Slashdot Mirror
'The Five-Paragraph Essay Must Die' (psmag.com)
In new book Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities, John Warner dispenses with arguments that the current moment of compositional crisis is related to screen time, text-speak, Twitter, or the idea that kids have become snowflakes who want participation trophies. An anonymous reader shares a report: There are, however, specific factors that have erected specific challenges to teaching writing in 2018; these include standardized testing, over-reliance on teaching grammar instead of writing, reliance on formulaic structure (i.e. those five-paragraph beasts), classroom surveillance, and college labor conditions. Warner examines the systemic causes in K-12 education that propel students into college without having discovered much about themselves as writers. Having explained the problems, Warner turns to solutions. The second half of the book offers his philosophical approach to teaching writing, honed over 18 years teaching first-year-writing classes at various schools, paired with practical exercises. Warner's next book, The Writer's Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing, a book of exercises, will be coming out next February. Together, they offer his assessment of the problems and plan for transforming how we teach college writing in higher education.
[...] Interviewer: So why isn't the five-paragraph essay a useful starting point? Why isn't it like doing scales before playing music, or practicing free throws before playing basketball?
Warner: The danger is the prescriptive process that the use of the five-paragraph essay privileges. Students are given rules -- not just parts of speech and subject-verb agreement rules -- but [they are told] all paragraphs should have five to seven sentences. The last paragraph should start, "In conclusion," then summarize the previous three paragraphs. In a 500-word essay, the audience hasn't forgotten what you've said! So if there's a specific purpose where a five-paragraph essay is useful, go nuts.
Students need to be given experience wrestling with the full rhetorical purposes of writing. Doing that allows them to develop the kinds of thinking that writers do [and] makes them far more amenable to examining the quality of the sentences. I write bad sentences all the time in my drafts. I write ungrammatical sentences. That's how I believe how most writers work. So that's what I want students doing. A lot of what I talk about in the book a matter of re-orienting our values. The publisher hype calls The Writer's Practice revolutionary. I see it as the opposite. I have an assignment that my third-grade teacher did about the components of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's not a revolution. It's stripping away the apparatus of school and getting back to essence.
[...] Interviewer: So why isn't the five-paragraph essay a useful starting point? Why isn't it like doing scales before playing music, or practicing free throws before playing basketball?
Warner: The danger is the prescriptive process that the use of the five-paragraph essay privileges. Students are given rules -- not just parts of speech and subject-verb agreement rules -- but [they are told] all paragraphs should have five to seven sentences. The last paragraph should start, "In conclusion," then summarize the previous three paragraphs. In a 500-word essay, the audience hasn't forgotten what you've said! So if there's a specific purpose where a five-paragraph essay is useful, go nuts.
Students need to be given experience wrestling with the full rhetorical purposes of writing. Doing that allows them to develop the kinds of thinking that writers do [and] makes them far more amenable to examining the quality of the sentences. I write bad sentences all the time in my drafts. I write ungrammatical sentences. That's how I believe how most writers work. So that's what I want students doing. A lot of what I talk about in the book a matter of re-orienting our values. The publisher hype calls The Writer's Practice revolutionary. I see it as the opposite. I have an assignment that my third-grade teacher did about the components of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's not a revolution. It's stripping away the apparatus of school and getting back to essence.
Older than Moohameed the cow god.
...before each paragraph.
I see way too many "walls of text" these days and it seems to be getting worse.
And whatever you do, do NOT follow the instructions for the essay
The five-paragraph essay is the English language equivalent of "Hello World" and other elementary programs in a programming language. Once a student has proven (to himself and/or his instructor) that he can write basic functional essays/programs, and therefore write statements in the language he is using that are correct in both syntax and grammar, then he is free to write bad grammar in his drafts as much as he likes, because he has shown, at least in the simplest cases, that he knows how the language *should* be used, and can correct as necessary prior to publication/compilation. But if he has never written compile-able code, then what?
When one writes in a high-level programming language, one is writing so that the program is interpreted correctly by a compiler and that the machine does what one wants. When one writes in a human language, one should write so that the reader can interpret what one has written correctly and, hopefully, with as little effort puzzling over it as possible. This will maximize the probability that the reader will do what one wants.
"The Iron Imperative: Treat the reader's time as more valuable than your own." – Josh Bernoff.
Ivory tower types use structure to assert authority where none exists
usually a short story.. cease fire stand down.. there are mothers & children in every town.. some still calling this 'weather'?
