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The pros and cons of the five-paragraph essay

The five-paragraph essay is a writing structure typically taught in high school. Structurally, it consists of an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. This clear structure helps students connect points into a succinct argument. It’s a great introductory structure, but only using this writing formula has its limitations.

What is a five-paragraph essay?

Outside of the self-titled structure, the five-paragraph essay has additional rules. To start, your introductory paragraph should include a hook to captivate your audience. It should also introduce your thesis , or the argument you are proving. The thesis should be one sentence, conclude your introductory paragraph, and include supporting points. These points will become the body of your essay. The body paragraphs should introduce a specific point, include examples and supporting information, and then conclude. This process is repeated until you reach the fifth concluding paragraph, in which you summarize your essay.

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The benefits of a five-paragraph essay

• Your ideas are clear. Presenting your ideas in a succinct, organized manner makes them easy to understand and the five-paragraph essay is designed for that. It provides a clear outline to follow. And most importantly, it’s organized around the thesis, so the argument can be traced from the beginning of the essay to its conclusion. When learning how to write essays, losing track of your thesis can be a common mistake. By using this structure, it’s harder to go on tangents. Each of your points are condensed into a single paragraph. If you struggle presenting your ideas, following this structure might be your best bet.
• It’s simple. Creating an essay structure takes additional brainpower and time to craft. If an essay is timed in an exam, relying on this method is helpful. You can quickly convey your ideas so you can spend more time writing and less structuring your essay.
• It helps build your writing skills. If you’re new to writing essays, this is a great tool. Since the structure is taken care of, you can practice writing and build your skills. Learn more writing tips to improve your essays.

The cons of writing a five-paragraph essay

• The structure is rigid. Depending on its usage, the structure and convention of the five paragraphs can make creating an essay easier to understand and write. However, for writing outside of a traditional high school essay, this format can be limiting. To illustrate points creatively, you might want to create a different structure to illustrate your argument.
• Writing becomes repetitive. This format quickly becomes repetitive. Moving from body-to-body paragraph using the same rules and format creates a predictable rhythm. Reading this predictable format can become dull. And if you’re writing for a college professor, they will want you to showcase creativity in your writing. Try using a different essay structure to make your writing more interesting
• Lack of transitions. Quickly moving through ideas in a five-paragraph structure essay doesn’t always leave room for transitions. The structure is too succinct. Each paragraph only leaves enough space for a writer to broadly delve into an idea and then move onto the next. In longer essays, you can use additional paragraphs to connect ideas. Without transitions, essays in this format can feel choppy, as each point is detached from the previous one
• Its rules can feel unnecessary. Breaking your essay into three body paragraphs keeps it concise. But is three the perfect number of body paragraphs? Some arguments might need more support than three points to substantiate them. Limiting your argument to three points can weaken its credibility and can feel arbitrary for a writer to stick to.

Creating essays using the five-paragraph structure is situational. Use your best judgement to decide when to take advantage of this essay formula. If you’re writing on a computer with Microsoft Word , try using Microsoft Editor to edit your essay.

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Essay Writing: The Five-Paragraph Myth

by Nancy Tuten | Apr 28, 2020 | 0 comments

In our educational journey, we likely learned some myths about writing.  One pernicious myth is the bane of many college English professors’ existence: the belief that writers should always employ the five-paragraph essay template—a rigid model compelling the writer to have a single-paragraph introduction containing a thesis, three body paragraphs addressing three distinct points, and a single-paragraph conclusion. John Warner, in his pithy article “ Kill the Five-Paragraph Essay ,” rightly notes that “there may be no greater enemy to quality writing than the five-paragraph essay.”

Here we explain why the five-paragraph essay formula is problematic and argue instead that the number of paragraphs in any document—including the argumentative essay—depends on the content the writer is trying to convey. (Scroll down to the bottom of this article for a video version of this article.)

In an effort to help beginning writers, many teachers encourage the five-paragraph essay template. Starting with a simplistic format is not inherently a bad idea, but often students aren’t told the “rest of the story”: The five-paragraph essay model is certainly  one possible structure for conveying ideas, but it is not the  only  one. Often it is not the best option, and at other times, it  doesn’t work at all.

What about Writing Outside of Academics?

