CAES1000 Core University English

Task 2: Writing a Well-structured and Well-argued Essay

(Assessed – Writing 25%; Annotations 5%)

This task aims to provide an opportunity for you to apply the academic writing skills learnt so far in the course. These skills include: (i) expressing a clearly argued and critical stance and (ii) using the ideas from quality sources to support your stance through citation and referencing.

Submission Deadline:

12 March 2025 (Wednesday, 5:00 pm)

(Upload your work to Turnitin on the Central Course Moodle)

Submission Guidelines:

• When you prepare for the assignment, you should read the Policy on Academic Integrity, Plagiarism, and GenAI use on the Central Course Moodle (click here). You may also complete the GenAI Module Unit 1 on the Plagiarism Moodle (Part II).

• You must submit a soft copy to Turnitin on the Central Course Moodle by 5:00 pm on the due date of the assignment. Submission on Turnitin by the deadline will be treated as the final version. The annotations should be shown properly on Turnitin and the uploaded file. Your teacher may require a hard copy of your submission. Please check with your class teacher.

• You should leave enough time for plagiarism check and all kinds of technical problems or human errors (if any). Technical problems or human errors leading to any submission issues (e.g., late submission, unreadable text, wrong submission, or non-submission) cannot be used as a reason for penalty exemption. Any file (e.g., wrong submission, unreadable text, or incomplete submission) submitted by the deadline will be treated as the final version. It is your responsibility to check your submission very carefully.

• You must NOT submit screenshots or image files of your writing. Penalty will be applied to these formats.

• You can resubmit multiple times before the due date for plagiarism check. After the due date, you are only allowed to submit ONCE. If you cannot submit your file, you need to contact your class teacher as soon as possible on the due date.

• Following CAES rules, assignments which are handed in up to four days late without any medical/legitimate reason will have one full letter grade deducted each day (e.g., a B- becomes a C- after one day late). If the assignment is submitted four days after the deadline without a medical certificate/a legitimate reason, it will be treated as a non-submission (N = 0 mark). It is up to the programme coordinator to decide whether such students should be given feedback on this assignment.

• Students who do not submit an assignment at all or miss an assessment without a medical certificate should be given an N (= 0 mark).

• If students are sick and unable to hand in an assignment, they must contact and notify their teacher immediately before, NOT after, the deadline. Extension request AFTER the deadline shall NOT be entertained. No work after the deadline will be accepted without a legitimate reason.

• You are given sufficient time to complete this assignment. Please manage your time well and check your submission file very carefully. 2

Instructions:

1. You should write 800-1000 words for this assignment (including all in-text citations). Anything beyond 1000 words will not be read. Write the number of words for your essay at the end of the text. This does not include the words in the reference list and the words in annotations.

2. You should cite and reference the reading texts given to you (4 in total) in your essay. You must also use TWO quality sources of your own choice to support your stance. One subgrade in C2 will be deducted if you do NOT use two quality sources of your own choice. Your reference list should include a maximum of 6 entries only. All extra or additional entries will be ignored.

3. You are NOT supposed to cite/quote any non-English materials in this assignment. CAES1000 is an English language course. Only English materials should be used.

4. Include a reference list at the end of your writing which conforms to the CUE APA Citation and Referencing Style. Guide (7th ed.) (click here to download the guide; also available on the Central Course Moodle, under the ‘Writing Assessments’ section). Whenever you have any doubts about citation and referencing, this style. guide should serve as your first and major reference point.

5. Complete the Turnitin Independent Learning Task (a video on how to check for plagiarism) on the Central Course Moodle using the essay you have just written. Analyse the Turnitin report and keep doing the task (e.g., effective paraphrasing and proper citation) until the document is plagiarism-free.

6. You should not solely rely on GenAI tools. You should critically evaluate the GenAI output, develop your ideas, and use your own words to express them. You should keep a proper record of your reading materials, notes, drafts and so on so that you have evidence to show how you arrive at the final submission.

7. Once the text is plagiarism-free, write 8-12 annotations on your text using insert comments. These annotations should highlight where you have applied your learning from this course. Each annotation must relate to a different feature of academic writing. You have to provide clear and enough details concerning what skills you have applied and the reasons for doing so in each annotation. Any one-word answers or very short phrases will not be sufficient.

8. Upload your work to Turnitin on the Central Course Moodle before the deadline. Teachers will only mark the submission on Turnitin by the deadline. All other channels or forms of submission (e.g., email submission or submission to an online drive) to your class teacher will not be accepted and will be treated as a non-submission (N = 0 mark).

