unteaching the five paragraph essay summary

Unlearning the Five Paragraph Essay

A key challenge for our freshmen students in the transition from high school to college is to unlearn the five paragraph essay.

I call the five paragraph essay a hot house flower because it cannot blossom in the sun. No professional writers actually use this form. College instructors may be baffled when they witness it. Yet it is the main form that our freshmen students know and deploy.

Unlearning the five paragraph essay may be a greater challenge for our students than learning how to write—with all its messiness—in the first place. As anyone who has tried to master a second language knows, the first language creates interference. We fall back on the inherited patterns of the first language which impede our mastery of the second.

What is the five paragraph essay?

The five paragraph essay encourages its practitioners to produce a thesis with three parts and then to map those three parts onto body paragraphs followed by a conclusion.

The five paragraph essay gives the writer the false comfort of a formula into which to plug ideas. It takes the sting out of thinking—which is one of the primary challenges of writing—and promises us whatever our thoughts, we can reduce them to an over-simplified format.

I have witnessed some student writers attempting to produce six page papers with five horribly bloated paragraphs. It’s like religiously following Siri-narrated map directions into an adjacent lake.

As long as you are not a stickler for nomenclature, some longer essays are also five paragraph essays when they hew to its peculiar logic of listing and mapping. Not all essays with five paragraphs are five paragraph essays when they grow organically—based on a writer’s purposes and design—rather than being held hostage to a formula.

Why is the five paragraph essay a weak form?

It distorts what a thesis is.

This distortion is both conceptual and syntactic.

A thesis presents an arguable idea and also serves as the controlling generalization for the essay as a whole.

One way of conceptualizing a thesis is to use the metaphor of an umbrella (this metaphor comes from an  article   written by my colleague Karen Gocsik). A thesis is like an umbrella because it is large enough to cover the full range of ideas explored in body paragraphs. When a thesis is distorted by being broken down into the three parts which are then mapped onto the body paragraphs, it serves as three little umbrellas rather than one large one. Student writers aren’t learning to generalize, but to find a poor substitute for generalizing. The three little umbrellas aren't keeping them from getting soaked.

In its crudest form, the three part thesis often devolves into identifying subjects rather than arguments and identifies the areas of focus picked up by the body paragraphs. For example, a student writer might decide to address the issue of friendship in literature, history, and personal experience. Such a tentative thesis focuses on a subject (“friendship”) and three major areas where the writer hopes to address that subject. The writer never identifies the claim about friendship to be developed in the essay, nor even wonders whether it is useful to address these claims in such disparate areas as literature, history, and personal experience. Rather, he or she just joins or adds these three disparate areas together as though they formed an automatically meaningful sequence.

Finally, when a thesis is divided into three parts, the sentence which reports these three parts itself frequently breaks down. It is difficult enough to express an idea in a complete sentence. Try encapsulating three ideas, joining them together, and jamming them into the thesis. Chaos generally ensues.

It distorts the organization of an essay.

The sole organizing principle of the five paragraph essay is that of addition.

A well organized essay is more than the sum of its parts.

Consider the various components that might be included in an essay.

A writer might want to highlight major ideas or issues and minor ones as well.

A writer may want to anticipate and address the arguments of others that run counter to his or her own.

A writer might wish to explain the complicated reasons behind any given phenomenon (mass incarceration, global warming, income disparity) and identify which ones are most compelling and why.

In order to perform the first task one might organize according to a relationship of emphasis: most important, less important, less important still.

In order to perform the second task, one might compare and contrast the various arguments.

In order to perform the third task, one might devote a paragraph to defining the phenomenon and the next to identifying and assessing its causes.

Because it is too rigid in its over-reliance on addition, the five paragraph essay would not allow a writer to organize via emphasis, contrast, or causality. Rather the ideas would have to be presented illogically (as additions) when they should be organized according to other types of relationships which would reflect the real purpose for writing. The form itself encourages incoherence.

The five paragraph essay takes meaning making out of the writer’s hands.

An essay is a vehicle for exploring ideas and creating meaning.

In order to explore ideas, a writer makes a series of decisions about how to present, develop, and organize them.

In order to create meaning, a writer decides how to sequence sentence after sentence and paragraph after paragraph.

The five paragraph essay takes many of these decisions away from the writer. It promises that a formula will replace decision and meaning making. As long as a writer plugs into the formula, the reader will be electrified by the magical results.

As a consequence, students do not develop strategies for the complex expression of their own ideas. How do I best express them? Why should I organize in one way rather than another? How do I anticipate a reader's response to my argument?

It creates the illusion that the form creates meaning instead of the writer. It creates the illusion that it is the sole or primary form so that student writers never learn the full variety of formal approaches.

The five paragraph essay may have been developed out of a well-meaning effort to simplify essay writing for novice writers.But it is not merely a simplification of essay writing, it is an over-simplification.  And as such, it limits the development of the cognitive abilities of student writers.

