First Essay for English , FALL 2017

English  —1st   Formal Essay —McFarland--Fall—2017

For this essay we will be investigating issues related to our book, Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, and to the movie, Crude Awakening. One of the intriguing arguments that gets built in both the book and the movie is that this contemporary life that many of us take for granted, is actually the result of specific events in history, especially including the discovery and rise of Oil.

For this paper you will be examining this claim and taking a stand about whether or not you think this is true.  The following questions are intended to offer some guidance to you as you build your paper. It is OK to argue more than one side of a question if that is how you feel. There are a lot of questions here. You can skip one or two of them if you like. 

1.     How do you explain the amazing population growth from 1860 up to today? that we see in the chart in the book on page 15 ?

2.     What are some consequences of adding this additional 5 billion people to the planet, from 1860 up to today?

3.     Why do we allow these consequences to happen?

4.     What is your own relationship to energy use?

5.     Hartmann argues that we are modern day Slaves; what is your opinion of this metaphor as a way to explain our situation?

6.     How do we gain freedom from this slavery?

In order to support your points, you need to use the ideas found in the book, the movie, your research, and in any other handouts, books, etc. that we have access to.

You should try to include more than one quote per paragraph whenever possible, two is good! Quote length in a paper of this length should be no more than 1-2 lines.

The essay’s page minimum is 6 full pages…(BNDJTM…) Be sure you do Rule of 3 for each question that you pick. That will help you reach the page minimum.

Be careful that you don’t simply retell the history of the how humans have used energy over the years. Use these moments in history to SUPPORT the analytic points you want to make. Paragraph topic sentences should start with concepts. Paragraph topic sentences should also feature KEYWORDS, which are taken from the essay assignments tasks.

Here is a Link to discussion of how to do Rule of 3
https://seanchabot.blogspot.com/2014/01/rule-of-3.html

Here is a Link to discussion of how to do Typical Academic Paragraph.
https://seanchabot.blogspot.com/2014/01/features-of-typical-academic-body.html

Below are due dates for each class... make sure you have the right class ....

The paper is due Sept 20 for the 102 class ...First draft is due Sept 18. 

The paper is due Sept 25 for the Monday nite 1A  class ...First draft is due Sept 18. 

The paper is due Sept 26 for the Tuesday nite 1A  class ...First draft is due Sept 19. 

Best of Luck!!