In academic settings, the thesis-driven essay works well for papers and tests that include discussion questions because it enables students to present both the knowledge they have gained and the critical thinking necessary for making sense of that knowledge.

But the essay (five-paragraph or otherwise) is not always the most appropriate model for professional writing outside the academy.  For example, similar to other journalistic writing, blog posts (such as this one) typically include short paragraphs, many of which are only a sentence long. In a world dominated by tweets and Instagram or Snap Chat captions, the fully-developed paragraphs that essays demand are inappropriate.

But while not all professional writing is thesis driven, some of it surely is; reports, proposals, and analyses, for example, benefit from being focused and organized logically into paragraphs that clearly support a central idea.

When the Five-Paragraph Essay Works Fine

If a writer has only three points to make, and if each of those points can be adequately argued or depicted in a single paragraph, then the five-paragraph structure works perfectly.

For example, suppose I want to assert that a gym membership is better than exercising at home. I might have three points to make in defense of that statement:

• First, gyms offer more equipment.
• Second, there are trainers at the gym who can assist me.
• Third, having others around who are also exercising might motivate me.

In this case, because I have three points to make, the five-paragraph essay works fine; the writer can support each of these three points in a separate body paragraph, adding examples and explanations to convince the reader that each point is valid.

Why the Five-Paragraph Essay Usually Doesn’t Work

But what if a writer wishes to make only one or two points—or perhaps four or five or seventeen points?

Or what if one point really needs more than one paragraph to be adequately developed and should be broken down into two or three or more sub -points?

In most writing situations, the five-paragraph essay simply does not work.

Rigid adherence to the five-paragraph essay model often results in an essay that includes one or two weak paragraphs. A writer who has only two strong points to make but believes the essay must have three will end up writing a flimsy, underdeveloped and unconvincing third body paragraph that weakens the entire essay.

What  Is the Appropriate Number of Paragraphs?

The appropriate number of paragraphs in the body of an essay is the number it takes to fulfill the promise made to the reader in the thesis. Writers must adequately address the thesis.

The body of an essay is shaped not by an arbitrary fixed number but by the content .

Instead of trying to force everything you write into a five-paragraph essay model, let content be your guide about how to organize and develop the body of an essay.

Once you have a thesis, first ask yourself what points you need to make in order to convince your reader that the thesis is true. Each of those points will be a “section” of your essay’s body consisting of one or more paragraphs.

Next, ask yourself what details you can include as evidence in support of each of those points.

Finally, ask yourself if any of those points are so complex that they should be broken down into more than one paragraph.

Once you have answered those three questions, you’ll have a rough idea about the appropriate number of paragraphs necessary to adequately address the essay’s thesis.

Writing is Discovery, and Drafting is Recursive

But you won’t know for certain how many paragraphs you’ll need until you actually try to write them.

We say that writing is discovery because the act of writing often helps us figure out what we know and don’t know.

Maybe you will find that one of the points you thought you could make doesn’t work after all. Maybe in the process of writing about one point, you’ll think of another one. Maybe a point you thought could be developed in two paragraphs really needs three or more—or only one.

Drafting is a recursive process: writers must go back and forth, fine-tuning the thesis and the support of that thesis until they work successfully together to produce a unified, coherent piece of writing in which every word contributes meaningfully to the message and in which the organization of paragraphs and sentences flows logically.

Not Every Essay Needs a Separate Conclusion

The five-paragraph myth also assumes that an essay always needs a conclusion paragraph. While we typically do need a separate introductory paragraph, sometimes we don’t really need a separate conclusion.

Consider for example, an essay that traces the development of a character in a story.

The thesis might look something like this:

At the beginning of the story, Jane Doe considers herself superior to most of her fellow townspeople because she is educated and because her family is wealthy, but when her father becomes gravely ill and in need of a kidney transplant to save his life, Jane discovers that neither a college degree nor money determine a person’s goodness and worth.

• The first body paragraph would provide evidence from the story that Jane considers herself superior.
• The second body paragraph would explain how her father’s illness begins to challenge Jane’s personal beliefs.
• The third body paragraph—presenting evidence that Jane has been changed by her experiences—could double as the conclusion if the writer touches on all the previous points and feels that a separate conclusion would simply be repetitive.

