In an excerpt of Unteaching the Five-Paragraph Essay," Marie Foley reveals how the Five-Paragraph Essay formula contradicts writing instructor's most basic goals. Foley shows that the formula deters from generating individual thinking. In today's society, essays are used by millions of people in order to express their different ideas. The Five-Paragraph Essay formula was originally developed to help retain the efficiency and clarity of the essay. Foley, however, believes that this process eventually separates the student from his or her written expression and should be used only as a first step tool for beginning student writers. Foley insists that the formula blocks discovery, squelches authenticity and undermines the reader's need for coherence. Foley shows that patterns of organization and more natural thinking can benefit the student.
3. Then, organize your essay with your thesis in mind. The type of organization you use depends on your thesis, but in general you should be able to use either block-by-block or point-by-point organization with any of the essay types.
Prior to taking English 1301 my method of writing simply involved writing the first thing that I felt made sense, this unorganized strategy resulted in essays with multiple grammatical errors that made absolutely no sense. As an English 1301 student, I am fortunate to have a professor who has mastered the art of writing. In assigning group work activities and the literary analysis of songs, I was able to learn from my professor, that writing is a process not a product. Working in a group divided the workload and gave us more time to observe each other 's paragraph, in doing so we were able to revise, edit and rewrite, this process taught me that a terrific paper is not an overnight miracle. Analyzing a musical selection was tremendously difficult for me; as a mediocre writer it took me a long time to grasp the concept; after continuously rereading and analyzing different lyrics for multiple meaning, I acquired the skill of reading between the lines, by simply taking the time out to ask questions and research information. Participating in these activities helped me understand writing as a process, and also encouraged me to work on my critical thinking
In the poem the teacher points out mistakes such as the student’s thinking, his style of writing the paper and his grammar errors. The teacher said, “there are spots/where your thinking becomes, for me, / alarmingly opaque, and you syntax/seems to jump backwards through unnecessary hoops,” (6-9). This instance shows the error the teacher found in the paper about how the student’s thinking was not straight and would jump backwards and forward throughout the poem. Another error that the teacher finds is when the teacher tells the student that he should have wrote the paper differently or said something else. The teacher said, “I’d have said it differently, / or rather, said something else” (17-18). This instance shows that the teacher is not happy about the way the student has written he paper and tells him that he should have wrote it differently. Another instance where the teacher finds mistake in the paper is when the teacher fixes the students semicolons mistake in the paper. The teacher says, “Please notice how I’ve repaired your/ use of semicolons.”(28).This instance shows that the teacher found a mistake of semicolons, which the student did not use correctly in the paper. However, even after finding all these mistakes the teacher gives A- as an overall grade to the student. This is an example of an irony that shows that the teacher not only gave negative comments to the student, but after giving negative comments
In my first draft for “Death Constant Beyond love”, my points were vague and seemed to be repeated in different parts of the paper which seemed that I had multiple statements. However, I did a deep analysis through my paper and located the key points of my ideas to create an outline that will drive the reader to only one conclusion, my thesis statement. In this essay I found my weakness but with hard work and multiple writing assignments I improved in a way that now I can focus in only one idea. For instance my thesis statement in this essay was contrasting as I wrote:
When an essay is scattered, it exposes the author’s difficulty to construct the paper which will cause the reader trouble to understand the main ideas of the author. Although there are errors in my introduction and conclusion, my body paragraphs display the organizational patterns that should have been used throughout the essay. For example, paragraph four starts with a clear main point, provides relevant information with two separate examples, and then ends by linking it all to the thesis statement. By providing a well-structured paragraph, the reader was able to read with ease and follow the flow of my idea. When the time comes for writing another timed essay, I will remember to create an essay with easy movement by referring to the M.E.A.L structure.
