English1A

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Unteaching the Five­ Paragraph Essay

The /hie-paragraph Jormula confuses and alienates students and undermines our most basic goals as writing Instructors. by Marie Foley

You may remember the poster dis­ tributed by a publisher a few years ago featuring the Five-Paragraph Mon5tcr. He was an engagingly silly dinosaur, with a menacing grin ("introductory paragraph-lots of teeth, no bite"), an unplcaslngly plump middle ("three paragraphs . . . mostly bulk") and a "somewhat limp and drawn out" con­ cluding paragraph/tail. Many of us gleefully tacked the poster to our bul­ letin boards, certain that by mocking the beastly formula it would slip away. But unfortunately the five-paragraph essay is alive and well, still being taught in some junior and senior high schools and colleges.

At the university where I taught three years ago, composition faculty were asked how high school students might be better prepared for college composition. One third of those responding called for an end to the five-paragraph essay. "Teach essay structure without relying on the fivc­ paragraph formula," wrote one in· structor. "They should get away from formula writing (the five-paragraph essay) and give kids experience in tackling all kinds of writing,'' sug­ gested another. The most pointed response was, "The one-idea, three-

Unttaching tlit Five-Paragraph Essay

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example, five-paragraph format­ AARGH!"

Why docs the five-paragraph for­ mula continue to defy extinction? Possibly the answer is teacher sur­ vival. Despite our national concern for improving writing, English classes continue to be overcrowded , particu­ larly in high schools. High school in­ structors arc expected to teach 150­ plus students how to write an essay when the essay by its very nature re­ quires personalized instruction . Though I bcgru9ge the time spent on untcachlng the five-paragraph essay, I often wonder whether I too might be tempted to teach with a formula if

· faced with that many students. But the more I encounter the fivc­

paragraph formula and the distorted mindset which it produces in stu­ dents, the less acceptable it seems, even as a strategy for survival . I am speaking here not of the teaching of structure per sc, but specifically of the five-paragraph approach-the formula introduction, the three "suppon" para­ graphs and the summary conclusion. This formula runs counter to our most basic goals as writing instructors. In­ stead of generating thinking, the for­ mula deters it. AS soon as students

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Foley, Marie. "Unteaching the Five-Paragraph Essay." Teaching English in the Two Year College 16.4 (1989): 231-35.

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meet their quota of three body para­ graphs, they arc free to stop thinking about their topic. 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. With sufficient practice, they master the formula, and it becomes so im­ printed that they arc loath to part with It

The Fonnula Alienates Students

My experience has been that students trained in the five-paragraph method regard essay writing as an alien, un­ natural enterprise. Filling In the struc­ ture with the requisite 500 words, they go through the motions of writ· ing, but they seldom create something authentically theirs. In their personal letters and in their journals they freely express themselves, but for the essay they adopt an alias. This very point was made almost twenty years ago by William Coles In his critique of "themcwriting," his tcnn for the form of "non-writing" invented by English teachers for use exclusively in English classrooms. Colcs's main point applies equally to the five-paragraph for­ mula-that It fails to engage the ~character, personality, moral nature, (and I convictions" · of our students (136-37). '· · Possibly the five-paragraph formula is a useful first step for beginning stu· dent writers. It helps them overcome writer's block and gives them the "I i:an- do it" experience. But when taught as the only writing mode, the formula eventually creates a gulf be­ tWcen the student's self and his or her written expression. Many college freshmen enter composition courses alienated from writing, dreading it or resentful that such courses are re­ quired. What pleasure can there be in

learning to write by a formula? Only the dubious pleasure of receiving an A for mastering it. The formula re­ inforces the writing-to-plcase-thc­ teachcr syndrome that turns students against the system ..