Assessment Criteria:

You will be assessed on the quality of your essay which is worth 25% of your final grade. The assessment criteria are on the Central Course Moodle, under the ‘Writing Assessments’ section.

You will also be assessed on the quality of your annotations. You must tell us in your annotations WHAT academic writing skills you have applied and WHY you have applied them. The skills may include the use of citation and referencing, cohesive devices, corpus for vocabulary, Generative AI, etc. This will be worth 5% of your final grade. The assessment criteria for this are as follows:

Standard Satisfactory (5%)

Expectations of student performance

The majority of your annotations show a good understanding of the academic writing skills being practised in the course. You have provided clear and enough details for each annotation.

Unsatisfactory (1.5%)

You will be given an unsatisfactory grade if one or more of the following is true:

▪ Only a few or none of your annotations show a good understanding of the academic writing skills being practised in the course.

▪ You have made fewer than 8 annotations.

▪ Each of your annotations is not related to separate aspects of academic writing.

▪ Most of your annotations are unclear and without enough details.

▪ You have copied your annotations from another student.

Non-submission (0%)

You did not annotate your Task 2 Essay.

Topic: A cashless society

WRITE AN ESSAY

TASK DESCRIPTION

Discuss and evaluate the extent to which a cashless society should be promoted. Identify arguments and evidence from your own readings and the source texts below to support your position.

Please read the following before you attempt this question:

• Analyse the key words of the question. Do not simply describe the benefits or disadvantages of a cashless society. Try to argue for your position while responding to critics’ concerns.

Note:

The four reading texts provided have been adapted for assessment purposes. Their information has been substantially modified. Students should NOT refer to the original texts and make any comparisons.

Text 1: Authored by J. A. Gaggd / 2019 / From an article titled Negative impacts of a cash-free society: Pushing citizens into criminal activities and exposing them to economic dangers / Published in a journal titled Journal of Money Laundering Control / Volume 22 / Issue 2 / Pages 350-358 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JMLC-04-2018-00432

Introduction

A cashless economy is not required to be completely devoid of cash. Instead, there are very few cash-based transactions while other payment methods, especially electronic ones, are widely used in this kind of economy. However, the ultimate goal of the cashless policy is to eventually achieve a cash-free economy – i.e., completing all transactions without the use of physical cash. Therefore, even when some external realities prevent a country’s government from forcing their economy to go completely cash free, the rationale behind the policy remains – to constantly push their economy further and further toward making less cash available to the public.

-p. 350-

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Arguments for cashless economic policies

A major rationale behind the advocacy of a cashless society is to decrease crime. Proponents suggest that in order to reduce money laundering and organized crime, governments should decrease the use and availability of money – specifically referring to paper money – circulating through the economy. The argument makes sense to a point because there have been numerous incidents where individuals have been targeted by criminal organizations primarily for carrying cash.

The idea that reducing cash circulation by a government will decrease the crime rate is not novel. Many proponents of this theory go even further to argue that the policy will have several positive effects: (1) increasing government control over the money supply, (2) decreasing the amount the government has to spend on printing money, (3) decreasing theft, (4) decreasing corruption, and (5) encouraging many individuals within the population who do not currently have bank accounts to open them. All of these arguments make sense, and are true to some extent. However, whether this policy will actually work is a matter of debate, and there are certainly some potential consequences from taking this step.

-p. 351-

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Arguments against cashless economic policies

On the issue of corruption, Ayoola (2013) found that Nigeria’s cashless policy seemed to only reduce petty corruption. Petty corruption, as defined by Ayoola, occurs when junior-level public sector employees accept tips, commissions and kickbacks in exchange for official services to be rendered. These official services can include any and all basic administrative duties these employees are already supposed to do – i.e., their job – and it is essentially the white-collar equivalent of petty theft. However, the larger versions of corruption, which mainly pertained to the political corruption of elected officials and the culture of corruption in the country as a whole, were left generally unaffected. In fact, not only did large-scale corruption 6 remain unaffected by the adoption of a cashless economic policy, but unemployment also increased.

-p. 355-

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Another significant negative impact the policy had was to disenfranchise a large segment of the population from the economy. Criminals are not the only people who prefer cash. Many poor people who live in rural areas and who may distrust banks, also prefer to operate in cash. To open an account, an individual must be able to prove their identity. This is not easy in a poor country, where record keeping is not as organized and where obtaining official documentation may come with a price tag in the form. of bribes, which many poor people may not be able to afford. According to Sharman (2011), the official financial system is inaccessible to 2.7 billion of adults in the developing world. A cashless economic policy to these people means cutting them off from their only “official” source of money. The policy also discourages jobs paid in cash in many developing countries, thereby leading to higher unemployment rates among the underprivileged who do not have bank accounts.