The five paragraph essay does not encourage students to develop the ability to be critical about their own strengths and weaknesses as writers because it turns writing into a check-list of features that are either present or absent.

Why should college instructors pay attention to what students have learned in the past?

Teaching students about writing requires an understanding and acknowledgment about their earlier instruction in the five paragraph essay.

Without understanding the nature of and the reasoning for that past instruction, you will appear to undermine that instruction without a real purpose.

Students won't understand why they are being asked to adapt to a new, unusual, and even strange mode of writing instruction.

They will fall into the familiar and comfortable formulas taught to them in the past because you won't have given them reasons for the new instruction about writing and the challenges you put in their path.

You might not even know that your instruction in writing is new to your students.

In that regard, you and your students may be on a common ground: what is familiar to each of you may not be familiar to the other.

But that common ground is not fertile ground for teaching or learning.

Unlearning the five paragraph essay means unteaching it as well.

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UMGC Effective Writing Center Secrets of the Five-Paragraph Essay

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This form of writing goes by different names. Maybe you've heard some of them before: "The Basic Essay," "The Academic Response Essay," "The 1-3-1 Essay." Regardless of what you've heard, the name you should remember is "The Easy Essay."

Once you are shown how this works--and it only takes a few minutes--you will have in your hands the secret to writing well on almost any academic assignment. Here is how it goes.

Secret #1—The Magic of Three

Three has always been a magic number for humans, from fairy tales like "The Three Little Pigs" to sayings like “third time’s a charm.” Three seems to be an ideal number for us--including the academic essay. So whenever you are given a topic to write about, a good place to begin is with a list of three. Here are some examples (three of them, of course):

Topic : What are the essential characteristics of a good parent? Think in threes and you might come up with:

• unconditional love 

Certainly, there are more characteristics of good parents you could name, but for our essay, we will work in threes.

Here's a topic that deals with a controversial issue:

Topic : Should women in the military be given frontline combat duties?

• The first reason that women should be assigned to combat is equality. 
• The second reason is their great teamwork. 
• The third reason is their courage.

As you see, regardless of the topic, we can list three points about it. And if you wonder about the repetition of words and structure when stating the three points, in this case, repetition is a good thing. Words that seem redundant when close together in an outline will be separated by the actual paragraphs of your essay. So in the essay instead of seeming redundant they will be welcome as signals to the reader of your essay’s main parts.

Finally, when the topic is an academic one, your first goal is the same: create a list of three.

Topic: Why do so many students fail to complete their college degree?

• First, students often...
• Second, many students cannot...
• Finally, students find that...

Regardless of the reasons you might come up with to finish these sentences, the formula is still the same.

Secret #2: The Thesis Formula

Now with your list of three, you can write the sentence that every essay must have—the thesis, sometimes called the "controlling idea," "overall point," or "position statement." In other words, it is the main idea of the essay that you will try to support, illustrate, or corroborate.

Here’s a simple formula for a thesis: The topic + your position on the topic = your thesis.

Let’s apply this formula to one of our examples:

Topic: Essential characteristics of a good parent Your Position: patience, respect, love Thesis: The essential characteristics of a good parent are patience, respect, and love.

As you see, all we did was combine the topic with our position/opinion on it into a single sentence to produce the thesis: The essential characteristics of a good parent are patience, respect, and love.

In this case, we chose to list three main points as part of our thesis. Sometimes that’s a good strategy. However, you can summarize them if you wish, as in this example:

Topic: Women in combat duty in the military Your Position: They deserve it Thesis: Women deserve to be assigned combat duty in the military.

This type of thesis is shorter and easier to write because it provides the overall position or opinion without forcing you to list the support for it in the thesis, which can get awkward and take away from your strong position statement. The three reasons women deserve to be assigned combat duties--equality, teamwork, courage--will be the subjects of your three body paragraphs and do not need to be mentioned until the body paragraph in which they appear.

Secret #3: The 1-3-1 Outline

With your thesis and list of three main points, you can quickly draw a basic outline of the paragraphs of your essay. You’ll then see why this is often called the 1-3-1 essay.

• Supporting Evidence for Claim 1    
• Supporting Evidence for Claim 2
• Supporting Evidence for Claim 3

The five-paragraph essay consists of one introduction paragraph (with the thesis at its end), three body paragraphs (each beginning with one of three main points) and one last paragraph—the conclusion. 1-3-1.

Once you have this outline, you have the basic template for most academic writing. Most of all, you have an organized way to approach virtually any topic you are assigned.

Our helpful admissions advisors can help you choose an academic program to fit your career goals, estimate your transfer credits, and develop a plan for your education costs that fits your budget. If you’re a current UMGC student, please visit the Help Center .

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4.9: A review of the five-paragraph essay

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A review of the five-paragraph format

Many writers will be able to detail the five-paragraph format.

