I find it ironic to be writing about this after watching twenty six wideeyed freshman English students struggle through the formatting of this five paragraph essay. Before I bring up my individual concerns about this format of writing, I want to point out a few positive qualities.
First, the five paragraph essay does give a concrete, general format to writing. Students can clearly understand what is expected, and the breakdown of the five paragraphs has been ingrained into their brains from a very early start in any English curriculum. Add to the essay a formula for an analytical paragraph, and the writing assignment looks like a fill in the blank Star Tribune word puzzle. Overall, this format is clear, concise, and familiar to most students. The five paragraph essay is also conducive to many genres of writing. It can be narrative, expository, persuasive, synoptic, evaluative, or simply recall. In this sense, the five paragraph formula is able to cross genres of writing without losing (or gaining) any additional writing characteristics. Additionally, this tends to be very easy for teachers to grade. Most rubrics for the five paragraph essay are broken down by paragraph- first intro, body (which still manages to leave something to the writer's imagination) and conclusion provide neat boxed entries for any type of rubric.
In general, the five paragraph essay does have certain characteristics that are appealing to our current English curriculum. However, it certainly is not without its drawbacks. Comments heard today from the shaken freshman are included below to highlight some of the less desirable outcomes of the five paragraph essay:
- “Can we go over five paragraphs? What happens then?”
The five paragraph essay has a tendency to pigeonhole students into a neat, concise format. But what happens when students have more to say? Some students feel that once the five paragraphs have been written, their assignment is over. Teachers tend to agree, and details, personality, or humor are often cut out of these compositions.
- “This sounds corny!”
To the more experienced writer, a five paragraph essay is elementary. It doesn't show off their great dialogue, or highlight their ability to provide details in narration. Rooms full of students cringe when they hear “five paragraph essay” because they view it as a direct school assignment, rather than a great chance to showcase their writing abilities. I dropped the “multigenre paper” bomb on this class today, and the look of gloom was instantly replaced by a curiosity for this type of writing.
- “My paper doesn't sound right... What's that called- flow?”
Sometimes students get so caught up in the five paragraph formula, they forget about what's between the lines. In this case- transitions! Many five paragraph essays have been written as three paragraphs, with a conclusion tacked on and an introduction pasted in. When the final produce appears, it looks right but often lacks a degree of fluidity. This seemed to be undetected to many students, until I had them read their papers aloud to themselves. As students stumbled and cringed, I saw them begin to notice the lack of anticipation and excitement their writing had created.
After all this, I'm sure I'll assign at least one “five paragraph essay” in my English class. While it's an important formula to understand, its just that... a formula that allows little room for discovery, a large margin of error, and daunting visions of multiplying pencils dancing in the writer's head.
Link of the week: It might be a shameless ploy, but the cornerstone of my quams with the five paragraph essay has to do with a lack of student motivation and engagement. To combat this, I've included a link to my "Motivate and Move" blog:
jonesy,
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy that you've seemed to pick up on some of the benefits of the five paragraph essay that i have. While I agree that it can definitely be limiting in some aspects (i.e." what happens if i go over five paragraphs?"), and that it doesn't leave a whole lot of room to challenge and stretch student's writing skills creatively or analytically. However, I feel that what it lacks in as a place to showcase writing abilities, it makes up for in teaching a definite form and structure for writing papers. While "the five paragraph bomb" is a wonderful alternative (I'm trying to incorporate this into my student teaching, please say you are too so we can collaborate a little! Intersession Reuinon '09 baby!) is it realistic, or practical, to hope that students will get the same skills out of that as they would out of a more formal, structured paper? And if so, can they then apply those skills to a college paper, business letter, or professional writing after they leave our classroom? And I agree with you that students struggle with the formatting. But unlike you, i've seen my students (how weird is that?) struggle with the concept of the I-Search paper format too, and these are 11th graders. I think it's important that through whatever form of paper, students gain skills that give them good habits for writing in the future, in whatever format that is. I think that if it's possible to teach them how to write in the structure of the 5 paragraph essay, it's also possible to teach them to write analytically, creatively, and expressively too. While the five paragraph essay is in no means the only right way to do that, I think it has definitely given me the skills and habits of writing to apply to graduate level papers today. On that note, I think it's important that we as teachers come up with ways to teach the skills of a structured, formally written paper in a way that allows students to express their voice, creativity, and analytical skills too.
Reunion 09 is a fantastic idea- but we're not writing another seventy page unit!
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