Once again, the five-paragraph model—which assumes a separate concluding paragraph—does not always make sense.

The Number of Paragraphs Is Merely One Consideration

Determining the appropriate number of paragraphs is just one step of many required to produce a good essay. Writers must also have a strong thesis and write well-developed paragraphs—two topics discussed in other posts.

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Why the Five-Paragraph Essay is a Problem Now—and Later

Belief #1: The five-paragraph essay is a problem now

Current common approaches for teaching writing are simultaneously too punishing and not nearly challenging enough. Part of the problem is how “rigor” is viewed in education. “Rigor” means “strictness” and “severity.” It is an artifact of a different time and a different mentality toward schooling. It remains popular mostly as a way to invoke days of yore that are supposedly better than today. . . . When students say a class was “hard,” they often mean “confusing” or “arbitrary,” rather than stimulating and challenging. (2018, 142)

We would add the following to the list of arbitrary and confusing approaches to teaching writing: rules that demand paragraphs will contain five (or nine or whatever) sentences; the topic sentence will always be first in each paragraph; and the thesis or claim must always be directly stated in the introduction. These rules do not represent excellence in writing. On the contrary: in many cases, adhering to them wrings the goodness out of writing. The writer is punished by being shoehorned into a form. Peter Elbow, noted writing researcher, argues that “the five-paragraph essay tends to function as an anti-perplexity machine” (2012, 308). Katherine Bomer agrees, adding, “There is no room for the untidiness of inquiry or complexity and therefore no energy in the writing” (2016, xi). Not only is energy drained from the writing when students practice mechanized thinking, but students also lose the valuable practice of generating and organizing ideas. When the form is predetermined, much of the writer’s important decision-making has already been stripped, which is one reason Penny is now encountering so many college students who believe they cannot solve their own writing problems.

We agree with John Warner’s notion that approaches taken by writing teachers are “not nearly challenging enough” (2018, 142). The form does the thinking for the student, and the student simply plugs in and follows. Without an understanding of options, students can’t imagine how a different form might better engage an audience or how changing the structure might better communicate their ideas. Teachers in high school rarely (if ever) meet across content areas to consider how often students are writing the exact same formulaic essays. The teachers at our schools never met to have these discussions. Students need numerous opportunities to study the various forms an essay can take, and they need repeated practice experimenting. This is not our only objection, however. The lack of student decision-making and agency is compounded when students are constrained by the teacher’s choice of subject and the lack of an authentic audience for their writing. We like how novelist Lily King explains the problems with standardized essays about books:

While you’re reading [the book] rubs off on you and your mind starts working like that for a while. I love that. That reverberation for me is what is most important about literature. . . . I would want kids to talk and write about how the book makes them feel, what it reminded them of, if it changed their thoughts about anything. . . . Questions like [man versus nature] are designed to pull you completely out of the story. . . . Why would you want to pull kids out of the story? You want to push them further in, so they can feel everything the author tried so hard to create for them. (2020, 271)

Night has fallen and is swirling and twirling around me. Gold chains hang across his neckline like trophies against a prize. The fine oil paintings and white pillars line sunken walls. It is a life filled with artificial riches, swishing like change in a pocket of hope. And the noises it made rustled in our dreams.

Abby writes with verve and authenticity. Jillian, the same age, is sitting in a first-year college classroom without the skill set to make the decisions expected of her. And we know this: students get to Abby’s level of essay writing when they’ve experienced a lot of practice in struggling with generating ideas and organizing their thinking. The road to excellence is rife with trial and error. It is up to us to entrust our young writers to wrestle with their decisions. Doing so matters now. And later.

Penny Kittle teaches freshman composition at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She was a teacher and literacy coach in public schools for 34 years, 21 of those spent at Kennett High School in North Conway. She is the co-author (with Kelly Gallagher) of   Four Essential Studies: Beliefs and Practices to Reclaim Student Agency , as well as the bestselling  180 Days .