In addition to blocking discovery and squelching authenticity, the fivc­ parag.raph formula is unnatural in other ways. For one, professional writ­ ers do not use it. On a deeper level, the formula undermines one of the writer's (and reader's) most b~sic needs-the need for coherence. The problem is not that the five-paragraph formula produces incoherence but rather that it limits students to a su­ perficial, predictable level of co­ herence. For the body of their essays, students tend to tack any three loosely related ideas onto the prefabricated scaffolding. These three ideas cohere only in the sense that they arc three aspects of the chosen topic-three reasons why I have decided to become a dentist, three advantages to joining ROTC, three examples of hypocrisy in Huddebmy Finn. As long as students construct a thesis sentence that ac­ counts for their three ideas and they insert transitions between the para­ graphs ("Anothu example of prejudice against Asian Americans Is .. . "), they feel they have mastered structure.

But juxtaposition is not coherence. To borrow a phrase from an article on coherence by Anita Brostoff, "next to is not connected to" (278). To be asked merely to enumerate three as­ pects of any topic relieves students of the need to probe relationships; in­ deed, it robs them of any motivation to do so. Take the student who de­ cides to write about three benefits of jogging: health, weight control, and . stress reduction. What If in the pro­ cess of writing, the student discovers this interrelationship: that feeling healthy and looking trim help to

TETYC, December 1989 212

reduce stress? The student is likely to · let the insight slide since the formula

requires only that three ideas be dis· cussed next to one another. Nor does the student know what to do with the insight for the formula creates the no· tion that an essay is basically three mini-essays joined by transitions.

Something is wrong when a writing assignment deters thinking instead of leading the student to discover con­ nections. Indeed throughout their col­ lege careers, students will be expected to write thoughtful papers and essay exams on complex, often abstract, subjects. But how can students ex· plore the relationship, say, between Darwin and fascism, i£ they have never had to explore the relationship between more accessible ideas, such as how stress affects a person's self­ image?

Ironically, students who do attempt to go beyond the five-paragraph for­ mula are likely to be penalized for writing incoherently because they do not know how to signal their more complex structure. ln his study of the organization of college essays, Richard Haswell found that although students could generate a variety of organiza­ tional patterns, they frequently were unaware of these patterns and thus unable to signal them. Haskell notes that teachers accustomed to the sim­ ple structure of the five-paragraph essay will be less likely to recognize this complex organization, since "judged by its appearance as a 'five paragraph theme,' the essay will not cohere" c-.os). In other words, the student may be penalized rather than helped to develop the complex organi· zation needed for expressing complex thought.

Teaching the five-paragraph for­ mula thus harms students in some fundamental ways, depriving them or the pleasures and challenges of writ­

Vnt.eaching the Five-Paragraph Essay

ing and ill-preparing them for aca­ demic and real world writing. While it may solve the immediate problem of teaching form, it does a disservice to students in the long run. Currently our profession is alive with dialogue and research about the writing pro­ cess, but proportionally little has been published about how writers achieve form and about how form can be taught. Perhaps this neglect is helping keep the five-paragraph formula alive. Even teachers who engage in process­ centered teaching fall back on the five-paragraph formula when teaching form . One way to rid ourselves of the formula is to develop a repertoire of alternatives to it. We (that is, all of us engaged in the teaching of writing) need to share whatever practical, workable, nonformulaic strategics we have developed to increase students' consciousness or form.

Alternatives to the Formula

In the interest of contributing to such an exchange, let me describe how l wean my students from the £ive­ paragraph formula: by offering the metaphor of the essay as journey. As with any journey, 1 tell them, an essay should move forward in a purposeful way, with a logical starting and ending point and a rationale for the sequence of stops along the route. Sometimes students map out the route (outline) before writing, but usually it develops during the revision of their rather freely written first draft. As they revise I encourage them to think about rela­ tionships and to grapple with contra­ dictions, complexities, and nuances. Also during revision they learn to pro­ vide cohesion signals so that the essay becomes a pleasurable journey for their readers.