The last paragraph should start, "In conclusion," then summarize the previous three paragraphs
So if the final paragraph summaries the preceding stuff, that is all a reader needs to bother with. Just skip to the last few sentences and it will convey the "meat" of the essay. And that means the reader doesn't have to wade through all the redundant stuff above it.
That sounds like a win, to me. A bit like an abstract in an academic paper.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
These kids don't want participation trophies, their parents do.
I thought starting a paragraph with "In conclusion" was the most uninspired, lazy, child-level writing habit. There are teachers actually prescribing this?
They come into college quite damaged by school. And they perceive themselves as survivors in a battle. It's particularly bad for writing because so much of writing is the ability to take a risk, to set a goal and risk failure. Falling short of your goal is nonetheless a noble enterprise that gets you up to try again.
Well, yeah. Taking risks and failing means a lower GPA. It means the possibility that you cannot move on in your education or getting a good job.
No one looks at the transcript and thinks, "Gee, he got a bad grade in writing. Let's look at his work and see if he took a lot of risks and tried to grow as a writer."
Nope. That number is all important. It's all about test scores and GPAs in our society. You get one shot so taking the least risky path is the beast - unless you're a trust fund baby and thumb your nose at the system because mommy and daddy gots lots O money!
That's fine, just replace it with COBOL class. It'll end up teaching them the same basic principles.
"I've spent over 18 years teaching first-year-writing classes at various schools. I'm broke. PLEASE buy my book."
I'm serious. The 5 paragraph essay is something with which I am completely unfamiliar. Is this some kind of gateway to literacy?
The two seem to go together. The fact that socialism generates poverty could be a key reason for this.
Perhaps the five-paragraph essay needs to die. Perhaps more kids need more exposure to creative writing. Visit one of Dave Eggars (sp?) studios -- the Pirate Store, Brooklyn Superhero Supply etc. -- and see kids engaged and excited about creative writing. Get them interested and excited, then help them hone the craft. It can be formulaic, or it can be free form -- there are many ways to write.
Not unlike how my generation was trained that any briefing (usually in PowerPoint) was to have three main points because, if you couldn't present in three bullet statements it was too complicated to be briefing to upper management (or even lower level folks). Less than three was also unacceptable; it meant you hadn't done your homework or some such.
Obviously, having everything limited to three main points is ridiculous. So called "leaders" (bad managers) were usually just making decisions based on whose bullets made the best sound bites.
Glad I was never so constrained in my writing, it seems that words like photographic subjects should be free to fill only the space needed, no more and no less.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The problem for writing English is the same as for programming; It is based on the assumption that you can "manufacture" people with proper skills. The 5-paragraph essay and other "rules" included in English writing instruction are mostly conventions so that the "quality control" people (read, "teachers") can spot deficiencies without stressing themselves.
C. K. Ogden, co-author of, "The Meaning of Meaning," constructed a form of "Basic English" on the proposition that a person could communicate anything using his 850 words. If I was teaching writing, especially non-fiction, for the first two months I would limit my students to using only Ogden's vocabulary. Then for the next month I would allow them to increase their vocabulary as long as they only used E-Prime. Only then would I allow them to explore the possibility of writing like John McPhee, Charles Petzold, Robert Hutchins, or other exceptional non-fiction writers.
BTW, after learning to communicate precisely, the Random House "Word Menu" is a great tool for creating more interesting writing. https://www.amazon.com/Random-...
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
"I write bad sentences all the time in my drafts. I write ungrammatical sentences. That's how I believe how most writers work"
Assuming everyone has the same process as you, always a good way to make broad recommendations.
I would say having limits helps writers. Having a format, having a time limit, word count take some questions out. Did I write enough? Did I make enough points? It can also force brevity for those of us who go on to long.
Anonymous Coward
December 24 2018
Slashdot.com Forums
This article is ridiculous.
This article has no substance to it. Historically, students have written five paragraph essays and have been fine. In addition, it provides a very easy playround to learn new writing processes. Finally, it is an easy mechanism for teachers to grade.
When I was in Highschool, I learned how to write five paragraphs essays. We were instructed to provide an introductory paragraph, three supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion. I turned out just find writing five paragraph essays. While this is obviously anecdotal evidence, it is my conclusion that anyone who cannot write a five paragraph essay is an idiot.