Penny is the author of  Book Love  and  Write Beside Them , which won the NCTE James Britton award. She also co-authored two books with her mentor, Don Graves, and co-edited (with Tom Newkirk) a collection of Graves’ work,  Children Want to Write .  She is the president of the Book Love Foundation and was given the Exemplary Leader Award from NCTE’s Conference on English Leadership. In the summer Penny teaches graduate students at the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institutes.  Throughout the year, she travels across the U.S. and Canada (and once in awhile quite a bit farther) speaking to teachers about empowering students through independence in literacy. She believes in curiosity, engagement, and deep thinking in schools for both students and their teachers. Penny stands on the shoulders of her mentors, the Dons (Murray & Graves), and the Toms (Newkirk & Romano), in her belief that intentional teaching in a reading and writing workshop brings the greatest student investment and learning in a classroom.

Learn more about Penny Kittle on her websites,   pennykittle.net   and   booklovefoundation.org , or follow her on   twitter .

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Is the Five-Paragraph Essay History?

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Has the five-paragraph essay, long a staple in school writing curricula, outlived its usefulness?

The venerable writing tool has largely fallen out of favor among influential English/language arts researchers and professional associations. “Rigid” and “constraining” are the two words critics often use to describe the format.

There’s no denying that a five-paragraph essay—comprising an introduction with a thesis, three paragraphs each with a topic sentence and supporting details, and a conclusion—is highly structured, even artificial, in format. Yet many teachers still rely on it at least to some degree. Supporters of the method argue that, used judiciously, it can be a helpful step on the road to better writing for emerging writers.

“You can’t break the rules until you know the rules. That’s why for me, we definitely teach it and we teach it pretty strongly,” said Mark Anderson, a teacher at the Jonas Bronck Academy in New York City, who recently helped devise a framework for grading student writing based on the five-paragraph form.

Classical Origins

Long before “graphic organizers” and other writing tools entered teachers’ toolkits, students whittled away at five-paragraph essays.

Just where the form originated seems to be something of a mystery, with some scholars pointing to origins as far back as classical rhetoric. Today, the debate about the form is intertwined with broader arguments about literacy instruction: Should it be based on a formally taught set of skills and strategies? Should it be based on a somewhat looser approach, as in free-writing “workshop” models, which are sometimes oriented around student choice of topics and less around matters of grammar and form?

Surprisingly, not much research on writing instruction compares the five-paragraph essay with other tools for teaching writing, said Steve Graham, a professor of educational leadership and innovation at Arizona State University, who has studied writing instruction for more than 30 years.

Instead, meta-analyses seem to point out general features of effective writing instruction. Among other things, they include supportive classroom environments in which students can work together as they learn how to draft, revise, and edit their work; some specific teaching of skills, such as learning to combine sentences; and finally, connecting reading and content acquisition to writing, he said.

As a result, the five-paragraph essay remains a point of passionate debate.

A quick Google search turns up hundreds of articles, both academic and personal, pro and con, with titles like “If You Teach or Write the 5-Paragraph Essay—Stop It!” duking it out with “In Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay.”

Structure or Straitjacket?

One basic reason why the form lives on is that writing instruction does not appear to be widely or systematically taught in teacher-preparation programs, Graham said, citing surveys of writing teachers he’s conducted.

“It’s used a lot because it provides a structure teachers are familiar with,” he said. “They were introduced to it as students and they didn’t get a lot of preparation on how to teach writing.”

The advent of standardized accountability assessments also seems to have contributed, as teachers sought ways of helping students respond to time-limited prompts, said Catherine Snow, a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

“It simplified the tasks in the classroom and it gives you structures across students that are comparable and gradable, because you have real expectations for structure,” she said.

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.

“I don’t connect the two in my mind,” Anderson said. “There is more informational writing and analytical writing, but I haven’t got a sense that the five paragraph format is necessarily the best way to teach it.”

Still, Anderson argues that structure matters a great deal when teaching writing, and the five-paragraph essay has that in spades.

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.

“The structure guides them to organizing their ideas in a way that is very clear, and even if they’re very much at a literal level, they’re at least clearly stating what their ideas are,” he said. “Yes, it is very formulaic. But that’s not to say you can’t have a really good question, with really rich text, and engage students in that question.”

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.

“To teach it extensively I think undermines the whole point of writing,” she said. “You write to communicate something, and that means you have to adapt the form to the function.”

A Balanced Approach

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.

