Unlearning the five paragraph essay means unteaching it as well.
You can use the five-paragraph format for writing any of the five styles of essay: argumentative, descriptive, narrative, informative, and persuasive. Think of this approach as not merely an essay structure, but also a means to adapt your writing and strengthen your composition skills for any future assignment.
Her take on the debate: It’s worth walking students through some of the classic five-paragraph-essay strategies—compare and contrast, cause and effect—but not worth insisting that students limit themselves to three points, if they can extend an idea through multiple scenarios. Sometimes the five-paragraph essay is referred to as the hamburger of essays. That’s not because it’s cheesy, but rather because of how it is built—like a hamburger with a beginning (bun), middle segmented into separate parts (hamburger patty, lettuce, condiments, etc.), and end (bun). Melissa Mazzaferro, a middle school writing teacher in East Hartford, Conn., tries to draw from the potential strengths of the five-paragraph essay when she teaches writing, without adhering slavishly to it. On the other hand, scholars who harbor reservations about the five-paragraph essay argue that it can quickly morph from support to straitjacket. The five-paragraph essay lends itself to persuasive or argumentative writing, but many other types of writing aren’t well served by it, Snow pointed out. You would not use a five-paragraph essay to structure a book review or a work memorandum. This essay format can also be thought of as a building block for almost every type of essay you could write. It is built on a and uses the main pieces of support, which are formatted into segments (or paragraphs), to uphold your thesis. This approach can be expanded based on however much support or analysis is appropriate for your essay. Among the genres of writing projects that students experience in upper elementary, middle and high school, the five-paragraph essay is one of the most popular. Well, it’s popular with teachers. With students, just saying the phrase “five-paragraph essay” can evoke audible groans. For those writers, it calls to mind themes of dullness and standardization, a static formula. Yet the form is a valid one for a number of reasons, and in the right conditions, it can encourage creative thinking instead of stifling it. In fact, among the benefits of the five-paragraph essay are valuable opportunities for writers in terms of cognition, rhetoric, and culture.
Here are some common and trending topics for 5-paragraph essays:
At a prior school, Anderson found that a more free-form workshop model in use tended to fall short for students with disabilities and those who came without a strong foundation in spelling and grammar. The format of a five-paragraph essay provided them with useful scaffolds.
Transition Words For Essays - The Ultimate List For 2025
A five-paragraph essay is a prose composition that follows the basic structure of five paragraphs. It includes an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Often critiqued for being too formulaic, the five-paragraph essay is an essential tool in every writer's toolkit and is especially handy on timed writing assignments and exams.
Which is arguably the most important part of a five-paragraph essay?
Interesting! I just finished reading a set of reflective letters from students in my developmental English course in college. Most of them thanked me for teaching them essay format because, as they said, either no one had ever directly taught it to them, or they had never understood the format. They found that the essay format of thesis statement, support, and organization helped them to get their point across and eliminate rambling. Although some disliked the fact that they could not be creative, I explained to them that audience is important. To help with this concept, the students wrote for a variety of audiences and a variety of purposes. The 5-paragraph essay was only one of a number of formats.
Which paragraph in a five-paragraph essay contains the hook?
Here is an alternate route. Take some well-written, publishedprose essays maybe from magazines or editorial pages or from somecontemporary books of collected essays. Analyze the way thewhole essay as well as various paragraphs are organized. Youmay want students in groups to construct an outline or graphic organizerfor that particular essay. What they will see is a sense oforder, but one that does not follow the 5PE format. If they havealready learned 5PE elsewhere, you can compare and contrast what they'velearned about 5PE with what they are now discovering about real writing. (However, let me be clear that learning the 5PE is not a prerequisite andno advantage that I can see).
Which is arguably the most important part of a five-paragraph essay?
It’s not clear whether the Common Core State Standards’ new emphases in writing expectations have impacted the five-paragraph essay’s popularity one way or another.