In addition, five paragraph essays provide an excellent sandbox for students to learn mechanisms of good writing. For example, in my eighth grade class, we needed to write an essay which focused on using transitional words, such as: first, second, thus, in addition, therefore, finally, as well as many others. Because of the small size of a five paragraph essay, it was easy to learn these mechanism and incorporate them into our writing. It would not be possible to learn how to use these words in smaller paragraphs. Essays longer than five paragraphs may be too long, and result in extra work without learning the core material.
Finally, five paragraph essays are easy to grade. Because all of the essays come in in a similar format, it can be easy to determine whether the structure of the paragraphs make sense. It becomes easy for thhe teacher to determine whether the student learned the core concepts of what was taught in class. The standardization also makes it easy for the teacher to compare students, as well as how different classes are performing. This would not be possible without the standard five paragraph essay.
In conclusions, the five paragraph essay must be used in classes. As we have learned, it has been used historically and high performance students have graduated learning the five paragraph format. The five paragraph format also provides an excellent playground for students to learn how to assemble their essays, as well as learn different techniques of writing. Lastly the standardization a five paragraph essay provides is useful way to standardize scores not only among students, but also among different classes in the same school. For these reasons, the five paragraph essay must continue to be taught in schools across America.
is that ever since these jokers started coming up with all the alternative methods, kids have started getting worse and worse at writing.
Whether or not the five sentence paragraph or the five paragraph essay are useful, my exposure to it was a poor explanation on how it was to be done. It also only appeared in one grade, never to be used again aside from the infrequent mention of it. It also resulted in text that felt rigid compared to conventional writing.
How it was explained: The five paragraph essay is a composite of five sentence paragraphs. The first paragraph is the intro (which lists the three points covered in the next three sentences), paragraphs 2-4 each describe one of the three points, and paragraph 5 is the conclusion that relists the three supporting points. Each five sentence paragraph is similar - first is the intro, the next three are supporting, and final is the conclusion (or transition in case of the five paragraph essay.)
The result was that I had to shoehorn more content into the essay, because it was also explained that each example should be independent from each other, but related to the paragraph. This brings the total from 3 examples to 12 examples, and it will grow exponentially if this is extended into a five essay chapter (48 examples), or a five chapter book (192 examples).
Writing normally means I can instead put as many examples as needed without having to stuff excessive examples in a fractal pattern. While the five paragraph essay could have been the same, it wasn't the case in how it was explained.
...because they can't read either.
As must the prohibition on starting sentences with numerical characters. Harumph. I am smart than everyone because I am pedantic.
BTW, not news for nerds.
Capthca: Useless Twat
I am never able to write creatively unless I have a story to tell.
None of my stories ever have anything creative to say about writing (except possibly this one)
you should master them.
The five-paragraph essay is the English language equivalent of "Hello World" and other elementary programs in a programming language. Once a student has proven (to himself and/or his instructor) that he can write basic functional essays/programs,...one should write so that the reader can interpret what one has written correctly
How does telling someone they MUST write five paragraphs of five to seven sentences help any of that?
Although I have not heard of that particular rule, I have seen the effect of mandates on length and structure - a lot of filler prose, a lot tortured text to fit into an artificial constraint - all of it working against expressed clarity of thought.
I agree it's good to help understand fundamental rules before you start breaking them meaningfully. Rules of grammar and syntax are important fundamentals.
A particular paragraph length is in no way a fundamental rule, instead it is a kind of canvas onto which someone skilled may paint a picture with words when they understand how to work them - forcing kids to write onto this space is like giving them a large canvas and oil paints when they have never even held a brush.
If we forced all kids to write nothing but limericks for several years it would be rightfully considered absurd. Yet the five paragraph essay would seem not to fall far from that tree.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> 500-word essay, the audience hasn't forgotten what you've said!
My experience on Slashdot and elsewhere is that this is bad advance. Readers DO forget the point, or don't get the point, unless it's stated at the beginning and at the end.
The standard form essay is to state your point, support your point, and then close by restating your point. I've found that when I do that on Slashdot, I get far better replies, fewer replies to unimportant supporting sentences and more that go to the point of the discussion. I also get moderated higher. (Though political viewpoints also greatly affect moderation).
I see that right now the highest rated comment on this page is from Dtmos. Dtmos made a statement, went into further detail, then at the end repeated his thesis statement. That got the highest moderation, so clearly that format works.
In a Slashdot post, we may have the first *sentence* introduce our thesis, then a few sentences of support, closing with a conclusion sentence again stating the thesis we started with. We may even set each off with a line feed, making it a one or two sentence introductory paragraph like this post has.