A former high school teacher, Mazzaferro heard a lot of complaints from her peers about the weak writing skills of entering high school students and ultimately moved to middle school to look into the problem herself.

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.

“Middle school especially is where they start to learn those building blocks: how you come up with a controlling idea for a writing piece and how you support it with details and examples,” she said. “You want to draw your reader in, to have supportive details, whether it’s five paragraphs or 20. That is where it’s a great starting point.”

But, she adds, it shouldn’t be an ending point. By the time students enter 9th grade, Mazzaferro says that students should be developing more sophisticated arguments.

“I used to help a lot of kids write their college essays, and whenever I saw a five-paragraph essay, I’d make them throw it out and start over,” she said. “At that point, you should be able to break the rules.”

Coverage of the implementation of college- and career-ready standards and the use of personalized learning is supported in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.

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5.6: The Five-Paragraph Essay Transmits Knowledge

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• Cheryl E. Ball & Drew M. Loewe ed.
• West Virginia University via Digital Publishing Institute and West Virginia University Libraries

Authors: Susan Naomi Bernstein, Arizona State University–Tempe. Elizabeth Lowry, Arizona State University,

“But I learned how to write an essay in high school! All you need is five-paragraphs with five to eleven sentences per paragraph. Why am I even taking this class?”

Most first year composition instructors have, at one time or another, heard this complaint from a student, who has been taught that writing should be no more complicated than knocking out the requisite five-paragraphs: In your first paragraph, warn your audience that you are planning to make no more (or less) than three points which they will know to look for in paragraphs two, three, and four respectively. After that, use the fifth paragraph to remind your audience of the three points you just made. For firstyear college students, the five-paragraph essay is considered to be a kind of catch-all for the would-be writer, a formula that students are often taught works for any kind of essay, on any topic, upon any occasion. Except when it doesn’t.

We argue that the emphasis on the five-paragraph essay at the high school level is emblematic of what internationally well-regarded Brazilian educator and activist Paulo Freire refers to as the banking model of education. According to Freire, the banking model is a form of teaching and learning in which knowledge is understood to be a kind of currency that is literally deposited into students’ heads by an expert. The banking model is promoted by an educational system that relies on standardized tests and other quantitative methods of analysis. Within the banking model, students accrue facts and formulas like interest, drawing on that interest when it is time to show what they have (l)earned from school. Another way to conceive of the banking model could be garbage in, garbage out. Or, as Freire himself puts it: “The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.” Here, Freire references storage , suggesting an eventual reallocation (or trading) of information that is presented as being empirical and objective. Freire critiques this model of education because it renders learners passive and dependent on the authority figures from whom the knowledge is ostensibly disseminated. Students educated within this system can too easily become complacent, accepting whatever they are told without question. Just as disconcertingly, students are not always supplied with knowledge that they can use in meaningful ways outside of school.

If our education system promotes modes of learning that apply only to school but not to the rest of our lives, chances are minimal that any of us will retain what we have learned beyond our lives out of school. In a similar vein, the five-paragraph essay is an exemplar of the banking model of education as a means of demonstrating how information is stored, rather than as a means by which students can interrogate and transform the world around them. To be successful in the banking model of education, students merely need to regurgitate (in some recognizable form) the knowledge that has been deposited in their heads. The five-paragraph essay is that recognizable form. Easy to read, easy to grade, and easy to teach.

The five-paragraph essay is widely believed to be useful in terms of making students assimilate, absorb, store, categorize, and organize new knowledge, but it is not useful in terms of getting students to actually use that knowledge creatively or critically for productive problem posing and solving. In this sense, the idea of knowledge transfer from high school to college via the five-paragraph-essay form is untenable. Although popular wisdom holds that assimilating some structural empirical knowledge of writing will help to promote efficient knowledge transfer between high school and college, in fact, the five-paragraph form can become a limitation when students are confronted with various new structures of knowledge significant to post-secondary success.