This journey metaphor gives stu· dents the sense of writing as move­

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ment, unlike the static quality of their five-paragraph essays (so aptly con· veyed by the poster's sluggish dino· saur). But students can benefit from more practical guidance on how to or· ganize their "journeys." For this I in­ troduce them to the patterns of organ­ ization most frequently used by writers. The most obvious one, al­ ready familiar to students, is moving through time (chronological order) . Other such patterns include moving from outside to inside (spatial order), from least to most significant (em­ phatic order), from effects to causes (causal order), from simple to com­ plex ideas, from narrow to wider im­ plications, from the obvious to the surprising, from the problem to its so­ lution, and from incident to in­ creasingly deeper reflections on it. Anyone wishing a more exhaustive list could read Haswell, who cites Ii "log­ ical organizational patterns" (iOi~). A less daunting list can be found in Booth and Gregory's text, The Harptr 6' Row Rhetoric (163-72). Frank D'Angelo offers a book-length, theo­ retical study of discourse patterns in A Conceptual Theory of RJaetoric.

These patterns may seem sus­ piciously like formulas, but they are not artificial, teacher-devised for· mulas. They have become discourse· conventions because they correlate with natural thinking processes. This is the basic point of D'Angelo's study. Starting with a premise from psychol­ ogy that thinking itself is a structural proccss--a process of getting at rcla­ tionsh~ps, hierarchies and pattcrns-­ D'A!tgelo posits that there arc "innate organizing principles" that determine how we organize discourse (26). In other words, the way writers organize 'discourse is a manifestation of innate organizing tendencies of the mind.

Unlike the five-paragraph formula, these patterns of organization arc ver­

satile: they can structure an entire essay, a sequence of paragraphs, or a single paragraph. They can overlap (a chronological pattern is often simul­ taneously emphatic), and they can be combined in chains (a causal pattern can merge into a problem-solution pattern). By making students con­ scious of these patterns, we enable them to develop a sophisticated con­ sciousness of form commensurate with their increasing maturity of thought. And this consciousnes~ of form will serve them at any stage of the writing process, not just in revis­ ing but also in prewriting. Simply knowing about emphatic order, for example,·-can provide the impetus for students to push their thinking be­ yond the obvious.

I would like to briefly mention in­ troductions and conclusions, two of the five paragraphs required by the five-paragraph formula. The journey metaphor helps students think of an introduction not as an account of what is to cQme (the formula ap­ proach) but as an invitation to a jour­ ney. Their introduction is an occasion to make connection with their read­ e~appeal to them, anticipate their needs-and orient them as to the di­ rection of the coming journey. The concluding paragraph is not merely the slot for reiterating main points; it marks the destination of the journey. It develops the final, most significant point or the climax or the surprise. Or perhaps it develops a reflection in­ spired by the journey. While it must provide a sense of closure, it is always meaty and never merely drags behind the essay like the tail on the dinosaur.

As I have mentioned, this journey metaphor has helped me wean stu- . dents away from the five-paragraph formula. It is unfortunate, however, that such weaning ever has to take place. Whenever teachers find them-

TETYC, December 1989

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selves unteaching what others have problems created by the five· taught, the sense of our collective paragraph formula be addressed by mission as writing instructors has writing instructors at all levels and broken down. And as always the real that those who have created alter­ losers are the students. For their native strategics be willing to share sakes, it seems imperative that the their expertise.

Works Cited

Booth, Wayne C., and Marshall W. Gregory. The Harper & Row Rhetoric: Writ­ ing as Thinking/Thinking as Writing. New York: Harper, 1987.

Brostoff, Anita. "Coherence: 'Next to' ls Not 'Connected to."' College Composi­ tion and Communication 32 (1981): 278-9'4.

Coles, William C. "Freshman Composition: The Circle of Unbelief." College English 31 (1969): 13'4-'42.

D'Angelo, Frank J. A Conceptual Theory of Rhetoric. Cambridge: Winthrop, 1975.

Haswell, Richard H. "The Organization of Impromptu Essays." College Composi­ tion and Communication 37 (1986): '402-15.

Marie Foley has taught composition and literature at Santa Barbara City College and the University of California, Santa Barbara, since 1975. She has published in the NCTE Classroom Practicts series and in the ADE Bulletin (forthcoming).

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