Again I'm not saying everything needs to be five paragraphs. I'm disagreeing with his aversion to closing by restating the thesis, his argument "they haven't forgotten what you said in a 500 word essay!"
By mentioning the thesis, stating the point, at the beginning and end of a communication you make it clear what the main point is. The reader doesn't get distracted by the supporting sentences, because they know that your main point is the thing you said first and last.
or in high school On the other hand, my12th grade teacher, every Monday, had a sentence written on the board when we came in, and we had to wrote 500 words on that, or including that. That was what we did that period....
More or less +/- 10 years. Even with most atheist there is a general belief there was a guy named Jesus (or darn close to it) who did some preaching about 2000 years ago.
Now if he did what they say he did, and said everything is was suppose to say is not historical fact, but a story based on events and traditions.
Huh?
"So if there's a specific purpose where a five-paragraph essay is useful, go nuts."
"I have an assignment that my third-grade teacher did about the components of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. ... It's stripping away the apparatus of school and getting back to essence."
WTF is the writer trying to say? What's the meaning of this bither? To me it has no more content than the political meaningless attempts at button-pushing of "make America great again" and "I'm with her"
The problem with most student writing is it has no content. Here in Texas we have a political party that wrote a platform against "critical thinking" in schools. In HS I wrote an essay about "what was right or wrong about something" choosing to critique the unequal quality of different public schools in my city, citing factual evidence. ... from sea to ..." Totally meaningless cribbed BS that got an A+!
I got a C- with a note saying I was wrong w/o a single rebuttal of the presented evidence. I redid the essay, writing about why I liked the the "Spirit of America" - "you can feel it from mountain's majesty to
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES NAZI PROPAGANDA FAGGOT KEN DOLL WE WILL SEE YOU SOON
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Jesus? The guy at the bar? Nah, he's maybe 25. His dad, Levon, has a sense of humour, yes.
Exactly.
Unfortunately a lot of people who see the greats who break the rules, think they shouldn't follow them as well, and produce crap, because they don't understand the foundation on where to go. And others who are so strict on the rules, they lock themselves into the structure vs what is needed.
This is true for almost any topic, Programming, Music, Ligature, Public Speaking....
Steve Jobs was one of the great public speakers. He went on stage with a turtle neck, not a suite. (He use to wear a suite earlier in his career). Now one of the rules for public speaking is to dress professionally. But jobs broke that rule. Why?
Jobs knew what he was doing. He needed to separate Apple from the other computer companies. He needed to shows Apples trend towards the minimalist design. So he ditched the suite to help communicate that direction with Apple. This works for Job, but it wouldn't work if the CEO of IBM did it (even if he did it first). You need to know the rules, and if you are going to break them then you need to know why and how to do such. Notice how Job put in the Turtle Neck not a t-shirt he still needed a degree of professionalism (business causal) look like an artist, not a bum.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Maybe if I read the book it would be clearer, but from the interview I am not even really sure what problem he is trying to solve, which makes picking on a standard essay format are a 'solution' rather baffling.
I can not even figure out what kind of 'writing' the person is trying to save, much less from what. The 5 paragraph essay format is used to teach techniques for making an argument or trying to give an overview of a topic, but the author seems concerned with fication or other storytelling, which the pattern does not apply to in the first place.
So I suspect the author has some ideological or aesthetic ax to grind, but I am really unclear on what it is or how his points tie into it.
The point of a 5 paragraph essay is to learn how to do an intro, have at least 3 supporting ideas, then an outro. In my experience, that format was only used for kids. By the time we were teenagers, that format was long gone.
Think of the 5 paragraph essay as a kata in karate. You have to do very specific moves to demonstrate your mastery. However, they would never ever expect that kata to be used in a real world scenario.
Academic writing is the most cognitively challenging thing any human being ever has to do. Learning to write it difficult because it not only requires us to learning a long list of component/constituent skills, but also to coordinate those skills simultaneously in specific ways in order to write well.
In the same way that we don't run full marathons every training session in order to become marathon runners, we shouldn't write whole essays every time we learn to write. Although it should be done in the context of full, meaningful compositions, students should practice specific aspects of writing, whether it be focusing on form, e.g. the component paragraphs of 5-paragraph essays, or on meaning, e.g. why proposition X is good or bad, how you support your arguments, & how to introduce & summarise your claims. Continuing with the marathon analogy, it's like strength training, breathing exercises, stretching, etc., as well as shorter distance practice runs.