Put another way, knowledge is not meaningfully transferable through the five-paragraph-essay form because the banking method of education conceives both learning and students themselves as products rather than as works in process. The five-paragraph form emphasizes shutting down processes of inquiry—that is, it dismisses the need for future conversation by providing the illusion of having resolved complex problems. The role of the five-paragraph essay in the move from high school to college is analogous to using training wheels when learning to ride a bike. Useful—maybe even necessary at first—but, as the rider becomes more proficient and broaches more complex terrain, those little wheels will collect debris, or become snagged on rocks. Thus, these once-useful training wheels become a liability. They may slow the rider down or, when they catch on obstacles, may throw her from the bike. At best they are a nuisance, while at worst they are a danger. Without training wheels it may be tough to get started at the beginning of a ride, but eventually we figure out how to do it. Bumpy rides may pose a challenge, but they make us resilient.

That said, at what point is it time to move away from the five-paragraph essay? We believe that the time comes to move away when one is focusing on a problem that defies pat answers. That is, when working on a piece of writing that is designed with a purpose beyond simply organizing information by reporting on uncontroversial facts (e.g., “smoking is bad for you”). As soon as a student is in a position to enter a process of inquiry to explore (and perhaps offer solutions to) an issue that may provoke more questions and yield myriad answers, the five-paragraph format should be thrown to the wind. We want authors to be resilient, to be independent thinkers, to be problem solvers and interrogators. Such is the purpose of teaching beyond the supposedly foolproof formula of the five-paragraph theme. When students are challenged to write beyond memorized formulas, to travel beyond the how of writing to the why of writing, they learn skills of academic resiliency that will transfer to college and beyond. Freire also addresses this. To counter the banking model of education, he offered the idea of problem posing , in which students take on problems and issues from their everyday lives and from their communities. Such problems, Freire believes, would engage students’ hearts and minds and would offer critical motivation and support for learning rather than (l)earning inside and outside the classroom.

Susan recounts the story of a time when the five-paragraph formula seemed helpful—at least at first. She had applied to teach in an emergency teaching-certification program in a large Northeastern city. She met with other applicants in a school cafeteria to complete a series of tests including an essay-writing test.

The applicants were to respond to the question, “What are the three most important skills that teachers need in our city’s classrooms?” Of course, this topic easily lent itself to a five-paragraph essay: An introduction (including a thesis listing the three main skills), one skill per paragraph, and a conclusion that repeated the most important points. Susan fit the essay together as neatly as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, robotically meeting unarticulated expectations. Just as the jigsaw puzzle encourages the assemblage of a mass-produced factory image already conceived by another entity, the five-paragraph essay seemed to be prompting the construction of an argument that was always already anticipated.

The testing session seemed an appropriate analogy for writing instruction itself. Administrators offered a writing test that implied a five-paragraph response, a response that could be easily vetted to identify uniformity and adherence to conventions. Applicants who followed these unspoken rules would be deemed qualified to teach the five-paragraph essay to the next generation of students. Anyone who interrogated this standard method for writing, whether teacher or student, need not apply.

After the essay-writing test ended, the applicants met for a short break and discussed with one another the essays they had just written. Somehow everyone had automatically done what Susan had done. All their essays sounded remarkably similar, except for one applicant who asked in disbelief, “We were supposed to divide that essay into paragraphs?” The rest of the applicants exchanged glances. In her head, Susan answered, “Well, yes. If we choose not to think outside the box. And if we expect every writer to follow the same formula rather than the more complicated nuances that come from real thinking.” Even as the directions for the writing test did not mention paragraphing explicitly, the five-paragraph theme seemed implicit for structuring an effective response.

The fact that the emergency certification applicants were slated to teach in the city’s most at-risk schools was also disconcerting. The banking model of education depends upon formulas such as the five-paragraph essay to deliver its most efficient lessons, especially in working-class schools, in which teachers instruct students to follow the rules. This “hidden curriculum,” as Jean Anyon describes it, rewards “rote behavior,” readying working-class children “for future wage labor that is mechanical and routine.” Such instruction replicates, rather than interrogates, U.S. social class structures. The link between the banking model of education and classism has been drawn because the banking model does not encourage students to challenge the status quo by entering into a process of inquiry. Instead, the banking method suggests that the knowledge conferred upon students (or deposited within them) is all those students will need in order to be successful. In fact, this is not the case. Students need to think critically and creatively in order to become community leaders and to gain social and political power.