• The introduction previews the entire essay.
• The thesis statement goes at the end of the introduction and describes what the three body paragraphs will be about.
• The body paragraphs discuss each topic described in the thesis statement in detail.
• There should be transitions between each body paragraph.
• The conclusion repeats key points made in the essay and could be the introduction re-worded in a different way.

These are sample answers from writers who describe what they have learned about the five-paragraph format. The five-paragraph format is a reader-friendly organizational structure that writers can rely on if they need to get information quickly and formally across to a wide audience. For instance, the five-paragraph format might be useful when writing a report to a supervisor with the purpose of explaining progress on a project. The introduction gives the most important information at the beginning and each paragraph is clearly related to one topic. The conclusion leaves the reader with a summary and a possible call to action.

Problems with the five-paragraph format

Donald Murray in his article “Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product”argues writing should be taught as “…the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we know and what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world” (4). However, when writers use writing to discover more about a topic, the five-paragraph format can be limiting because of the following:

• Writers usually decide on the three main body paragraphs before they start drafting.
• With three large topics to change from, writers are less likely to dig deep into a specific topic.
• Writers may use the five-paragraph format in ways that avoid detail and make their essays indistinguishable from other essays on the same topics.

For instance, a writer might want to discuss communication on social media. They decide before they start writing that their three main topics will be Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. By the time they write a few details about Facebook, they move on to Instagram. There is not enough space for the writer to get into details and differentiate ideas on their topic and to describe observations, experiences, and research in depth. When writers start with three main topics, it’s also hard to find the space to teach the reader something new.

Discover with writing

Writing is an opportunity to share unique experiences with readers. If writers feel like they are not sharing anything valuable through their writing, they should reconsider their stance on the assignment or schedule a meeting with their instructor so that they can orient themselves more meaningfully to the assignment. Often, five-paragraph format writing is uninspired. Writers race to jot down what they know on three loosely related subjects so that they can finish the essay. The writer is not learning through the writing and neither is the reader. The main problem with the five-paragraph format is that it discourages writers from discovering what they could write on one focused and specific topic.

When to use the five-paragraph format

Published essays, in any genre, that use the five-paragraph organization are very rare. It might be interesting for writers to pay attention to how published material that they read on their own time is organized. Because first-year writing is a context where writers are encouraged to learn and teach through their writing, the five-paragraph format might not be the best choice for organization. However, when writers are in situations that demand them to relay information quickly, the five-paragraph format can be useful. Formulaic writing is not uninventive or inherently bad. Different genres use various kinds of formulaic writing, and it’s important for writers to adhere to conventions and pay attention to how essays are organized in the genre they are writing in.

Works Cited

Murray, Donald. “Teach writing as a process not product.” The Leaflet, vol .71, no.3 (1972), pp. 11-14.

“4.9 A Review of the Five-Paragraph Essay” is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 / A derivative from the original work by Julie A. Townsend.

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“unteaching the five-paragraph essay”.

In the article “Unteaching the Five-Paragraph Essay”, Foley Marie, argues that the five-paragraph formula do not allow students to think in a critical way, and it prevents them from discovering new information. According to the author “the prefabricated structure invites students to fill the five slots with what they already know, thus often depriving them of the pleasure of discovering new ideas”. The reason why five-paragraph formula continues to be taught is because of teacher survival, it would be easier to teach a class the formula of five-paragraph than to teach the students individually. Although students experience the emotion of nervousness in writing, they hardly create something theirs. The author believes that this formula is useful only for beginners students writers “it helps them to overcome writers block and gives them the, I can do it”. However, Foley believe that this formula of writing should not only be the writing mode; because it would create gab between the students self and their expression in writing. The author believes that the five-paragraph formula will not prepare students for college or for real life writing, because professional writer do not use it. Moreover, Foley believe that in this formula, students cannot link between the three body paragraphs, this kind of writing prevent student form discovering connection. According to the author “teaching the five paragraph formula thus harms students in some fundamental way, depriving them of the pleasure and challenges of writing”.

At first I disagreed with the author, because I thought that it would be easier for students to write in five-paragraph formula. Teachers would give students some rules, and they would just follow them. My personality is very clear and direct, if my teacher gave me a rule, I would apply it and I would live by it. However, after reading the whole article the author convince me that the five-paragraph formula is not that useful and affective for students. It really prevents them from exploring new information, and students would only write what they know. Another thing that the author point out that really griped my attention is that students cannot discover connection in writing while they are using the five-paragraph formula. That information is true, because it is hard for me to find connection between my paragraphs when I write in five-paragraph formula. Moreover, why should students only use five-paragraph formula while professional writers do not use it? It would be hard for me as a student to not understand the professional writers formula.

Foley, Marie.  Unteaching Five-Paragraph Essay

Click to access foleyunteaching%205%20paragraph.pdf

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