The Value of 5-Paragraph Essays

The article in this post does a great job of putting the 5-paragraph essay in context.  I always used to tell my students that there was really no such thing as a 5-paragraph essay outside of school, just the way that surgeons don't go around dissecting frogs in their job (read the article...)  But I'd also show them my master's thesis and explain that although it was long, it was really just a huge 5-paragraph essay-- only with a "preface" instead of an "intro paragraph," and so on. 

Hope this article puts the purpose and value of the 5-paragraph essay into focus.  Don't forget about the video on our persuasive writing page on the CCTS English site!
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Can the Five-Paragraph Essay Be a Useful Teaching Tool?

            In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Georgia Perimeter College English professor Rob Jenkins says he used to believe that the five-paragraph essay was “evil” – he firmly believed that organization should arise organically from the content, as it always had with his own writing. For years, Jenkins refused to teach the five-paragraph formula in freshman composition and other courses, even, he says, “when students practically begged for a handy rubric to help them organize their thoughts.” Instead, he tried to lead them “on a journey of self-discovery, or at least a discovery of what they were trying to say and how.”

            But it didn’t work for most students, and Jenkins gradually came to realize three things about writing:

-    Organization is vital; this is what makes it possible for the reader to follow the writer’s train of thought.

-    Few people are naturally good at organizing their ideas in writing.

-    People won’t magically get better at it, even if they are highly intelligent and well-educated.

He came to see the five-paragraph formula as exactly what students needed, not just for their college papers but for all forms of communication, from after-dinner speeches to doctoral dissertations – basically, Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, then tell ’em, then tell ’em what you told ’em.

            The danger of the five-paragraph format is that it can become too rigid and formulaic. To prevent this, Jenkins uses two metaphors with his students:

            • The accordion – A piece of writing can expand if there’s more content and contract if there’s less. For example, a major writing assignment might have three or four introductory paragraphs, 18 middle paragraphs fleshing out five or six supporting points, and two or three concluding paragraphs. A brief interoffice memo might be only three or four paragraphs long, with the important points sandwiched between a brief introduction and conclusion. The key, says Jenkins, is that “if students can learn to organize their ideas into five paragraphs, they should be able later on to expand or contract the format as necessary – especially if they understand that the five-paragraph theme is merely a beginning, not an end unto itself.”

            • The frog – “A student who wants to become a heart surgeon doesn’t start out by cutting people open,” he says. “That student will probably begin, in an introductory biology course, by dissecting a frog… For student writers, the five-paragraph theme is their frog. It’s not a 10-page term paper, much less a 50-page proposal. But the lessons learned about organization from writing in the five-paragraph format make it possible, later on, to put together longer documents that are more logical and coherent.”

            Jenkins goes on to rebut the kinds of objections he himself used to raise about the five-paragraph approach:

            - It’s repetitive and redundant. Yes, it is, but redundancy isn’t all bad. “As any teacher, parent, or coach can attest, the way to get people to remember and improve at things is to repeat them over and over,” says Jenkins. To avoid being tiresome, the trick is to “repeat yourself without sounding as though you’re repeating yourself – which can lead to many fruitful discussions about sentence variety, word choice, and the importance of vocabulary building.”

            - It’s formulaic. True, but it really helps students to learn how to follow a set formula, because most kinds of writing are formulaic.

            - It’s devoid of content. Yes, content comes from students’ knowledge and life experience. This means that as students get older, they have more to plug into the structure of the five-paragraph essay. But the structure is helpful in managing and expressing thoughts in a way that others can understand. And that is what really counts.

“Accordions, Frogs, and the 5-Paragraph Theme” by Rob Jenkins in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 26, 2010 (Vol. LVI, #24, p. A76), no e-link available