Another drawback associated with a cashless economy is the rise of anonymous transactions, which can lead to a higher rate of financial crime. Financial systems which promise individuals the ability to conduct financial transactions with no questions asked have become so popular worldwide – not just with criminals. A typical example is Bitcoin, a non-government backed digital currency. Even though many countries have tried to make the use of Bitcoin illegal, enforcing those laws is difficult given Bitcoin’s anonymity provision. This anonymity feature allows people to establish accounts with absolutely no personal identifying information. The laws also cannot stop individuals from turning to other types of zombie-money or even to terrorist organizations, which offer people an alternative way to receive financial services through the hawala system. This system is a non-official way to transfer money from one place to another without physically moving any money and without the monitor of any formal financial institutions. Also, it is possible that some other forms of crime, such as computer crime or embezzlement, might even increase from those who can and do participate in this new cashless economy.

-p. 356-

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Text 2: Authored by P. Marszelek and K. Szarzec / 2021 / From a book chapter titled The transition to a cashless economy / Published in an edited book titled Digitalization and firm performance: Examining the strategic impact / Edited by M. Ratajczak and L. Smith / Springer / Pages 251-281 / https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83333-2_10

Definitions and features of a cashless economy

A cashless economy, perceived as an issue inherently related to the recent expansion of technological solutions, is not a new issue. Somehow paradoxically, it was considered and discussed already before the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution, the birth of cryptocurrencies, and the proliferation of sophisticated financial instruments and financial engineering. Still, the term is not clearly defined or understood.

It should be clearly emphasized that a cashless economy is not the same as a barter economy, although the latter is, obviously, also “cashless”. A cashless economy should not be – though it often is, mistakenly – identified with the situation of an economy with no money. Money exists in a cashless economy; it just has no physical form. In other words, one might say that a cashless economy is equivalent to a situation in which there is no physical means of payment and government money is only a unit of account, but other means of payment function in the economy.

-p. 254-

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The advantages of a cashless economy

Traditionally, it is argued that a cashless economy diminishes the shadow (or grey) economy, where transactions and economic activities are not reported, and thus contributes to higher revenues for the government. It is highly impossible to hide income or evade taxes if all financial records are digitized. The absence of banknotes and coins would also prevent the practice of money laundering that allows criminals to spend illegally gained money. Non-cash money is easy to track and control, so financial crime (not to mention false banknotes) would probably become obsolete in a cashless economy, and the scale and freedom of financial crime, terrorism and drug trafficking would shrink.

-p. 264-

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The literature emphasizes that a cashless economy is a greener and universal solution (however, one should consider the huge cost of energy connected with cryptocurrencies, which are perceived as digital money of the future, and are one of the symbols of the non-cash economy). Cash-free payments are also faster, which is a major issue for time-sensitive businesses operating under very short transaction time horizons in the contemporary economy. Very often, when people pay by cash, the transaction becomes slower. Replacing cash with cards, for example, will speed up service, as contactless and prepaid digital payment methods are significantly more efficient. It also eliminates a need for cash registers, which simultaneously lowers the risk of theft. At the same time, it is possible for merchants who accept only non-cash payments to save on labour time, as there is no need to count cash and then transport it to the bank (which also is connected with the risks of transporting large amounts of cash).

Additionally, accounting time and the number of employees who spend time reconciling transactions are reduced. With digital money, merchants can simply download a report of all transactions, and the appropriate funds are then transferred electronically to individual accounts. Cashless service also helps the merchants to avoid problems related to potentially forged banknotes; it also reduces the need for spare change and helps solve the problems associated with accepting large denominations. Cashless transactions are also more convenient and need less contact. This feature turned to be crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many merchants strongly encouraged e-payment or even completely banned cash payments. A virus could live on paper money and coins (Angelakis et al., 2014), and thus paying by card or smartphone reduces the risk of transmitting disease.

-p. 267-

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The disadvantages of a cashless economy

Cashless forms of payment require some specialized equipment, knowledge, and a significant level of trust. However, for people who are vulnerable to financial exclusion, meeting these requirements is difficult. At the same time, the basic condition for encouraging the development of a cashless economy is to provide sufficient and accessible infrastructure of payments, which obviously requires involvement of banks and access to banks by ordinary persons. Yet, this condition is not fulfilled in many countries, as it is typical for there to be a significant proportion of people who make up the so-called “unbanked”. According to Kunt et al. (2018), globally about 1.7 billion adults remained unbanked – without an account at any financial institutions or through a mobile money provider. This phenomenon is not equally distributed and the problem is most serious in Asia and Africa. However, even in the United States, as the report of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (2019) shows, six and a half percent of households were unbanked in 2017.

