not exceed this length by more than 250 words.
• Choose one of the cultures or time periods that the course investigates as your subject:

Elements of Music	Music of India
Elements of Music - Part One Elements of Music - Part Two Elements of Music - Part Three Elements of Music - Part Four Elements of Music - Part Five Elements of Music - Part Six	Music of India - Part One Music of India - Part Two Music of India - Part Three Music of India - Part Four Music of India - Part Five
Arab Music	Indonesian Music
Arab Music - Part One Arab Music - Part Two Arab Music - Part Three Arab Music - Part Four	Indonesian Music - Part One Indonesian Music - Part Two Indonesian Music - Part Three
Early European Music	Music of Latin America
Early European Music - Part One Early European Music - Part Two Early European Music - Part Three Early European Music - Part Four	Music of Latin America
African Music	Classical & Romantic Music
African Music - Part One African Music - Part Two	Classical and Romantic Music - Part One Classical and Romantic Music - Part Two Classical and Romantic Music - Part Three Classical and Romantic Music - Part Four
Baroque Music	20th-Century Music
Baroque Music - Part One Baroque Music - Part Two	20th Century Music - Part One 20th Century Music - Part Two 20th Century Music - Part Three

• Demonstrate what you have learned in the course in your Writing Component. REPEAT: DEMONSTRATE WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED IN THE COURSE IN YOUR WRITING COMPONENT. Use course concepts knowledgably, use musical terminology correctly, and write in a manner that suggests your experience in the Music 345 course.
• Choose a title for the writing component.
• Research the subject on the WWW using a search engine such as Google (www.google.com), or Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), et al. Find a minimum of five URLs (web addresses) associated with the subject, which may include those in the course textbook.
• "URL" is an acronym for "Uniform Resource Location." It is the World Wide Web equivalent of a street address. It is the "address" of a World Wide Web site. It is also know by other names such as "Address" or "Location" and is specific to a "web browser" two versions of which are "Internet Explorer" by the Microsoft Corporation (www.microsoft.com) and "Netscape Communicator" by the Netscape Corporation (www.netscape.com). Some examples of URLs from the Music 345 course are:
  1. Course Materials Home Page: <http://trumpet.sdsu.edu/M345/logan_M345.html>
  2. Syllabus: <http://trumpet.sdsu.edu/M345/logan_M345_SYL.html>
  and
  3. Textbook: <http://trumpet.sdsu.edu/M345/logan_M345_MOW.html>.
• You may detail the culture or time period from which the information comes and speak about what has been found from the cultural perspective.
• Write in a clear, understandable style.
• Spelling and punctuation are important and should be checked and double-checked before offering the "writing components" for evaluation.
• Be sure to compose your writing component with your own words. Do not copy and paste text directly from a web site into your writing component (This is plagarism!). You may use quotations from references if the text is in quotation marks and the author is properly given credit before or after the quotation. All writing components found with segments of copied text that are not properly cited will receive a "0."
• Be sure that every link that you provide as a reference works properly. Each missing or incorrect reference will result in a 5% deduction from your writing component grade. Thus, a writing component without any citation of URLs would begin with a grade of 75% and additional errors in the essay would be deducted from this starting point.
• URLs that you provide as the citation of sources for your essay should be unique. In other words, your paper should not cite links pulled from the same root web site. (For example: www.madonna.com/biography and www.madonna.com/albums are essentially the SAME root URL of www.madonna.com; these two calls would NOT be viewed as two URL citations, rather they are just different locations within the same root web site).
• Cite references below the text of your writing component in a numbered list. Cite the reference by number in your text.

Suggestions for Improving Student Writing ... in No Particular Order

Grading of Writing Component

The course writing component comprises 10% of the student's final course grade. Superior writing will earn full credit while writing of lesser merit will earn less according to its quality.