Many high schools teach the five-paragraph essay. There are voices pro and contra this instructional method of composition. The following links might help you when you are composing your own opinion:
1) This link just explains what the five-paragraph essay is.
2) This link is a pro-5-paragraph-essay research article from the English Journal entitled, "To the Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay" by Kerri Smith. Here's another pro-article: "Breaking the Five-Paragraph-Theme Barrier" by Thomas Nunnaly.
3) This link is a contra-5-paragraph-essay research article from the English Journal entitled, "The Ill Effects of the Five Paragraph Theme" by Kimberly Wesley.
As a comment to this thread, please post a short statement (ca. 500 words) about what you think with regard to the five-paragraph essay -- have you learned it, will/do you teach it, is it beneficial, does it harm students...???
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I am a student who has learned the five paragraph essay and one who has used it quite often. Like the article from Jeanetta Miller states, this form for writing a paper eliminates anxiety about form and organization. You know how the paper should look so you just take the pieces and plug them in. It is easy. I will be the first to admit that when it comes to doing homework I will take the easy way out. This is where the problem becomes apparent. Students do not enjoy writing because it is boring to just plug things in, so they try to do it as quickly and easily as possible. As teachers, we should be making writing fun and interesting. We need to teach other ways to write. As Miller advocates, we need to "convey the idea the there are many ways to develop an effective piece of writing, depending on audience and purpose"(100). I either do not remember any instances where I was taught other ways to write or they never happened. Even in college, I have never had a teacher explain that essays can be written in many ways and should be organized differently based on content. They expect you to just know already the best way to write a paper, or they accept your boring version of the five paragraph essay. I think that if we expect our teachers to be teaching other ways to write we need to make sure they are being taught them. I am not a fan of the five paragraph essay, despite the fact that I often produce papers in this fashion. I hope that through this class I learn better, more effective ways of writing so that I can show them to my future students. I want my students to leave my class with information and skills that will really help them to succeed, not just things that make them look like everyone else. I am sure that every teacher hopes this, but it is up to us to make sure it really happens.
ReplyDeleteThe five-paragraph essay is something that is all too familiar to me. I remember learning the make up of the five paragraph essay before I ever entered junior high. I can see where it may be a useful instrument in giving students a basis and structure for the expansion of their ideas. I mean sure a student can say, "I think that World War II was devestating." What is important is the student learn that in an essay more information is needed such as, what devestating events happened, who caused them, what was done in response, etc. As students get older I believe it is necesarry for teachers to encourage and foster personal styles rather than to shun the students and make remarks like, "That is reserved for professionals. Are you a professional writer? How many books have you had published?" That was my experience with some teachers. I would try to break away from the norm with my writing and instead of being encouraged i was rebuked for it. One example in particular was when I was in third grade. I believe it was the first time essays had been introduced to my class. The topic was, "How to kill a porcupine." Most students wrote they would hit it with a hammer, then run it over with a truck, and then if that did not work use a shotgun to shoot it. I took the assignment a totally different way. I turned in a story about a dog that tried to kill a porcupine and failed. Then the story went on to tell what he did afterwards. Instead of just telling me that I should have stayed more on task the teacher became very upset with me and made me feel like my work was garbage. Perhaps if he wasn't so worried about everyone turning in uniform papers I would have became comfortable with my own writing style sooner. Basically, yes it is a trusty old tool this five-paragraph essay, but once it has served its purpose we need to encourage students to quit always using it.
ReplyDeleteI remember having the five-paragraph essay assigned to me in my early elementary years. In second and third grade, we even had to write our paper in different colored pencils to show which part of the paper was the introduction, body, and conclusion. I think that the five-paragraph essay, when taught correctly, is a valuable tool for young writers. The five-paragraph essay helps young writers have an understanding of how to keep their papers centered around one topic. As students get older, they should acquire the skills necessary to expand the five paragraphs into a much larger paper. No matter how long a paper is, professors, teachers, and teacher assistants all want to see an introduction followed by a body and a conclusion to summarize ideas. Therefore, the five paragraph essay, when graded with very lenient standards, can build a love of writing for young students because they are able to express ideas freely in their writing.
ReplyDeleteI found the articles to be very interesting and very much an awakening to the responsibilities and the thought that is going to have to go into my future English class. The five paragraph essay was always taught at my high school and I learned how to perfect the formula without really ever putting any critical thought and work into the essay. After reading some of the articles on this subject I realized that I myself was forced into the limitations of the five paragraph essay because that is what I knew and what was expected from me by my teachers. Now looking at how I will guide my students to write I realize that if I want them to be able to express their thoughts and think critically then I will have to move outside of the five paragraph essay. By gaining ideas from some of the articles, I hope to give my students the freedom to be able to choose the amount of paragraphs and the style of the essay. But I still think that their needs to be structure and a way to be able to assess my students so that I can grade them fairly with their classmates. I agree with the article by Noskin that expresses how important the prewriting process is and how teachers should not limit this to 20 minutes inside of the classroom. For students to fully form ideas and be able to think critically about a given topic I feel that they need a more open amount of time or space. I also agree with setting up both open ended and close ended writing prompts so that students of all writing and thinking styles can find a topic that interests them. Overall, I know that my opinion on the five paragraph essay will change whenever I have control over my own classroom, but for now I feel that it is necessary to have structure and guide lines when teaching writing but there needs to be more room for creativity and critical thinking.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the five-paragraph essay format is a pair of training wheels—it can only go so far in teaching students the fundamentals of academic writing. In order to continue growing as writers, students need to let it go—and sometimes it is up to the teachers to wean students away from the safe-and-familiar. Not many people like change, and that is sort of the reason why the format is like a double-edge sword. Students need to understand the significance of organization in an essay—but at the same time, teachers are restricting the potential of the students’ work into five measly paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t have many issues growing up with the format, but there came a time early in high school when my three reasons to support our argument could not satisfy the teacher and we were forced out of that writing mold. To this day, I appreciate what the teacher did, but there are other teachers who are either plain lazy, or just badly misguided, and do the opposite. In my freshman year of college, I had to peer review a student’s argumentative essay, which resulted into an actual argument between the two of us. She claimed her paper did not need revising because the grammar was correct. Besides the problem that her paper was a page short of the required count, she did not answer the question. Her paper lacked focus and any purpose—it was just a paper with lots of information. It did have five paragraphs, so that makes it good, right?
That example was a strange one, but it shows what can be problematic in teaching with the five-paragraph essay format. It can give the student the misconception that anything said within five paragraphs is acceptable. Even if the content was acceptable—the paper would be much stronger with more arguments to support it, and if my students are capable of doing better work, then I have no reason to back them down.
In response to Kimberly Wesley’s metaphor with the bonsai, I see the five-paragraph essay more as a tiny little pot, rather than stunting the growth of a tree. It’s easier to grow a seedling in something smaller, but in order for it to grow it has to move on to someplace bigger.
I was taught the five paragraph essay when I was in middle school. It was the first technique that I learned in order to compose an essay. My teachers made sure that this format was permanently embedded in my brain. They were so persistant that by the time I arrived at college, I had no idea there was any other way to write a paper. As mentioned in one of the articles, I wondered how I was supposed to write an enrtie research paper in five paragraphs. It was embarrassing to have to ask the professor so many questions about something that should have been so simple. I believe that the five paragraph essay is valuable when INTRODUCING a student to writing formats. However, I don't think that it should be heavily relied on, or even used for any length of time. The students need to know that there are many other options. I probably won't use the five paragraph essay in my classroom unless I find it absolutely necessary.
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