Critical thinking should begin as early as possible—and it should begin by challenging the five-paragraph form. For example, students could be asked how they might rewrite five-paragraph essays in more imaginative ways. What happens if they add more paragraphs? What happens if they remove some? What happens if they begin to change the order of the paragraphs? How might meaning change and how might students better control the intended message of their writing? After all, meaningful writing is far from formulaic.

Further Reading

Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a foundational text on pedagogy, particularly with respect to disenfranchised communities. First published in Portuguese in 1968, the book was eventually translated into English and became an instant classic in the United States. Readers interested in further foundational work on socioeconomic class, agency, and education should see Jean Anyon’s 1980 article in the Journal of Education , “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” This piece argues that the kinds of work students are asked to do in school often reifies social divides.

academic writing, banking model of education, five-paragraph essay, problem posing, transition to postsecondary education

Author Bios

Susan Naomi Bernstein is a lecturer and co-coordinator of the Stretch Writing Program at Arizona State University–Tempe. She teaches Teaching Basic Writing Practicum and Stretch courses at ASU, and also teaches in an American Indian Community in central Arizona. Her most recent publication is “Occupy Basic Writing: Pedagogy in the Wake of Austerity” in Nancy Welch and Tony Scott’s collection, Composition in the Age of Austerity. She has published four editions of Teaching Developmental Writing (Bedford/St. Martin’s) and is a regular contributor on basic writing issues for the Bedford Bits blog.

Elizabeth Lowry received her Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition from Arizona State University, where she now holds a lecturer position in rhetoric and composition. Her research interests include public spheres, material culture, and 19th-century women’s rhetorics. Her work has been published in Rhetoric Review, Word and Text, and in edited collections.

The Ultimate Guide to the 5-Paragraph Essay

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• M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
• B.A., History, Armstrong State University

A five-paragraph essay is a prose composition that follows a prescribed format of an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph, and is typically taught during primary English education and applied on standardized testing throughout schooling.

Learning to write a high-quality five-paragraph essay is an essential skill for students in early English classes as it allows them to express certain ideas, claims, or concepts in an organized manner, complete with evidence that supports each of these notions. Later, though, students may decide to stray from the standard five-paragraph format and venture into writing an  exploratory essay  instead.

Still, teaching students to organize essays into the five-paragraph format is an easy way to introduce them to writing literary criticism, which will be tested time and again throughout their primary, secondary, and further education.

Writing a Good Introduction

The introduction is the first paragraph in your essay, and it should accomplish a few specific goals: capture the reader's interest, introduce the topic, and make a claim or express an opinion in a thesis statement.

It's a good idea to start your essay with a hook (fascinating statement) to pique the reader's interest, though this can also be accomplished by using descriptive words, an anecdote, an intriguing question, or an interesting fact. Students can practice with creative writing prompts to get some ideas for interesting ways to start an essay.

The next few sentences should explain your first statement, and prepare the reader for your thesis statement, which is typically the last sentence in the introduction. Your  thesis sentence  should provide your specific assertion and convey a clear point of view, which is typically divided into three distinct arguments that support this assertation, which will each serve as central themes for the body paragraphs.

Writing Body Paragraphs

The body of the essay will include three body paragraphs in a five-paragraph essay format, each limited to one main idea that supports your thesis.

To correctly write each of these three body paragraphs, you should state your supporting idea, your topic sentence, then back it up with two or three sentences of evidence. Use examples that validate the claim before concluding the paragraph and using transition words to lead to the paragraph that follows — meaning that all of your body paragraphs should follow the pattern of "statement, supporting ideas, transition statement."

Words to use as you transition from one paragraph to another include: moreover, in fact, on the whole, furthermore, as a result, simply put, for this reason, similarly, likewise, it follows that, naturally, by comparison, surely, and yet.

Writing a Conclusion

The final paragraph will summarize your main points and re-assert your main claim (from your thesis sentence). It should point out your main points, but should not repeat specific examples, and should, as always, leave a lasting impression on the reader.

The first sentence of the conclusion, therefore, should be used to restate the supporting claims argued in the body paragraphs as they relate to the thesis statement, then the next few sentences should be used to explain how the essay's main points can lead outward, perhaps to further thought on the topic. Ending the conclusion with a question, anecdote, or final pondering is a great way to leave a lasting impact.

