Please review the full requirements for the Final Research Paper before writing your rough draft. The point of a rough draft is to allow your instructor to get a good sense of your organizational writing skills, to examine the content of the essay, to evaluate your resources, and to provide you feedback that you will incorporate into your Final Research Paper that is due in Week Five.

To begin, select a topic from the following list:

Body art and ornamentation 
Child rearing practices 
Healthcare practices 
The use of music or dance as a form of political protest, or as a reflection of cultural issues, values, and beliefs 
Educational practices 
Elderly care 
Body language and proxemics 
Rites of passage 
Conflict resolution 
Marriage practices 
Alternative gender roles 
Alternate topics are possible, but these must be approved by your instructor at least one week before the Week Three draft is due. 
For your final paper, you will compare one of the topics above across two specific cultures of your own choosing. It may be helpful to brainstorm a list of cultures you are interested in researching. Then, you will need to begin conducting research on those cultures.

Thoroughly read through the research guide. The research you will do for this assignment will be a dynamic, multi-step process, and the research guide serves as a starting point for you. The research guide outlines the steps you will need to follow in order to complete your research, contains resources within the guide that may help you further decide on which cultures and/or topic to choose if you are undecided, and contains instructional tutorials to show you how to effectively search in the library.

After completing your research, you may want to compile your sources in a reference page. Do not worry if you do not end up using one of the sources in your Final Research Paper; you can always remove any sources that you do not use later. You should also begin working on the annotated bibliography, which is a critical summary of each scholarly source you will use in your Final Research Paper. For each source, create a one-paragraph annotation that summarizes the source's major claims and describes how the material will be useful to the Final Research Paper. The annotations should be placed below each corresponding source on your reference page. For an ex, please view the Sample Annotated Bibliography from the Ashford Writing Center. 

Once you have read through and annotated the sources you located, you should now be able to prepare a thesis statement that reflects the requirements of the Final Research Paper. For help creating the thesis statement, please use the Ashford Writing Center's Thesis Generator tool and/or visit the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center.

If you are concerned about how to successfully integrate the sources that you found, please view the Incorporating Sources tutorial. As you are incorporating the information from your sources, think back on the Plagiarism Quiz and the Article Selector Quiz to make sure that you are properly citing sources. You can also view the "Plagiarism Flow Chart" to help ensure that you have properly incorporated sources.

Your Partial Rough Draft must include:

An introductory paragraph containing a thesis statement that reflects the requirements of the Final Research Paper. 
A discussion of how two specific and contemporary (currently existing) cultures approach the topic. 
A comparison of your chosen topic across the two cultures you have selected. 
A concluding paragraph that reinforces your thesis and summarizes your main points. 
An annotated bibliography that includes entries for each scholarly source you will use in your Final Research Paper. Each annotation should be one paragraph in length. 
As a reminder, your Final Research Paper will be a five- to seven-page research paper that contains the following components:

A discussion of how two cultures (other than your own) approach the topic, including specific ethnographic exs. Be sure to choose two specific and contemporary (currently existing) cultures. Terms such as European, Asian, or African refer to continents, not cultures, and are not appropriate for this paper. 
A compare and contrast analysis of the similarities and differences in how the two cultures approach the topic from a culturally relativistic perspective. In your analysis, address how the information on the cultures was gathered as well as how cultural relativism played a role for both the anthropologist in the field and for you in this discussion. 
A discussion of whether the differences are related to other cultural factors such as kinship, division of labor, gender roles, economic organization, and political organization, as well as whether the differences can be seen as adaptations to the social or natural environment. You don't have to cover every single one of these cultural factors, but you should include a discussion of the most salient ones related to your topic. 
A discussion on the cultural context of the topic and how it relates to symbolic systems such as religion, communication, or ritual. 
A discussion of how this particular cultural practice has changed over time and whether it has been modified, adopted, diminished, and/or spread through colonialism and/or globalization. 
The Partial Rough Draft must be three to four pages in length, including the annotated bibliography but excluding the title page, and formatted according to APA style. You must use at least three scholarly sources from the Ashford University Library to support your claims. Cite your sources within the text of your paper and in your annotated bibliography. For information regarding APA, including samples and tutorials, visit the Ashford Writing Center, located within the Learning Resources tab on the left navigation toolbar.