About one-half of all countries have a per capita GDP of less than $10,000 ($US PPP).
A variety of reasons have been presented by sociologists, development economists, public
policy advocates, and various institutions that describe the reasons why some countries are
poor. Among these include:
a. Culture
b. Geography
c. Size of Population
d. Lack of intelligence and knowledge by authorities
e. Colonialization
f. Lack of natural resources
g. The natural resource curse.
1. Evaluate the legitimacy of the above reasons for the existence of poverty in one-
half of the world’s countries. That is, do these conditions provide an adequate
explanation for poverty in poor countries? Why or why not?
2. Can you provide situations in which countries are wealthy or poor in spite of the
reasons noted above?
guidelines:
Plurals, Possessives, and Apostrophes:
-No possession, no apostrophe.
Ex, singular: country=one country
Ex, plural: countries=two or more countries
-When something is being possessed, an apostrophe is required. Be mindful of words
with irregular plurals, and remember that apostrophe position is different with plurals.
Ex, singular: country’s=belonging to one country
Ex, plural: countries’=belonging to two or more countries
-note that in this example, countries is plural and ends with an ‘s’ already,
so the apostrophe goes after the ‘s’ instead of before
Comma Usage:
-Commas separate clauses, stand for pauses in lengthy sentences, and help to introduce
sources or new ideas. There are many stylistic and pragmatic uses of commas, but here
are some common places where commas are often forgotten.
-Introducing a source or example: “According to my professor,” (comma goes after
source); “For example,” (comma goes before the example); “In the case of the United
States,”
-In a lengthy sentence, separate clauses or ideas with a comma to avoid run-on
sentences.
Independent Clause Dependent Clause
Ex: The United States has a high GDP, but China’s is also high.
-Generally, the more complex the sentence structure, the more you can rely on commas
to provide clarification.
Independent Clause Dependent Clause Dependent Clause
Ex: The United States has a high GDP, but China’s is also high, exemplifying the
fact that GDP does not present a full picture of a country’s economy.
Prepositions:
-Prepositions are often described as “anywhere a mouse can go”. For example, under, to,
above, and from are prepositions. However, they are not all interchangeable.
The website englishclub.com has an excellent list of the most commonly used
prepositions, as well as a complete preposition list with examples of how to use each in a
sentence.
Subject/Verb Agreement:
-The subject and verb of a sentence should agree in order to make the sentence flow
smoothly. With irregular verb “be”, make sure that the conjugation is singular (“is”) or
plural (“are”) in accordance with the subject.
Ex, singular: The citizen is in revolt.
Ex, plural: The citizens are in revolt.
-In longer sentences, this can be tricky because often the subject and verb can be
separated by a prepositional phrase, or even two. Remember what the verb is referring
to.
Ex, singular: The citizen of the province in South Africa is in revolt.
Ex, plural: The citizens of the province in South Africa are in revolt.
Describing Words:
-Descriptive writing is a great tool to use in an essay. However, there are a few
descriptors that don’t add anything to sentences and should be cut from academic
writing.
-Very. This word does not add anything to writing, and often can be cut out with one
well-chosen descriptive word.
very hungry=famished, ravenous
very poor=destitute, impoverished
very expensive=exorbitant, costly
very large=huge, massive
-Extremely
-Really
-Using a lot of these words to hit a word count distracts readers from the message of the
essay.
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