I agree with the author on the fact that the “five paragraph essay” does more harm than good. It forces students to follow a template to answer an essay question with little mobility to be creative or show their personality in their writing pieces. Students are taught to craft a thesis statement and answer it within five paragraphs. An alternative to this system would be to use the five paragraph essay as a layout to point students in the right direction and help them understand how much they should write about. This way the students will be able to understand what their thesis statements should be and how it should be presented, but not be forced to follow a formula to answer their thesis statement. Once they have mastered the format they should be allowed to be free with their writing. Another alternative could be to teach the students to properly write and as long as they are efficient and cohesive allow them to write as much as they have knowledge. If the students are forced to write more than they understand, the rest of the essay ramble on.
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Thanks Dionna. I do wonder though if the five paragraph model is just a template and not a rule if students will be able to get beyond the template. In other words, sometimes even if we hear, “You don’t have to do it like this,” we do because it’s easier, or we feel safer using a model our instructor has given us.
I also wonder what you mean when you say we should learn how to write “properly.”
DW