The Five Paragraph Essay
New horrible papers are on their way. Until then, I wanted to write about something different:
If there's any form of paper writing that needs to die, it's the five paragraph essay. They're really popular for standardized high school tests in Michigan, mostly because they're easy to grade. Oddly enough, they still have a place here at the University of Michigan. The format goes like this:
Paragraph 1: Introduction
Paragraph 2: Antithesis
Paragraph 3: Info
Paragraph 4: Info
Paragraph 5: Conclusion
And the writer is not to deviate from the structure!
Back in high school, I had to do one of these essays in preparation for the MEAP. I did all this research and put together an essay I thought was pretty good, but my slight deviations (saving the antithesis for the fourth paragraph for example) earned me a C: not because I didn't write well, but because I observe the rules of the five paragraph essay.
Furthermore, the red ink suggested that it was a huge error on my part to allow my conclusion paragraph to analyze and wrap up. According to the powers that be, the conclusion cannot introduce any new information. The author is not allowed to analyze: only to repeat what he has already said as if the reader might have forgotten the point of the paper in the time it took him to read a few paragraphs.
In the end it goes something like this [if I were writing about five paragraph essays]:
In this blog post, I am going to convince you that five paragraph essays suck. They're awful.
Some may say that five paragraph essays are great. They are wrong.
This is a short paragraph where I can't cram in any info.
This is another short paragraph. Too bad I can't have a third info paragraph.
Conclusion paragraph that consists of what I just wrote less than a page ago.
Is this how we're going to teach kids to write a good essay? A child would do considerably better if someone taught him how to write a several-paragraph essay where the paragraphs transition nicely from one to another. Why teach a kid to fill up all his essays with dead words? There's something wrong about an essay where only two out of five paragraphs have good, solid information.
If there's any form of paper writing that needs to die, it's the five paragraph essay. They're really popular for standardized high school tests in Michigan, mostly because they're easy to grade. Oddly enough, they still have a place here at the University of Michigan. The format goes like this:
Paragraph 1: Introduction
Paragraph 2: Antithesis
Paragraph 3: Info
Paragraph 4: Info
Paragraph 5: Conclusion
And the writer is not to deviate from the structure!
Back in high school, I had to do one of these essays in preparation for the MEAP. I did all this research and put together an essay I thought was pretty good, but my slight deviations (saving the antithesis for the fourth paragraph for example) earned me a C: not because I didn't write well, but because I observe the rules of the five paragraph essay.
Furthermore, the red ink suggested that it was a huge error on my part to allow my conclusion paragraph to analyze and wrap up. According to the powers that be, the conclusion cannot introduce any new information. The author is not allowed to analyze: only to repeat what he has already said as if the reader might have forgotten the point of the paper in the time it took him to read a few paragraphs.
In the end it goes something like this [if I were writing about five paragraph essays]:
In this blog post, I am going to convince you that five paragraph essays suck. They're awful.
Some may say that five paragraph essays are great. They are wrong.
This is a short paragraph where I can't cram in any info.
This is another short paragraph. Too bad I can't have a third info paragraph.
Conclusion paragraph that consists of what I just wrote less than a page ago.
Is this how we're going to teach kids to write a good essay? A child would do considerably better if someone taught him how to write a several-paragraph essay where the paragraphs transition nicely from one to another. Why teach a kid to fill up all his essays with dead words? There's something wrong about an essay where only two out of five paragraphs have good, solid information.
Labels: on writing
posted by AHFB at 1:44 AM
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