Percent of Grade: 3%

Final Form: Turn in typed, MLA-style one to two page paragraph OR multi-paragraph essay based upon your outline assignment. Staple the paper in the upper-left corner, attaching after (or behind) your final draft, the tutor sheet and the draft that was shown or emailed to the tutor.

Audience: an intelligent, rational person who has read and is interested in understanding Animal Dreams or Silent Spring.

Goal: To present an interesting argument that questions or supports an issue related to Animal Dreams or Silent Spring. The argument should make a reader of one of these texts think more deeply about the issue raised by the text that you address.

• Read Structuring Paragraphs and Essays, pages 50-60, 62, and 65-73. Read Animal Dreams up to at least page 98.
• Using the information from the chapters you just read in Structuring Paragraphs and Essays, take a fresh look at your outline assignment. Make any changes you feel will improve your paper. Do research if you feel that will improve the paper. Then turn your outline into one paragraph or five related paragraphs. Basically, start writing with the goal of one full paragraph in mind. If you find, however, that you need more lines to adequately develop and explain your ideas, feel free to expand.
• If you expand, this is the best way. You turn "reason one" into the topic sentence of paragraph two,"reason two" into the topic sentence of paragraph three, and "reason three" into the topic sentence of paragraph four. Your thesis and conclusion become the first and last paragraph. Add sentences so that the first and last paragraphs have at least two sentences.
• Take your draft to the writing center or success center and get advice. Revise to insure that you have followed MLA form, you have excellent grammar, and you have documented any ideas or words that are not your own. The url of this assignment is http://hal.ucr.edu/~cathy/syll/f01-450wp3.html
• If you quote from any text in addition to Animal Dreams or Silent Spring, you need to provide MLA documentation, as explained in Structuring Paragraphs and Essays on pages 250-255. The samples on page 251-2 show how to explain in your paper where quotations from other texts have come. The other pages, 252-255, show the information you put after the last paragraph, so that people can find the information that you used.

1. must be typed in MLA style
2. must be on the assigned topic or an approved alternative
3. must contain at least three clear reasons your thesis (or topic sentence) is true
4. must have a clear, appropriate topic sentence or thesis
5. must have less than fifteen grammatical/mechanical errors per page
6. must have no major inaccurate or false statements
7. must be basically clear and comprehensible
8. must stick to the one significant idea of the topic sentence (the thesis) and not digress or wander off into other areas
9. must not be plagiarized and must give accurate page numbers and documentation of any texts other than Animal Dreams or Silent Spring.

• B papers have less than ten errors per page.
• A- papers have less than five errors per page.
• A papers have two or fewer errors per page.
• Excellence in style or content may lead to a paper with more errors getting a slightly higher grade.
• A papers have perfect unity, coherence, and grammar. The support is excellent and strong. The word use and diction is appropriate and interesting.
• A+ papers usually have exceptional originality, smoothness, or stylistic brilliance, in addition to the regular qualities of an A paper.
• Coherence problems will pull a strong argument down to a B, C, or D, depending on how severe they are.
• Weak, short support can pull a well-written paper with a clever, original thesis down to a B, C, or D as well.
• A weak, barely acceptable thesis (a pretty obvious claim)--even if supported by brilliant, clever writing that is grammatically perfect, fully coherent, and perfectly unified--will get no higher than a B-, so select your thesis with care.