English 1A: Essay #1: 1st Out of Class Essay
Chapter 6: “Ah Wilderness! American Myths of Nature and the Environment”
Final Draft Due Date: Thursday, March 29, 2012
Required Guidelines:
 5-7 pages, MLA format (5 FULL pages at least)
 Must use at least 4 sources and must be the following types:
a) Book (if RRA is used, it counts as one source—even if more than one selection is
used)
b) Article from a scholarly journal (use PCC databases)
c) Another type of periodical from the PCC databases (newspaper/magazine or
scholarly journal)
d) Website—must be reputable
e) Blogs, video clips, advertisements, cartoons, or other multi-media types only
allowed if it’s the 5th source.
 Sources/Mediums not allowed for this paper:
a) May not use Wikipedia.
 First paragraph should include underlined or highlighted thesis statement.
 Use 3rd person. 1st person is fine when discussing personal experience. Do not use 2nd
person.
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Works Cited page (WC) is a separate page from the essay and should not be page 5. Refer to
page 492 in A Writer’s Reference (AWR) for a sample WC page. Your WC page is a list of
citations in your essay. Refer to page 423 (AWR) to review in-text citations; look at page 423424 to review listing the works you cite in the WC page.
Allowed only 1 long (block) quote in the essay. (page 433-34 in AWR)
4 copies of the rough draft—due Tues. March 27th for peer review; failure to do so=
minus 20 pts from Homework and Class work points. Do not email if absent, in class
activity.
 Final draft—due Thurs., March 29. If absent, you may email it BEFORE class is
over—otherwise, it may be accepted the next class day with a 10 point deduction.
 Rough draft needs to be a minimum of 3 FULL pages, including in-text citations and
Works Cited on page 4, if not complete.
 Final drafts which fail to submit a Works Cited page will not receive an overall
grade higher than 65%
 Final drafts which fail to cite correctly, meaning citations in the essay do not match
the citations in the Works Cited page, will not receive an overall grade higher than
65%
Choose one of the following prompts to write your essay.
A. Climate change may have dramatic and devastating consequences due to small, less
visually arresting alterations in weather or sea levels, yet it may require extreme images
such as the one on page 702 in the Visual Portfolio of RRA to motivate people to address
the problem. Are such strategies justified, or are they misleading, particularly the one on
page 702? Be sure to focus your argument on the image on page 702 and climate change
in general.
B. Write an essay exploring the notion that 21st century America is entering a “post-natural”
era. What evidence do you see in people’s daily lives to suggest that nature is no longer
critical—or even very interesting—to us as a nation?