Students are taught many hard-rules in elementary school because it is easier to teach young kids clear firm statutes than it is to explain to them the many subtle nuances of any given subject. Usually, these rules are unlearned. Students learn that there are more than 5 physical senses, subatomic particles and so on, but one rule that remains in place throughout even college is the “5 paragraph essay” rule. The first paragraph should be an introduction with a hook, background and thesis. The 2nd/3rd/4th paragraph should be three separate points that reinforce the main thesis. The 5th paragraph should be a conclusion that summarizes all of your points but doesn’t reintroduce new ones. This is a bad habit for many reasons.
It doesn’t teach writing (or the English language) as an art or a skill. It instructs the students to craft a uniform hamburger. A student can be a proficient essayist without ever learning how to write well.
It’s not really a piece of writing. It would effectively be the same if a table were created in a Word Document with “Introduction”, “Thesis”, “Point 1”, “Point 2”, “Point 3” and “Final Insights” in the X column, and the corresponding information in the Y column. It’s not much more sophisticated than Cosmopolitan’s list of 5 ways to please a man, except it’s a list of 3 things with a perfunctory amount of repetition. A paper that’s 2-4 pages or less shouldn’t really be an essay to begin with.
It encourages the mentality that things should revolve around one idea. Information that contradicts the idea is jettisoned. Information that is important, but doesn’t directly revolve around the idea is cut as well. Many real-world problems aren’t that simple and sometimes there is critical information that doesn’t exactly fit inside a thesis.
I don’t think many people out here would suggest the 5 paragraph form for a Common App essay. What are you trying to say (since this is posted in the College Essay) forum?
Different writing styles for different goals. In my technical writing class we learned how to write memos, and letters, and instruction sets, and cover letters…all of which had a defined structure we had to follow. Conventions are a thing for a reason. If the five-paragraph essay doesn’t work for your purpose, fine, don’t use it.
Elementary school? You’re worried about a mechanism to teach effective writing to children? It’s just a device. And as time passes, they build on the early skills and learn more complex approaches.
Your post stated what you view as the problem and you offered three paragraphs to support your statement. I was left not quite understanding what your conclusion was and I was interested in what you might have recommendations as an alternative. Perhaps a summary would have helped.
I tell my students that the 5-paragraph essay they learned in high school (or earlier) is a safety net. It’s formulaic, sure, and it tends to artifically force points to be generated, expanded, or condensed in ways which don’t always best suit the material. However, when a student is utterly lost as to how to approach an assignment, it’s a valid fallback position, and sometimes its familiarity helps students generate the content they need for an initial draft.
It’s “C+” structure. But sometimes that’s all you need.
As others have indicated, it’s a device to teach writing one way. There are clearly other structures in existence, but it’s sort of hard to teach all structures at one time.
As with most things, we learn one firm step at a time.
Mastering a one skill sets us up to master other skills.
Sometimes, when someone is absolutely blanking on an AP Lang essay or something of that sort, the 5-paragraph essay formula is a good thing to fall back on. As @ProfessorD said, it’s a “C+ structure,” but that’s better than a failing grade. No one is espousing it as the be-all end-all of fantastic essay writing.
@Otterma Basically, what I wrote is fundamentally the same as a 2-page essay except without the repetiton. However, I should have added a few things. (A) the formula isn’t inherently bad for what it is but the main problem is that most students are rarely taught to evolve their writing into anything beyond that. (B) As a consequence, it is harder for students to be molded into good writers.
@ProfessorD I agree with your point. A formula essay is about a C+ in quality (even though it oftentimes gets an A from teachers who care only about mastery of content). It is a good way to initially approach an essay that one is uncertain about, and it’s definitely better than going haywire into the wrong direction and failing the assignment.
It’s not a bad idea to start out with the formula: have the intro, thesis, 3 points and conclusion. But in order to go from average quality to great quality, it needs to be built on. Trim the repetition and irrelevant sentences. Add more paragraphs that go into depth.
@mohammadmohd18 I don’t think anyone would tell you it’s the best form of writing if you asked them directly. However, cases of students writing a hamburger essay and getting an A are all too abundant, even in high ranking schools.
In humanities, many professors don’t care about the writing as long as the essay shows that they’ve mastered the content. At that point, they should have just made it a short answer take-home quiz and not an essay. In English however, I’m far less congratulatory to students who attained high grades simply by inserting talking points and sources into a template-like essay.
This is purely my perspective, but this is what I think of grading essays:
A = Strong content and strong writing.
B = Strong content/average writing.
C = Average content/average writing. (Or above average content and weak writing)
D = Below average content and writing.
F = Bad content and bad writing.
Some may respond that it wouldn’t be fair to punish a student with great ideas and a high level of content mastery purely for their writing, especially in a humanities course. However, I would say that if you’re an adult and in college, you should be expected to write proficiently. College is not just about learning domain knowledge; it is also about learning how to communicate effectively and honing literacy beyond a high school level.
By college, especially in post-introductory courses, a student should absolutely know how to:
No one on this thread is disagreeing with you as far as what good essay-writing is. No need to be bellicose.
The 5-paragraph essay format has its (very apparent) limits, yes. But it is something to fall back on, especially if one is a high school freshman who needs to pump out a quick essay.
I have to agree somewhat with OP’s distaste for the five paragraph essay. In high school my daughters would often ask me to read over their essays. One time I suggested to my daughter that her paragraphs were too long and to break them up to improve the organization (I am a college professor, formerly an attorney and have scored the SAT writing section). Her teacher then marked her essay down for not following the five paragraph “rule.” This was a dual enrollment class! My daughter was not happy with me. I heard this over and over again from my daughters in their AP classes! At some point high school teachers need to abandon this “rule” and start teaching students how to write at a college level.
Interestingly, my youngest who is a freshman this year at a top-ranked University told me the first thing her first-year writing Professor told the class was, “forget about the five paragraph essay.” Did I feel vindicated? You betcha. :))
They should know how to write better than the 5 paragraphs by mid hs, as far as I’m concerned. What I really thought the point was (after the ideas about organizing thoughts and presenting them clearly,) was the focus on the opener and conclusion, and continuity.
What drove me nuts, (and still shows up in college app essays,) is the thesis statement.
You should know how to write effectively, for different purposes, by the time you hit college, no matter whether freshman writing seminars are required. (Yeah, in a perfect world.)
I fell the 5 paragraph rule is appropriate for a single argument. Too many people just drone on and on when it really can be tightened up and presented in only five paragraphs.
For arguments with many facets, it is less appropriate.
