Prep For Week 4 Assessment

Your Synthesis Task – Preparation for Week 4 Assessment

In your notebook, respond to the following three questions. These form the basis of your Week 4 written assessment:

1. Choose one country or region from this week’s lessons — Japan, Spain/Europe, South Korea, or another region mentioned. Explain the specific conditions that enabled golf to take root and grow in that place. What economic, cultural, and social factors were most important?
2. The lesson argues that individual players — Gary Player, Seve Ballesteros, Se Ri Pak — acted as catalysts for golf’s growth in specific countries and regions. What does this suggest about the role of individual achievement in cultural and economic change? Is the “catalyst player” model a reliable mechanism for growing a sport, or is it too dependent on unpredictable individual success?
3. Golf’s global expansion reproduced some of the sport’s existing social exclusions — high costs, private clubs, elite associations — in new settings. Does this pattern of exclusion represent a fundamental problem with golf’s expansion, or is it an inevitable feature of how expensive sports spread? What, if anything, should the sport do differently?

Parent-Teacher Note:

The three synthesis questions here range from factual recall (Question 1) through analytical reasoning (Question 2) to normative judgment (Question 3). This progression is intentional — it mirrors the analytical structure of Stage 3 assessment generally. Encourage your student to spend the most time on Questions 2 and 3, where the thinking is most demanding and the learning most durable.