'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.

Comments

Er, no.

[dtmos]

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.

Re:Er, no.

[azcoyote]

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.

Well said. I think the long history of people complaining over five-paragraph essays is more a sign of its success than failure. The annoying repetition is exactly what makes well-structured writing second nature for many students. I've taught plenty of college students from foreign countries or even U.S. territories where the five-paragraph essay was not enforced in high school, and this lack causes a significant and difficult learning curve for these students. They typically have trouble communicating in larger research essays because they never learned how to communicate well in five boring paragraphs. "The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones" (Luke 16:10a).

Ridiculous!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

How does a five-paragraph essay and rules help?

[SuperKendall]

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.

Elitist Drivel

[Artagel]

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.