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'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.
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.
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
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.
It'd be much more reaosnable to teach them how a word processor works.
There is no reason to tab at the start of a paragraph, the first line indent should be set as a paragraph style.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I'm serious. The 5 paragraph essay is something with which I am completely unfamiliar. Is this some kind of gateway to literacy?
A lot of American schools teach the 5 paragraph essay. 1st paragraph you describe what you are going to "make an argument for"; the next three paragraphs are separate supporting cases for your argument; so basically you backup your argument with three facts in your favour. The last paragraph summarizes the rest of the paper and gives a tidy ending.
There is nothing really wrong for it. For teaching basic concept of how to write something to make an argument for something it isn't bad. It's a format that makes it easy for students to think through what they need to do. It also makes it easier for teachers to grade fairly by having a rubric to go against.
The only problem with the 5 paragraph essay is that perhaps it is overused. As long as students learn other writing techniques and are exposed to a variety of projects there is nothing wrong with them in moderation.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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
Common Core isn't "easier", it's a trojan dreamed up by the former "jocks & cheerleaders" to actively handicap & shackle the kids who, in the past, effortlessly sailed through school with a 3.9 GPA(*) and make THEM into the "learning-disabled" kids.
Think about it: they discovered a way to make the kids who, 25 years ago, would have RUN their school's Math Club, end up hating math & struggling to avoid failing (by redefining the problem in a way that a technically-correct answer obtained the "wrong" way is "more wrong" than a LITERALLY wrong answer by someone who followed the officially-blessed process).
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(*) The openly bored, cynical kids who either slept in class, doodled, or read other books, never did their homework, oozed contempt for the teacher & classmates... and still got "99%" of the answers on tests right & graduated in the top 1% of their class without even trying. And WOULD have been Valedictorian if they'd cared enough to vigorously fight the B+ they got in 10th-grade PE like the kid who ended up BEING Valedictorian did.
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.