Regarding the headline argument to ditch the 5-paragraph essay, I argue that it's essential to use template essay formats, i.e. 5-paragraph essay or some other, in order to scaffold novice writers' attempts while they learn & master the component skills that they must eventually coordinate unaided in order to write coherent, cohesive, effective essays in whichever genre of writing is required of them. Additionally, more advanced writers require different types of practice & to focus on more complex, coordinated aspects of writing. There's no one-size-fits-all technique to learning & teaching writing.
Learning to write isn't simple, simple advice isn't helpful, & may, in some cases, be a hindrance.
So there! :P
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
"I write ungrammatical sentences. That's how I believe how most writers work."
Exactly, go figure Kendall never wrote an essay longer than 5 paragraphs as his education stopped right there - it was too much indoctrination for his Libertarian faggot ass to agree to be educated in the first place.
Everything he comes up with he pulls right out of his ass, no need for veritas or forethought, just dry it off and run with it. Listening to him give advice as if an educator is just fucking precious comedy.
His teachers probably spent more time rolling their eyes and shaking their heads softly than anything.
I tutor inner city children taught in the Chicago Public Schools. I wish most of them could execute a five-paragraph essay. Quite frankly, I wish I could get single paragraphs with topic sentences, explanatory sentences and summarization at the end. For many 6th graders, single sentences with grammar and spelling is beyond.
For the best students, some of the hangup is indeed getting the first ideas down. These I teach to get it out (the vomit draft) and fix it later. Others can work with a "vomit outline" fix that, and write from there. But for half of them, going by complete formula would be a significant accomplishment.
Alas, teaching 35 kids at a time means those city teachers have to teach at a level that includes most of the class. So our author may be right for some parents improving their children at home, but misses what public school has to do.
than shitting on someone else's definition of a good code format.
The bottom line...
If the thought was conveyed accurately and efficiently with no ambiguity (or as little as possible) then who cares what it looks like to get there.
If someone is so obsessed with format that it clouds their ability to process the data(words) in front of them then they are the ones with the problem.
I learned a long time ago that not everyone learns/reads/comprehends/values/processes situations/actions/words/code the same way. Everyone has bias and tenancies so as long as you use words with precision who the fuck cares how it is formatted. I will concede though, that a poorly formatted thought, whether written or spoken, does not help anyone. "The 5 paragraph essay" however is a good format.
In my experience, that format was only used for kids. By the time we were teenagers, that format was long gone.
Unfortunately, that's not true. They still use it on the GRE for college graduates looking to go on to grad school. Sure, the GRE is a classist scam that no one with a functioning brain takes seriously (so about half of academia), but that's still how you've got to do it, and depending on the program it might be important to know how to give them their stupid format.
1 2 3 4 And in conclusion 1,2,3,4
The last time I wrote an essay was in college. That's mostly what I wrote before college.
I can count on one hand the number of times I had to write some sort of directions before college. In college I took rhetoric and technical writing classes.
I do sysadmin, devops stuff. I write directions all the time. How to use the build system. How to troubleshoot our product. Installing it, using it, explaining what xyz is about and why we use it.
I'm sure all the essays were useful, but I wish I was a better tech writer.
I think you have it backwards. Parents are snowflakes who want their kids to get participation trophies.
People need to read more Terry Pratchett, and learn his ideas on what is wrong with schools. Actually, his ideas can be summarized as "Don't trust schools to give you an education".
"(He use to wear a suite earlier in his career)."
Is correct spelling one of the rules you're allowed to break? There are two misspelled words in your sentence. Can you find them?
Through high school and introductory college english courses handled the majority of their essays. That isn't to say there were not assignments that didn't follow the 5 paragraph essay format, but often it was the minimum requirement to get your paper done and for particularly uninspiring topics was what you would write against to just get it out of the way.
Personally I cannot remember many writing assignments because they were so forgettable, but what I do remember is the non-english classes at the college level were more lax about it, not because the school mandate stated otherwise, but because the professors thought it was retarded and if their deans didn't pay too much attention they only cared that you used complete sentences and got around the required page numbers or word counts conveying your research or discussion of a topic and they were satisfied. The English and History professors were more pedantic about it, but above second year english or history classes they usually did token 5 paragraph in case they were audited, and left most of the other assignments, including midterm and final essays to the writer's discretion.