Data shows that low-income individuals are the most likely to be unbanked and that 70 percent of this group use cash for daily purchases. In a cashless world, millions of unbanked citizens would have difficulties buying what they need for daily life. People with no technological knowledge, bank accounts, or modern technological devices will struggle to keep up with rapidly evolving cashless technology. Thus, if digital payments become typical or even the only option, people who are unable or unwilling (for example for privacy reasons) to use such services risk being excluded from the economy.

-p. 269-

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Text 3: Authored by H. Ha, P. W. Qiu and Y. W. Lin / 2020 / From an article titled Risks and rewards of a cashless economy / Published in a journal titled Journal of Reviews on Global Economics / Volume 9 / Issue 1 / Pages 216-223 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.6000/1929-9211.2020.09.20

The benefits of a cashless economy

Today, the speed, convenience and safety of non-cash payments are being paid attention to by the government because the effectiveness of payments greatly affects the efficiency of mobilizing and allocating social capital. This also shows the development or stagnation of a nation’s economy. In a cashless economy, the government will benefit from improved tax evasion control and reduced illegal cash flows. The central bank has better control over the money supply, thereby making the monetary policy more appropriate. A cashless economy provides transparency in business transactions and this will inevitably lead to an increase in tax revenue and an increase in infrastructure development which is important for economic development. Singh et al. (2013) investigated whether the long-term transition to credit and debit cards stimulated economic growth in 56 countries around the world. They found that electronic card payments can increase efficiency and boost the economy’s consumption. Moreover, the application of electronic transactions is essential for transparency, accountability and reduction of cash-related fraud, the key elements of economic growth and development.

There is evidence of a causal relationship between cash and crime involving cash. It is found that reducing cash flow reduced overall crime rates, and rates for theft and assault. Local crime rates in poor neighbourhoods have improved after reducing the amount of cash on the street. Because cash is important to pursuing many illegal activities, restricting cash flow plays a role in curbing the root cause of street crime. Moreover, limiting cash flow may combat underground crime since the anonymous nature of cash makes it helpful to tax evaders and other criminals to realize value from their illegal behaviors. Rogoff (2016) reported that at least half of existing currency is held and used in underground economies for tax evasion, drug and human trafficking, and funding of terrorism. Therefore, reducing cash circulation tends to lower overall crime rates.

-p. 217-

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The drawbacks of a cashless economy

A cashless society will bring inconvenience to individuals who do not have access to e-payments. The most apparent benefit of cash is its current, nearly ubiquitous acceptance. Related to this is that currently cash is relatively easy to access for most individuals. Although the convenience may differ across markets, most people have access to cash from automated teller machines (ATMs), grocery stores and bank branches (Mende et al., 2019). In addition to its nearly universal availability, cash, unlike its digital counterparts, is not tethered to remote accounts and can be reliably used without connectivity or electricity.

A cashless economy will marginalize individuals who do not have access to digital payments. It is essential to ensure the inclusion of socially vulnerable citizens who may not have bank accounts or who lack the necessary digital skills. For these reasons, cash is regularly used by citizens of all ages, all educational levels and all income groups, considering all cultural differences and payment habits in individual countries.

The independent choice of payment method and desirable form. of money is seen as a manifestation of economic and civil rights in the market economy. At the same time, a cashless economy creates an environment in which the government is able to access a wealth of data on households, enterprises and organizations. This gives the government too much power over its citizens and raises fears of a techno-dystopia. With non-democratic regions, such an ability to monitor – through a full record of transactions and the circulation of digital money – any economic activity could reinforce a dictator’s ability to clamp down on dissent. Even in cashless democracies, individuals may be the subject of over control from the side of the government, as well as commercial firms that are able to track spending patterns and send targeted marketing. Thus, the transition to non-cash money, by undermining privacy, can be seen as a major threat to civil liberties.

-p. 219-

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There are also other non-economic and non-efficiency considerations with regard to the flaws of a cashless economy. Given the ease of control and visibility of cash flow, a cashless economy can create bad spending habits, deprive the money of emotional value (e.g., emotional value of saving processes and charity), and increase dependence on technology at the expense of human qualities and skill. Certainly, the technology and procedures associated with non-cash payments are extremely well designed and secured. However, even if digital payments are designed to be as robust as possible, they still remain vulnerable to potential disruptions, such as energy blackouts or technical failures. Such factors, even if only temporary, can generate severe problems, undermining trust in digital money and non-cash payments.

-p. 220-

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