World Affairs Papers: General Characteristics

Things You Need To Know About World Affairs Papers

A world affairs paper is a writing assignment related to any policy issue, its importance, and its outcomes. You can devote your paper to any global issue. Alternatively, you may focus on any certain internal matter of your state that somehow has an effect outside the state itself, including in its historical context. All you need is to pick a topic you are interested in, analyze it, and provide your considerations.

Writing these papers can help you to reach certain goals:

improve your analytical skills significantly;
accustom yourself to think critically;
enhance your writing skills – you can work at your weak points and become more persuasive.

Process of Your Work

Searching for resources

The success of your writing greatly depends on the resources you use. To prepare yourself better consider the following types of information:

Books – look for any specific books related to your topic or at least books that contain chapters devoted to it. If you lack such resources, try to find other books that are indirectly related to your topic, but contain valuable information. For instance, these may be historical books. You may review the situation you are going to write about in its historical context. This approach can sometimes provide you quite unexpected findings.
Foreign policy outlines – foreign affairs authorities in many countries have their strategies and make such publicly available. These official opinions will sound very persuasive in your paper.
Manuals – many organizations prepare short manuals on writing reports. Read them to grasp the approach they use and form a better understanding of their work. This will be even more important if your subject is related somehow to the activities of these organizations.
Briefs and newsletters – can sometimes contain very valuable information that mainstream media or experts omitted for some reason. If you pick this information, you can make your world affairs paper more interesting.
Magazines – here you can find the latest news or professional opinions concerning your topic. They will be especially useful when your topic is new at the moment, and you lack resources for your writing.
Social media – look for relevant groups or opinion leaders to see what ordinary people think about your topic.

Make sure any information you use is:

accurate;
explicit;
from reliable sources.

In any case, the variety of resources will help you to make this paper comprehensive.

Analytical work

Making sufficient analysis can enable you to form very sound conclusions. For this reason, it is desired to apply certain approaches while working with the selected resources. Here are the main tips to follow:

1. Read any information consciously.

2. Evaluate your informational resources impartially.

3. Identify key statements and connections between them, if any.

4. Ask a question about the content you read, for instance about:

the purpose of this content;
assumptions made by its author;
arguments expressed by the author;
whether these arguments are valid – premises and conclusions are correct and interrelated;
whether these arguments are well-structured;
primary sources of information that can test this statement;
possible counterarguments;

5. Understand the history of events, if applicable.

Proper analytical work will help you to develop and intensify your arguments.

Prepare your statements

Any thesis you express in the world affairs paper is not only your consideration, thought, or belief. It is your argument first of all. Therefore, it should be properly structured.

Make sure your argument has reliable premises and summarize them shortly. Afterward, put your main statement that should logically flow from the premises. Important thing is to make sure there is a cause-and-effect relationship between your premises and the statement.

Make special emphasis on vulnerabilities or weak points of your arguments. For instance, they may result in several interpretations, some of them not in your favor. Address these issues by restating your arguments in a different way to eliminate these deficiencies.

Checklist for the strong argument:

valid reasoning;
relies on the correct premises;
well-structured;
logical connection between its parts;
contains only examined assumptions;
clear for understanding;
without ambiguities of any kind.

Structure for your future text

Build your “road map” to structure your random statements and make connections between them. This road map can be in the form of:

scheme;
table;
plan.

For your convenience, here is a basic example of a structure for your world affairs paper:

Introduction

In this part, introduce your topic first. Then, express your main statement. This is the main idea of your paper. So, make sure it is formed clearly and explicitly. Avoid any ambiguities and abstract formulations. Use instead only specific and concrete words. Your future readers should understand this statement without any extra effort.

Main body

This part of your paper will include several supplementary statements, your arguments to support the main one. Where possible, add evidence to support your statements.

Conclusion

In this part of your paper, reaffirm your initial thesis statement, and briefly indicate your findings.

Main Writing Tips for Your World Affairs Paper

To make your writing effective, simply keep in your memory the next advice:

1. Choose a topic you are extremely interested in.

This tip will facilitate the overall writing process. And your interest will certainly be reflected in your paper, making it more attractive for your readers.

2. Emphasize your audience.

Shape in your mind the view about who are these people, what are their interests and expectations. Keep this information in your mind constantly during your writing.

3. Provide extensive research and select the most appropriate resources.

Apart from your personal views, your reader should also see and feel your background. Even if you don’t mention all the things you know, the awareness about your background will be reflected in your text by default. This will make it sound more professional.

4. Analyze your resources comprehensively and critically.

Any sources of information you read should raise doubts. The most effective approach here is to raise questions and look attentively for any weak points of this information.

5. Make your writing personal by adding your reflections and considerations.

Apart from the opinions of specialists, you should develop your own views. Even if they coincide with outer opinions, they still should sound as independent judgments. Feel free to express your assumptions at this point.

6. Prove your opinions with supporting arguments.

To sound more persuasively, develop each opinion using relevant arguments. The strongest of them are usually based on particular evidence, like official statements or statistics. So, you may also write briefly about this evidence too.

7. Present your arguments in a natural order.

This means your reader should step-by-step form his/her vision concerning your topic. Do you best to organize your arguments simply, so even a non-professional reader could clearly understand the problem, your opinion, and explanations?

8. Prefer active voice to passive

All your statements should sound confident. Therefore, choose your active voice to present the statements in your world affairs paper.

9. Put any statements in a positive manner.

Your attitude and emotional state will be reflected in your paper. So, the easiest way to write positively is to become enthusiastic about your topic. If your choice was related to some tough matter – focus on possible solutions and positive outcomes.

10. Write in a plain and flowing manner.

Your text should be flowing and easy to read. Make sure your potential reader can simply grasp your point of view. A simple reading of your paper aloud or checking with the help of online readability services can help you to make it’s sound better. However, it is still worth to share your paper with somebody else for review. Any online service makes its analysis based on certain algorithms. However, only the outside reading of your paper can provide you more or less objective feedback on how people will understand your point of view. In this case, simply try to involve somebody who has required competencies.

11. Review your draft at least two times.

If you have enough time, set aside it for a couple of days. And refresh it with new ideas that could come to your mind later. Restating your judgments and making them simple is also a very good idea during your review.

Topics to Practice

To gain the required skills beforehand, you can write word affairs papers on your own. For your convenience, here are topics to practice:

Climate change and modern politics
Is it possible to make socialism workable?
Ethics in politics
Propaganda in the modern world
Globalization and foreign policy
Dictatorship test for a head of state
Combating international crimes
Place of the People’s Republic of China in the modern world
Ways to stop using weapons as arguments
International organizations and local foreign policies
How to make any country a strong player in the modern world?
Humanitarian aid as an essential element of foreign policy
The most significant foreign policy events in 2019
Ways to prevent and eliminate terrorism
The modern policy of the United States
Global democracy possibilities
Human rights protection in the course of foreign policy
World peace essentials
Modern geopolitics
Cold war phenomenon
Nuclear issues in foreign policy
Ways to prevent military interventions
Influence of media on foreign policy
Ways for handling international conflicts
Cybersecurity in the modern world
Cultural aspects of foreign policy
Pandemic and the global crisis: ways to prevent
Digitalization and foreign policy

Final Words

World affairs papers are not so difficult to write, as it seems at first glance. Yes, most topics are complex. However, it is pretty much easy to cope with them if you know how to select resources, conduct analysis, formulate arguments, and make structured text.

In the end, writing these papers can give you the experience of sharing your consideration on various serious matters. So, make it interesting and enjoy your essay writing.