Having said that, I heard this situation got even worse in the no child left behind years. When I was going to school they were just coming off the failed pushes of the 70s-80s at teaching by formulaic wrote, which wasn't working out too well.
Then there's "Turtle Neck" (should be one word, not capitalized) which he apparently put in. Who knows where?
Oh, and I doubt he meant "Ligature", unless we're talking about surgery. GP is an illiterate fucktard who should keep well away from anything about writing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why isn't it like doing scales before playing music
I think this is a very insightful analogy. It's a starting point, a kind of toy essay that helps with the basics. I also like the analogy give once or twice above with the "Hello, World!" program.
And in the same way, if you can't play something besides scales or program something besides "Hello, world!", then the learning process is seriously off track.
I don't think that on reflection, anyone can think that the five paragraph essay, with all kinds of rigid "and then you next sentence must say x" instructions, exists for the benefit of student writers. Such essays are the product of a time when teachers have become too cowardly to assign grades according to quality of work. All the rules are there as little mini-quests that the obedient student ticks off, and the non-compliant student can be given clear, objective reasons for that B-. Real writing teachers, the ones who help actual writers, can still give clear reasons why a certain attempt at writing sucks. What they can't do is give a recipe that, if followed slavishly enough, will produce successful writing. But that recipe is exactly what public school students, parents and administrators demand. In every class, the teacher must lay out a path to grind out an A, one that requires nothing but careful adherence to explicit rules. That's how we got to today's insipid five paragraph essays. Insight, talent, a strong voice, and other qualities that make good writing good are either not addressed, or the value - sometimes the very existence - of such things is explicitly denied. If the rules are rigid enough, then all the essays suck equally by literary and aesthetic standards, which gives frightened teachers the freedom to grade essays by checklists alone. Nobody cares that this isn't helping the students learn to write. What they're actually learning is to submit and obey arbitrary rules, in preparation for - presumably - the future workplace where they will do more of the same. If I taught high school, I'd make students read and try to duplicate the effect of Michel de Montaigne's Essays, the 14th century work that invented and named the genre. They would actually have fun!
These kids need to be encouraged to read more. Reading can provide a set of templates for an initial draft. The rough analogy is that it's easier to code when you've got examples to build on.
It already is dead. The last time I wrote a 5 paragraph essay was for a college history history test.
Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em. Tell 'em. Tell 'em what you told 'em.
That's all the value it has and it really is dead outside of class tests.
Which must die?
When I was in HS, one teacher assigning a paper had this policy of "any fact you include in an essay must have a proper citation or you're plagiarizing", even, I know because I asked, if you wrote the sentence "The War of 1812 began in the year 1812". Her opinion was unless it was something you directly personally witnessed, then you must have learned it from some source and therefore had to cite that source.
The lesson I took away was that zero-tolerance/absolutist policies are always inherently stupid. The reality of professional writers is no, if it's a well known fact like, in short "common knowledge" or something that is self-evident by the very nature of the text, then there is zero need to provide a citation and in fact over citation just produces a morass of useless data that obscures the source of more important things that actually do deserve a citation.
So that's the 5-paragraph essay. They took what was intended to be a starter's learning tool and turned it into the gospel truth and thence it got stupid.
Frankly, I also personally find use of "In conclusion" to start a final paragraph to be stilted and infantile sounding.
What must die is saying "X must die" where X is not, in actual fact, alive.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Jobs wore the turtleneck because he was a sociopath who had attained success, and he wanted to rub it into the faces of those inferior beings: everyone who was not Jobs.
Which must die?
Consider this. After you're done, you could fuck Jar Jar's corpse.
That's not a paragraph. This is a paragraph.
A 3 paragraph article about 5 paragraph articles, with 1 paragraph describing it. Ha!
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
While a 5 paragraph paper is useful for debate teams, selfies, instagram, and other clueless socialites, it teaches todays students nothing about literature or deep discussion. Personally, I abhor James Joyce and William Faulkner as 'writers of drivel', but that is a personal opinion. Shakespeare is better.
Can you imagine a 5 paragraph research paper being useful? I cannot.
99% of people in the first world live and die without having successfully written a proper sentence. There are people who can't even spell their own names and make more money in a day than you, a writer, will make over the course of your entire life. Most people can't capitalize, punctuate, or use the correct homonym and never suffer for it. If you manage to teach one of these individuals how to write you will quickly find that they have nothing to write about.