The upper three levels of Blooms’ Taxonomy – analysis, synthesis, and evaluation – were all closely related for me and were all aspects that I found to be challenging to do in my essay. As we all picked different essays and did not go over them at all in class, understanding the work was crucial to having through and accurate analysis. I found it challenging to immediately identify what Carr’s argument and purpose was in the essay; I noticed that over the course of the writing process, what I thought each was gradually evolved as I continued to read over and think critically about Carr’s work. Having a more complete understanding of the essay also helped me to be more precise and less wordy because I knew what I wanted to express and did not need to use as much “fluff” to compensate for not having a clear understanding of something. Because of the relatively low word count, synthesis was crucial; after identifying what I wanted aspects of the essay I wanted to focus on I had to precisely bring together the necessary background knowledge with through analysis without being to general
The question was to write a 4 page in which you discuss the impact a on-literacy text has on your reading of “The Lottery,” “Sonny’s Blues,” OR “Hills Like White Elephants.” I chose the story “Sonny’s Blues” because I Understood this story better than others. First of all, since I did not get good grades, I thought I should put more effort on these papers in order to do better in this course. So, I tried to use some higher level words so that my paper may look like a higher writer’s paper. Same as the 1st paper, my thesis statement still was not clear because the way I put the thesis, it seems like my opinion, however, If I try I can make it look like a better thesis statement. For example, “I think you can work on your thesis. Your thesis is like generalized about the story but professor want something that changed or confirmed your view. Definitely, you can work on thesis to make clear idea what this essay is about.” (Peer Review 2- Islam) In other words, as I said, my thesis is more look like a sentence that summarizes the story where in this paper, it should look like a change that after reading a secondary source have made. This was my thesis, “A non literary text impact various way depending on how an individual analyzes the piece.” (Paper 2-page 1). After the peer review, I have changed my thesis statement into something like this “Reading
I had to go back into the Language Arts book to develop more ideas and analyze why different parts of his letter were rhetorically effective. I had to change this because it clearly wasn’t five pages. Past length of the essay, I had to look deeper into how his viewpoints and strategies were linked between the clergymen and all people. I had to change this because my rhetorical analysis was more of a rhetorical summary. Another thing I changed between drafts was the organization of the paragraphs I had.
The five-paragraph essay is perhaps the only kind of essay many students hear about. Argumentative essays, research papers, and even book reports have a tendency to fall into that formula strictly and allow for little flexibility. This can be a tedious and boring process, as John Warner’s fervent argument insists. However, Kerri Smith demonstrates a stronger argument with her defense of the five-paragraph essay by emphasizing throughout that it is simply a building block for more elaborate essays and by using credible influencers that prove her point effectively.
Many of the mistakes I would have deemed inconsequential in the past resembles glaring flaws now. The introduction and conclusion paragraphs were where the most work was done. In the introduction, I inserted a hook and blended the paragraph together. I accomplished this by adding transition words and changing the tense to fit the rest of the essay. In the conclusion, I completely started over. The original was bland, boring, and just plain repetitive. In the revised version, I outlined the essay, restated the thesis, and ended by suggestion other applications.
Many times, my writing consists of a solid introduction with a good idea, but it wanes as it nears the ending and the conclusion is not effective so as to remain consistent with the proper sequence of the sentence (2-3-1). The reader of my work must distinguish the most important points of the work, understanding the general theme, while remaining captivated by a consistently interesting paper. If a primary point exists, it needs to be expanded, emphasized, or supported. The work needs to remain interesting and captivating throughout. For the reader to infer my opinion on the subject matter, I must show approval or disapproval of it in some way.
Yes, learning that I could truly enjoy poetry was an amazing, but also, a highly involved discussion. One I would rather focus on at another time. I would, though, like to elaborate on the profound similarity I felt with the feeling of the narrator. There have been many times in my life where I have done something that I am not proud of. Most of these dealing with the men in my life.
... poem, I thought it to be weak and nonsensical. However, now, it is easy to see the wisdom behind Drayton's words.
But I believe I have substantially improved in this area, best shown through the first two papers. The largest reason I chose the short story analysis and the poetry exposition is because it constitutes the two highest grades I received in both 1101 and 1102, and therefore it is difficult to not consider them my strongest works. These papers also comprise my best thinking, which becomes part of my portfolio’s loose theme: analysis. The first paper was difficult for me to write, because it required several rereads and a substantial amount of notes.