The five paragraph essay: a dreaded but inevitable piece of writing for many high school students. Despite ever-shifting state and national standards, the prevalence of the five paragraph essay (FPE) in high school English classes has endured. However, it seems as though the FPE leaves many students unprepared for writing beyond high school. As Patricia A Dunn writes in her blog, Teachers, Profs, Parents: Writers Who Care, many college writing instructors indicate that students enter their classrooms solely prepared to write expository essays. These students simply lack the skills to express themselves through narrative.
This issue is briefly taken on by Dawn Latta Kirby in her book, Inside Out: Strategies for Teaching Writing. Here, Kirby indicates that there has been far too great an emphasis on the FPE. To teachers who protest that testing standards require mastery of the FPE, Kirby indicates that test scores are not the sole judge of good writing, nor should they be the sole aim of our instruction (131). Kirby encourages her readers to “engage in conversation with . . . colleagues to learn what you and they really think about FPEs” (131), and so that is exactly what I will do.
I agree with
much of what Kirby writes (I was especially on board for the third chapter of Inside Out, which discusses building
community within your classroom and developing a welcoming environment. Not surprising, considering how obsessed I am
with this website that lets you design your own classroom posters!), and I do
think that writing in schools can often become too formulaic. However, I think she comes down a little too
hard on the FPE. While Kirby
acknowledges that FPEs are a building block for basic writing (131-132), she
dismisses it as writing that stymies creative thought and even seems to
attribute the prevalence of plagiarism to the constrictive, high stakes nature
associated with the FPE (132).
In my
opinion, the five paragraph essay is a critical writing form for students to
know. The FPE exam is not exclusive to
English class alone, and knowing how to quickly formulate a thesis and
supporting points is a crucial step for students who are limited to a 50 minute
exam time in, for instance, their social studies class. Would I love for all of my future colleagues
to abandon high stakes testing and formulaic essay prompts? Sure!
Making a portfolio or engaging in some other performance of knowledge is
a much better demonstration of mastery than a pressure cooker exam. However, the reality is that many high school
teachers, college professors, and various exams (the GRE, LSAT, and MTLE to
name a few) require quick writing that they expect to be at least organized and
coherent if not in the FPE form exactly.
To not equip our students for this does them a disservice.
I agree with
Kirby, however, that only teaching
the FPE and teaching it rigidly also does our students a disservice. Instead, I would advocate that students can
use the FPE creatively. Injecting humor,
description, and narrative into a FPE can enhance and improve student writing. The ideal FPE draws on both the formulaic and
the creative: transition words help keep the reader on track while vivid
imagery helps keep the reader engaged.
Organization and formula do not necessarily preclude creativity. The two worlds can work together.
It seems as
though the FPE is here to stay, so I think that it would behoove us to focus at
least some of our energy on learning not just how to teach the FPE, but how to
teach it well so that student
thinking doesn’t die along with their interest in writing.
What are
your thoughts on the FPE?
