Readings for February 8
I don’t think it’s necessary to review the different points made regarding the pros and cons of the five paragraph essay. Instead, I’ll focus the one I agreed with the most, Nunnally. Nunnally made excellent points about the relevance of the five paragraph essay. Although the formula is not always applicable and reading them is tedious and dull, the five paragraph essay does teach useful writing skills such as thesis, clarity, relevance, and support of ideas. What I find baffling is that teachers often don’t relay this information to their students. Instead they focus on the three ideas. Students get caught up in following this formula without understand what they are doing. Thus, instead of relevance of ideas and support, students often are limited (by the three) or distort their ideas to fit (again three). I think it is important to tell them that they should concentrate on coming up with a thesis, and then finding ways to support that. Teachers should specify that an entire paper could be support of one idea or support of 10 ideas (or perhaps the paper does naturally have three ideas and it should be noted that that too is acceptable). More than one paragraph can be dedicated to supporting one idea. Again, students need to know why they are doing what they are doing. Nunnally sums this up by suggesting that, “students should be encouraged to see the FPT for what it is: a helpful but contrived exercise useful in developing solid principles of composition” (71). I do think that students should know about the five paragraph essay if for no other reason than to pass state mandated tests and to have an idea of where to start when writing a paper; however, they need to know that the formula can be changed to suit the needs of the paper and the thesis. The five paragraph essay is a good way to learn how to write but there is no need for it to be used repeatedly after one has mastered the concept.
The following website kind of outlines how a five paragraph essay can be used as a skeleton to start a paper, and how once you get into it, it often becomes far more than the standard FPT: http://www.brooklyn.liunet.edu/fw/portfolio_resource_guide/d1a.htm
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2 comments:
Hi Kerry, Loven the blog - and loven that you post early!! I, too, liked Nunnally. It seems our cohort is a pragmatic group. I agree that 3 paragraphs is limiting however, students tend to bite off more than they can chew and get off topic very easily. 3 main ideas seems like plenty to my tiny brain! I really liked adding genre to the FPT - it gave the tired old format a little life.
Kerry, you go girl! Dead on with your approach to the topic. I too feel that there are important reasons to teach the five part format, including the thesis and structural aspects, but I also agree that the teacher needs to step up for that the student knows that it is just one type of format and not the end all. I also agree with how tedious it is to grade such works, which is why Romano is the Shiznit!
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