The Five-Paragraph Essay is a methodology strictly standardized and instilled in students to see their intellectual capabilities. The Five-Paragraph is like a guideline that teachers use to explain to students the exact way to write. In applying this sort of curriculum, the students writing abilities are diminished and the teachers have forgotten the appropriate manner to teach students how to write. I agree with the article, from a personal point of view when I was in High School, I was taught the methodical Five-Paragraph technique. This strategy was used to test students’ abilities and their level of success. From standardized essays to in classroom essays I always did the Five-Essay paragraph and in doing so I lost my writing style, it was similar to following a procedure. An alternative to the Five-Paragraph essay is just to let the essay be like an open-ended question where they can follow their procedures and guideline when writing the essay.
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Thank you Ivy. I was quite taken by your description of how writing in five paragraph formatting led to you losing your own writing style along the way. I think this is one of the downfalls of standardized testing– we forget how to think outside of a formula!
DW
Hello Ivy,
I agree with you. Throughout school they have always taught us the importance of using the five paragraph format and that in-turn made us lose our individual writing styles. Though using these guidelines were thought to help us perfect our styles of writing I feel it caused more restriction. I believe writing should have some guidelines when it comes to pronunciation and spelling but writing should show freedom of expression.