GSP160 Writing for Academic Purposes Tutor-Marked Assignment 01 July 2025 Presentation | SUSS

GSP160 Tutor-Marked Assignment 01  

This tutor-marked assignment is worth 45% of the final mark for GSP160 Writing for Academic Purposes.  

The cut-off date for this assignment is 2355 hours on 16 September 2025.

Submit your solution document in the form of a single MS Word file on or before the cut-off date shown above.  

Additional instructions: 

TMA submission – read these instructions carefully 

You will need to indicate clearly on the front page your name, student ID, course title and assignment number. Note also the following:  

• Spacing (between the lines): 1.5 or double spacing
• Font style: Arial or Times New Roman preferred
• Font size: 12 preferred (min 11 and max 13)  

Summarise using your own words as much as possible. You must document all information that you use from another source, or you will be penalised severely. You must acknowledge these by using the APA documentation style. This includes both in-text citations and end-of-text referencing.

Backup your TMA at all times.

Strictly follow the naming convention specified for TMA files.

Submit early and check the Turnitin originality report for possible revision and resubmission. Turnitin reports are generated immediately the first time, but subsequent reports may take up to a day to generate.

Resubmissions (overwriting earlier submissions) are allowed before the deadline, but NO further resubmissions are allowed during the grace period or thereafter.

Upload the correct TMA file to the correct folder of the correct course. Admin fee applies to appeals to transfer files to the correct folder.

The 12-hour grace period after the deadline is NOT an extended deadline but is solely for resolving any technical problems encountered with submissions before the deadline.

In case of technical issues: Email Learning Services Support LSsupport@suss.edu.sg immediately (with relevant screenshots and your TMA attached) and follow up with LS Support to resolve the issue before the grace period is over.

If there was no submission before the deadline, one late submission is allowed after the deadline for up to 1 week, after which no more late submissions will be allowed.

Automatic mark deduction applies after the 12-hour grace period (refer to the mark deduction scheme in the Student Handbook). 

Retain the Turnitin digital receipt as evidence of a successful submission. Appeals submitted without the Turnitin digital receipt will not be entertained.

View your submission immediately to ensure that the entire document has been uploaded completely and successfully.

Scope 

You will find Chapters 3 (Critical Reading), 7 (Summary, Paraphrase, Quotation), 8a (Synthesising), 8b (Synthesising Sources) and 9 (Locating, Mining and Citing Sources) in your GSP160 textbook useful. Refer also to the relevant online study units.

Question 1   

SG Culture Pass: $300 million for arts and heritage programmes involving Singaporeans and PRs  

Clement Yong  

Published on 22 February 2025  

SINGAPORE – A total of $300 million has been set aside for the SG Culture Pass initiative announced at Budget 2025 to encourage Singaporeans to attend local performances, exhibitions and experiences.  

It is the first incentive of its kind here to target the arts and heritage sector.  

Qualifying programmes for the $100 worth of credits, given to all Singaporeans aged 18 and above, must have Singapore citizens or permanent residents playing key roles.  

The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth said on Feb 21 that it will begin accepting proposal submissions, which can be related to the literary, performing and visual arts or heritage sectors, from March 10.  

It will take an open-minded approach, welcoming applications from all registered organisations, collectives and independent practitioners.  

There will be a focus on in-person activities, rather than virtual ones. Tickets must be sold via authorised ticketing providers to prevent fraud.  

Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong, who gave the details at a ministerial town hall for the arts and culture sector on Feb 21, said that the raison d’être of the culture pass is to get those who have not attended local programmes to do so, and “after the first taste, some will come back for more”.  

Speaking at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre, he entreated practitioners to “compete for and find ways to reach new audiences”.  

“I encourage all of you to take up this challenge, put up compelling offerings to attract new audiences, (and) find different ways of using the culture pass to retain them,” he said.  

In time, all eligible offerings will be listed on a single website, which will function as an easy directory for those not in the know.

Mr Tong added, “The significance of the SG Culture Pass goes beyond the dollar value. I see it as a catalyst that can help shift mindsets towards favouring local arts and culture offerings more, and not always say, ‘We will pay well for foreign content, but not so well for local content.’ We want to break this mould.”  

The SG Culture Pass, which can be redeemed from Sept 1, 2025, to end-2028, marks an important shift in strategy by the Government to foster consumption of the arts.  Whereas accessibility and exposure efforts in the past largely focused on making programmes free to attend, the SG Culture Pass protects the labour of local artists and heritage workers and ensures people do not take their creations for granted.  

Arts and heritage practitioners said getting Singaporeans to pay for these activities will, over time, encourage people to accord the same prestige to shows produced here as they do international, imported productions, which many misguidedly continue to consider as superior.  

A visibly emotional Ms Meenakshy Bhaskar, artistic director of Indian dance company Bhaskar’s Arts Academy, said at the town hall: “It’s a big win – $100 (a person) may seem a pittance, but $300 million is a lot of money. It’s our money coming back to us for our own programmes.   

“As a child, people used to say to me, ‘Oh, Singapore has no culture, ’ and I would get really angry, because my parents are artists. I’ve seen the evolution – we’re ready for the arts in every family.”  

Theatremaker Chong Tze Chien, who has been appointed the next director of the Singapore International Festival of Arts, was one of many who compared the SG Culture Pass credits to CDC vouchers, which are used at hawker centres and heartland shops.  

