All through our academic years we were taught how to write. Starting with elementary, when the form of writing was first introduced, it consisted of compositions with simple prompts about our weekends. Now, that there was an idea of how to write, middle school English teachers began teaching students a writing format. This format is commonly known as the five-paragraph essay, which entailed an introduction, three supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The five-paragraph essay began being strongly implemented in high school and it leads to many debates whether or not it benefited students proceeding into college. I believe the five-paragraph format was helpful for high school students starting out, but is not as beneficial to freshman …show more content…
In “The Ill Effect of the Five Paragraph Essay” written by Kimberly Wesley, Wesley explained that there was an assigned essay of five-to-seven pages long. The student, mentioned by Wesley, had difficulties comprehending how to incorporate the five-paragraph essay into her assignment. Many students face this problem throughout their academic years and although teachers began by teaching an excellent organization method, the students still had a form of missing information. Students of all grade levels faced different problems from the others, especially if they were taking remedial or advanced classes. Students are all taught one way in the beginning, but when more options are presented to students everyone begins to learn differently. Such as, a dual enrollment, student is being taught at the college level so they have a better understanding of how to write a well-organized essay before actually attending the university; however, a student in a remedial or regular course does not know quite the same thing. A dual enrollment, student learns slightly more than students not taking the same course perhaps because dual enrollment students are taught about research papers and content within their writing, but not all students take an AP course; therefore, very few students are taught the strategy needed to help them easily advance once they enroll into
In our modern society, we have forgotten the art of writing. When we write, we think to ourselves, the longer the sentence, the more intelligent I will sound. Many may say it is by writing long sentences. But is it all that true? In this piece of writing I would like to focus on an essay written by Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing. In this essay he explains how and why when we write, we should keep our sentences short. he also explains why students should be assigned essays that are not determinate on other sources as evidence. I will also be comparing this to a piece written by Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness. I will be comparing these two pieces on their writing style, and their essayistic ideas. My belief is that we need
We would do research on a subject or a person, and write about them. We, once again, were not allowed to be unique in our writing or think creatively or critically. This is the time when I was taught the five paragraph essay. As stated in Gray’s article, the five paragraph essay is detrimental to students’ writing. This format for writing is damaging because it doesn’t allow students to express their own ideas about a topic. It does not allow for any creativity or uniqueness in a paper. In tenth grade, I wrote many papers for my English class, but I never once got an A on them. I was led to believe that my writing was weak because I could not relate to what I was writing about. I did not have any emotional connection to the research papers I had to write, and it made it harder for me to write them. I had grown up not being allowed to think critically, and therefore, my papers in high school lacked creativity and deeper
Over the past semester, I have found the most challenging part of this course to simply be the transition from high school composition classes to college. Because writing expectations are so different in college than in high school, even with AP and Dual Enrollment “college level” classes, I first found myself being overwhelmed with the pressure to write the perfect first draft. The pressure came from knowing how much a final draft of a paper contributed to my grade. This left me sitting in front of my computer for hours at a time with thoughts of what I wanted to say racing through my head, but unable to deliver these thoughts into organized, structured sentences. I learned, through writing my persuasive essay, that instead of trying to write the paper start to finish and already in its perfect form, it is easier for me to look at the paper through its different components and focus on them individually, then work to best organize my ideas fluently.
Based on my high school experience, my view of writing has always been that the five-paragraph essay will be able to carry me through my life, and therefore, I would not have to learn another essay writing style but master this one. But in the essay “Breaking the Five-Paragraph-Theme Barrier” by Thomas Nunnally, we are told that “Students need to understand that they practice on the FPT to learn the principles of effective composition, principles that can be applied to any writing task, not to master a single format that will answer all their writing needs.” (70-71). In other words, Nunnally is saying that the five-paragraph theme (FPT) is supposed to be a guideline to determine ideas and a general concept of an essay but not be the only way of writing. I agree that the FPT is a good starting point in essay writing, a point that needs emphasizing since so many people believe that they cannot stray from this template, as I once did. In this essay, I will summarize the main ideas of Nunnally’s essay, and my response
“Unteaching the Five Paragraph Essay” by Marie Foley demonstrates how a five paragraph essay formula disturbs the thought process of the students and limits what they can write. A five paragraph essay is an introduction with the main idea, with three supporting topics showing the relationship to the main idea, and a conclusion summarizing the entire essay. Foley argues that this formula forces students to fill in the blank and meet a certain a word limit. She noted that this formula was intended for teachers in the education system to teach an overcrowded class how to write. While it is beneficial for the first-time students learning how to write. In the long run, this standard destroys any free style writing, new connections between a topic,
However, though John Warner’s argument is strong, Kerri smith’s argument is stronger. In Kerri Smith’s article “In Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay,” She claims that the five-paragraph essay should stay taught in schools as a guideline for a well-structured essay. She explains the five-paragraph essay as an “introduce-develop-conclude structure” that even great expository writing follows this structure (Smith 16). She purposefully communicates to her audience this idea to show that this structure gives students the knowledge and capability to write a professional essay. The five-paragraph essay includes the three key points to have a well-structured and organized essay. By mentioning that other great writers use this form of structure, she creates a stronger argument as to why the five-paragraph essay is important to education. She continues her article by explaining her early stages of writing and how she was taught; over time, her teachers would show her new ways to improve her writing which, in the end, she was told to think “of those five paragraphs simply as a mode of organization” (Smith
Warner’s “Kill the 5-Paragraph Essay” has many valid points that do make sense and could make his argument effective. It is true that in many high school classrooms, students are simply writing from a “list of rules handed down by their teachers … including specific “good” transition words and limits on the number of sentences per paragraph or words per sentence.” This
When it came to the process of writing my first, second, and third essay’s, there was clear visual improvement that I have become a better writer in certain aspects. As for essay one, I tended to rely on my writing skills as a high school student rather than use the components of a successful college student essay. This was definite once I received the feedback given by ...
