The Five Paragraph Essay

I feel that I have the ultimate love/hate relationship with the five paragraph essay. I first learned the format from one of my favorite teachers, Mrs. Mattson, who taught me language arts in the 8^th, 10^th, and 11^th grades. Mrs. Mattson was extremely strict with the writing process. To write an essay, she first had us freewrite or research our topic, depending on the type of essay we were writing. Once researching was done, we could begin writing thesis statements. She drilled into us that the thesis statement was the most important part of the paper and if it was weak, then the entire paper would be weak. Because of this belief, she made us write, rewrite, and revise thesis statements multiple times. After this, we made outlines. The thesis statement was put at the top of the outline. Then the outline mapped out the introduction, three body paragraphs and three supporting points for each paragraph, and then the conclusion. Each section of the outline that represented the body paragraphs needed to relate directly back to the thesis statement. If they didn’t, that section needed to be deleted and rewritten so that it would relate to the thesis. Mrs. Mattson stressed the outline just as much as the thesis statement. I remember spending days in class just revising outlines. Only after the outline was perfect could the actual essay be written; and then of course, we needed to go through at least two drafts of the essay. Everything was handed in to Mrs. Mattson at the end, and if I remember right, the outline and thesis statement revisions were worth significantly more than the final essay. 

While this probably sounds like torture to most students, I actually really liked writing 5 paragraph essays in this way. It gave me a structure and direction. There was no way that I could get lost in what I was trying to say because it was all mapped out for me beforehand. And I loved how neatly my paper was always tied together. Overall, the five paragraph essay taught me organization skills that served me well throughout my college career. However, this being said, it also limited me in some ways. I was never taught a structure beyond the five paragraph essay. When I was assigned an eight-page paper my freshman year of college, I couldn’t figure out how to format a paper longer than five paragraphs and ended up getting points taken off for making all of my paragraphs roughly two pages in length. I’m still terrified of a paper that has an “implied thesis.” And I’m wary of adding a counter-argument at the end of a paper because I can still hear Mrs. Mattson telling me that absolutely everything in my paper needs to relate directly back to and support my thesis statement. 

Given my experiences, I think that the five paragraph essay definitely has a place in English education. It serves as an excellent, straight-forward, non-intimidating introduction into essay writing. But it needs to remain just that: an introduction. It is when teachers stick with the five paragraph format well into 10^th or 11^th grades that the five paragraph essay becomes a problem. Teachers at these levels need to expose their students to different ways and forms of essay writing. As Wesley said, they need to show them that each writing assignment warrants a different format or structure instead of trying to squeeze every assignment into five paragraphs. Hopefully doing so will eliminate the confusion for college freshmen like me who try to format eight pages of writing into five neat paragraphs. 

Here is my resource link that discusses the place of the five paragraph essay in high school and in college.