And that's just the first world. In the third world kids don't have time to learn to write because they're busy trying to stay alive.
If you ivory tower douchebags actually gave a shit you would support your local trade school.
For people such as those who belong to the slashdot crowd, the engineering method of paragraph construction is usually taught. There are other ways to teach paragraph structure, but that method seems to work best with STEM students. Basically, paragraph strategies revolve around devoloping an idea rather than number of sentences.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
The five paragraph essay is fine as a tool for teaching writing to students in elementary school, but it ought to be largely abandoned by the time these students enter high school and begin preparing for college. It's interesting to note the similarities between the restrictive rules associated with the five paragraph essay format and the Eight Legged Essay format that was for centuries the required form used in the Chinese Imperial Examinations, whose graduates were roughly equivalent for their time to what we might today associate with an undergraduate university degree. The problem in China was that eventually serious and mature scholars, either by choice or necessity, limited themselves almost exclusively to the Eight Legged Essay format which in many ways is trite and formulaic, rather like the five paragraph essay that we teach our students today. In fact, some have argued that it was at least in part responsible for the economic decline and stagnation of the Qing dynasty in 19th century China and the 100 years of humiliation at the hands of technologically superior western powers. The five paragraph essay is not a serious problem in that way today because it's fairly obvious that our best professional writers are not limiting themselves exclusively to that format or even using it at all. However, it's worth remembering that limiting the study of writing to formulaic output is definitely not the path to greatness and our students would do well to keep that in mind, even as they're pounding out five paragraph essays for their college entrance exams.
I'm not seeing where it says that.
From the horse's mouth:
What is the Common Core?
State education chiefs and governors in 48 states came together to develop the Common Core, a set of clear college- and career-ready standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts/literacy and mathematics.
What guidance do the Common Core State Standards provide to teachers?
The Common Core State Standards are a clear set of shared goals and expectations for the knowledge and skills students need in English language arts and mathematics at each grade level so they can be prepared to succeed in college, career, and life. The standards establish what students need to learn, but they do not dictate how teachers should teach. Teachers will devise their own lesson plans and curriculum, and tailor their instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms.
I suppose they would say that though, wouldn't they?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> In my experience the shorter the post the better. Sometimes only a 1 liner needs to stated ... [goes on for several paragraphs]
That would have been funny had you not also said:
> Sometimes two paragraphs, sometimes more.
> The problem with bullshit rules like this is that there are ALWAYS exceptions.
True
Only half the problem. You have to train people to actually be able to READ such writing. You may as well be writing Greek otherwise.
E Proelio Veritas.
Concise.
There is nothing wrong with the five-paragraph essay once you understand that it is a structure which expands to fit the topic as necessary. Trying to impose sentence limits is sort of like demanding that people write their thesis in haiku form.
However, what we are seeing here is teachers dumbing down this formula in order to teach it to people who are congenitally unable to write. We keep dodging this in our egalitarian society, but: some are born to be writers, and some to be ditch diggers. Gosh, that sounds harsh, doesn't it? And yet it's reality.
A better question would be to ask who should be in our English classes, and why we no longer teach English through classical literature, which shows application instead of dry theory alone. Maybe to look into these "reaction essays" which are basically congenial emoting about a topic.
We teach form over content because not everyone can understand the content. As a result, we have generated a flood of nonsense from people who have no business writing.
Alternative Right.
First, writing, like most things is rarely done without constraints. So you better get used to it.
Second, having too much freedom when you are inexperienced is overwhelming. Thinking about structure, choice of words, spelling, and the arguments themselves is a lot. Taking away some variables make things a bit more manageable.
The saying is: learn the rules, then learn how to break them. The 5 paragraph essay is the first part.
How do you define an idea?
Defining sentences is easy and accurate. Just count the full stops.
Bear in mind that most teachers are not smart. My kids stick to the rules, why risk a bad mark?
I recall doing the five paragraph essay for middle school, and then the first part of high school. It was pretty useless. The essays I wrote were pretty boring, uninspired, and I am not proud of them at all. I recall when I got to high school and I tried to make one for honors English, after I moved from the midwest to the east coast. I was told that it just wasn't going to cut it. After that I never wrote a five paragraph essay again, I figured if they didn't want them in school, they probably didn't want them anywhere, and I was right. I can't recall the last time I read a five paragraph essay either. Most books, blogs and articles do not follow that format because it does not make much sense, and probably does not get the point across either.