In the essay, Unteaching the Five-Paragraph Essay, Foley Marie expresses her discontent with the way that the five-paragraph technique hinders preparation for the real world. The five-paragraph formula remains alive and strong in many schools preparing students for college and even in some colleges. Teachers are forced to teach an overwhelming number of students in our overcrowded school systems. The simple formula that the format brings is too tempting to pass up when teaching such numbers. Professors, such as Foley Marie, must spend time on correcting the the misled student’s writing skills to not revolve around the format. The format handicaps a student’s growth in ideas. The widely taught ,”structure invites students to fill the five slots
Writing is so much easier when you don’t have a ridiculous amount of guidelines you have to follow. With literary freedom, we are able to express ourselves more than if we have to follow a specific set of rules for every thing we write. This is one downfall for high school English. We have to order our papers in a specific sequence while writing about a topic that is chosen for us. This English composition class changed all of that. We were able to write about anything that related to the given type of essay, which greatly improved our ability to fully immerse ourselves into every paper. This greatly affected my writing thoughts about writing; they changed from hating to write for school to actually enjoying it because I was able to find new things about my self while deepening my knowledge for writing.
Academic writing is a very discouraging topic that most young writers do not even want to begin to think about or imagine doing. Throughout college everyone will be asked to write multiple academic essays regardless of their major. We have read two sources in class that have helped clear up some common myths and also helped make academic writing not seem so foreign. The two sources we read were “What is Academic Writing?” and the first chapter of the book “From Inquiry to Academic Writing”. Many young students seeking a college degree are fearful about the amount of work needed to be done in order to survive their college courses. Academic writing is a challenging topic that many young people struggle to get a grasp on. Once the skill of
Originally appearing on the blog “Good Writer, Bad Writer,” the post called “The Five-paragraph Fix” was written by Shaun Patrick Doyle, a Writing Consultant at Cornell University. It is a unique approach in presenting the argument of lengthy crtical thinking papers being easier than, what many claim to be more of a comfortable writing, a short 1-2 page paper. The author of this blog makes a personal realization of why he used to believe long essays are harder and how that belief has changed as he grew out of the five-paragraph structure of writing a paper. Writing long papers require hard work in coming up with the argument and brainstorming deeper questions that allow you to know the topic you are discussing in depth, but once you have developed strong research it is easy to meet the required word count for those lengthy critical papers.
You think that writing requirements in high are a lot but once you enter college you’ll see writing requirements that you’ve never thought of having. Middle school and early high school years give the basics of English. By the time student begin college they lose their skills of writing. Also, for students that haven’t studied English in a while, that have assigned to take academic writing it will probably be difficult for them. Professors in all majors except students to enter their courses in the first semester of college. It is for this reason that all students should become familiar with the three types of writing assignments like argumentative, research, and expository,
Acknowledging children’s interest in reading, I had setup a tent in the outside area of the Pipi room and kept three books inside the tent for reading. Soon, it caught F attention, a one year three months old infant, and she crawled towards it. She sat outside the tent and observed it for a while, and then she went inside it and looked around. To my surprise, she bent her body outside the tent with a book in her hand and pointed it towards me. “Do you want me to read the book to you?” I asked F. F kept the book on the grass and pushed it towards me. Acknowledging F’s intentions, I picked up the book and went inside the tent. I read the book to F and F listened to me attentively while observing the photos in the book. Given that the book was related to dinosaurs, due to continuous repetition of the word dinosaur F tried to speak it and said, “Ddd”. When I finished reading, I looked at F and asked her if
The traditional writing style I learned and got used to was the classic format for compositions which is the five-paragraph essay. It is not the only format for writing an essay, but it’s the traditional one many are familiar with. Students are trained to memorize the format of the five-paragraph essay. This allows the student to answer the exam prompt quickly