He said: “A lot of CDC vouchers have gone into raising the profile of our neighbourhood vendors. The very fact that there will be a page (for the SG Culture Pass) that you click on – that in itself is actually a campaign, is advocacy. Many have zero idea that so many performances are going on.”  

It is important that the pass is restricted to local productions, he added. “Being a tiny nation with a shorter history, we always have that insecurity about our local arts and local producers. The professionalisation of the arts and culture effectively started only in the 1980s. We don’t place a very high premium on local, and we automatically accord more status and value to anything foreign.”  

HuM Theatre’s creative director, Daisy Irani, said: “What delights me most is that this is a strong message from the Government that the arts and culture are as necessary ingredients to enriching our society as food and recreation.”  
Art gallery Artualize’s founder, Low Sok Leng, who is the daughter of second-generation artist Low Hai Hong, hopes the initiative can aid her ambitious dream of placing a piece of art in every Singaporean home.   

“Most visual arts exhibitions in Singapore are already free, so the art galleries and the local artists can’t really ‘benefit’ from the pass. The only way to also help the local artists at the same time is to allow the credits (to be used) for the purchase of artwork.

One of the first occasions where the culture pass idea was mooted was in 2019, when then Nominated MP Terence Ho proposed the idea of free culture credits to offset the cost of tickets in a bid to reverse shrinking audience numbers.   

He said at the time that the format of such an initiative could take after ActiveSG credits, which are used for public gyms, swimming pools and other sports facilities. The “pragmatic” mindsets of Singaporeans, who baulk at paying sustainable amounts for arts performances, must be helped along, he had said.   

Pleased that his suggestion has now been taken on board, Mr Ho, who is executive director of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, said he has told his orchestra to come up with promotions so that it can capture these culture pass dollars, such as pricing a whole season of the orchestra’s performances at about half of the total credits.   

Asked if $100 a person is too meagre a sum, he said he hoped “this is only the beginning of the story”.  

He said a high use rate for culture pass credits could motivate the Government to renew the funds, citing the example of the Cultural Matching Fund, which provides dollar-for-dollar matching for cash donations to arts and heritage charities and has been periodically topped up.  

But there remains some head-scratching, particularly over the long three-year timeframe given for people to use these credits. Mr Tong had said this was to give practitioners time to plan and organise their offerings to take advantage of the pass.   

Arts NMP Usha Chandradas agreed, saying the timeline allows as many groups as possible to figure out the qualifying conditions.  

However, she added: “But it does also raise questions as to whether there will be mid-term reviews of the scheme’s efficacy, or if top-ups to the credits can be made while the scheme is ongoing.   

“If these are possible, then the three-year timeframe may not really be an issue.” Smaller players on the scene are also worried that all the funds will end up being monopolised by larger and more established groups that are already major grant recipients, and that they will not get a look-in.   

Ms Low said institutions like National Gallery Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum, for example, “should not be fighting with commercial entities for this little pie”.  Tamil-language Agam Theatre’s founder and managing director Subramanian Ganesh said the authorities should take the chance to encourage audiences to actively seek out diverse productions beyond the mainstream, “regardless of language or medium”.   

Former Kinokuniya Asia-Pacific senior store and merchandising director Kenny Chan said he hopes that amid the glut of offerings, people will remember the written word. Mr Tong has said in closed-door meetings that books will be eligible for the credits.

Mr Chan asked: “Why not book vouchers to be redeemed for publications by local publishers, or include bookshops and other outlets selling literary works? Culture should include the literary arts.

There has been much discussion in the media with regard to Singapore's Culture Pass, a government initiative offering young citizens aged 18 and above a voucher for local arts and heritage activities. Many issues in relation to this topic have been debated in the discussions. The two articles provided below reflect some of the sentiments regarding this topic.  

In about 750 words, develop a synthesis essay explaining and evaluating the SG Culture Pass initiative, and what further improvements can be made? You must develop a thesis about this issue and provide evidence that will support your thesis. The thesis for this TMA01 is a viewpoint that does not have to be persuasive – that is, it is the conclusion you arrive at based on summarising and synthesising the information you researched on this topic. Relevant information for you to gather, interpret, relate and cite would be:  

• Issues surrounding the measures to encourage participation in local cultural events through the SG Culture Pass initiative  
• Evidence for the effectiveness of current measures to encourage participation in local cultural events through the SG Culture Pass initiative
• Evidence against the effectiveness of current measures to encourage participation in local cultural events through the SG Culture Pass initiative
• Improvements to existing measures to encourage participation in local cultural events through the SG Culture Pass initiative    (100 marks) 

Guidance Notes

1. Use process writing to develop a rhetorical structure for your essay.
2. Strengthen your thesis with relevant examples and illustrations.
3. You may include any additional but relevant information to the ideas that have already been given in the scenario and articles.
4. You should use at least 5 research sources to help you write your essay. The given articles are considered as a separate research source each and can count towards the 5 research sources. Synthesise information from these various sources in your writing.
5. You are to use credible and reliable sources to help you write this essay. Evaluate information critically from various sources in your response. Marks will be deducted for non-credible and unreliable content.
6. Remember to use accurate grammar, correct sentence structures and a tone appropriate to academic writing. Cite sources in your writing using the proper citation and referencing style. Marks will be deducted for poor English.
7. You are allowed a +10% buffer on the upper limit of the given word count for the essay. Anything beyond the 10% buffer will NOT be read and graded.