Once you complete the first draft of your essay, it's a good idea to re-visit the thesis statement in your first paragraph. Read your essay to see if it flows well, and you might find that the supporting paragraphs are strong, but they don't address the exact focus of your thesis. Simply re-write your thesis sentence to fit your body and summary more exactly, and adjust the conclusion to wrap it all up nicely.

Practice Writing a Five-Paragraph Essay

Students can use the following steps to write a standard essay on any given topic. First, choose a topic, or ask your students to choose their topic, then allow them to form a basic five-paragraph by following these steps:

• Decide on your  basic thesis , your idea of a topic to discuss.
• Decide on three pieces of supporting evidence you will use to prove your thesis.
• Write an introductory paragraph, including your thesis and evidence (in order of strength).
• Write your first body paragraph, starting with restating your thesis and focusing on your first piece of supporting evidence.
• End your first paragraph with a transitional sentence that leads to the next body paragraph.
• Write paragraph two of the body focussing on your second piece of evidence. Once again make the connection between your thesis and this piece of evidence.
• End your second paragraph with a transitional sentence that leads to paragraph number three.
• Repeat step 6 using your third piece of evidence.
• Begin your concluding paragraph by restating your thesis. Include the three points you've used to prove your thesis.
• End with a punch, a question, an anecdote, or an entertaining thought that will stay with the reader.

Once a student can master these 10 simple steps, writing a basic five-paragraph essay will be a piece of cake, so long as the student does so correctly and includes enough supporting information in each paragraph that all relate to the same centralized main idea, the thesis of the essay.

Limitations of the Five-Paragraph Essay

The five-paragraph essay is merely a starting point for students hoping to express their ideas in academic writing; there are some other forms and styles of writing that students should use to express their vocabulary in the written form.

According to Tory Young's "Studying English Literature: A Practical Guide":

"Although school students in the U.S. are examined on their ability to write a  five-paragraph essay , its  raison d'être  is purportedly to give practice in basic writing skills that will lead to future success in more varied forms. Detractors feel, however, that writing to rule in this way is more likely to discourage imaginative writing and thinking than enable it. . . . The five-paragraph essay is less aware of its  audience  and sets out only to present information, an account or a kind of story rather than explicitly to persuade the reader."

Students should instead be asked to write other forms, such as journal entries, blog posts, reviews of goods or services, multi-paragraph research papers, and freeform expository writing around a central theme. Although five-paragraph essays are the golden rule when writing for standardized tests, experimentation with expression should be encouraged throughout primary schooling to bolster students' abilities to utilize the English language fully.

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• Definition and Examples of Body Paragraphs in Composition
• What Is Expository Writing?
• What an Essay Is and How to Write One
• Paragraph Writing
• 3 Changes That Will Take Your Essay From Good To Great
• An Introduction to Academic Writing
• Tips on How to Write an Argumentative Essay
• The Five Steps of Writing an Essay
• How to Write a Solid Thesis Statement
• The Introductory Paragraph: Start Your Paper Off Right

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UMGC Effective Writing Center Secrets of the Five-Paragraph Essay

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This form of writing goes by different names. Maybe you've heard some of them before: "The Basic Essay," "The Academic Response Essay," "The 1-3-1 Essay." Regardless of what you've heard, the name you should remember is "The Easy Essay."

Once you are shown how this works--and it only takes a few minutes--you will have in your hands the secret to writing well on almost any academic assignment. Here is how it goes.

Secret #1—The Magic of Three

Three has always been a magic number for humans, from fairy tales like "The Three Little Pigs" to sayings like “third time’s a charm.” Three seems to be an ideal number for us--including the academic essay. So whenever you are given a topic to write about, a good place to begin is with a list of three. Here are some examples (three of them, of course):

Topic : What are the essential characteristics of a good parent? Think in threes and you might come up with:

• unconditional love 

Certainly, there are more characteristics of good parents you could name, but for our essay, we will work in threes.

Here's a topic that deals with a controversial issue:

Topic : Should women in the military be given frontline combat duties?

• The first reason that women should be assigned to combat is equality. 
• The second reason is their great teamwork. 
• The third reason is their courage.

As you see, regardless of the topic, we can list three points about it. And if you wonder about the repetition of words and structure when stating the three points, in this case, repetition is a good thing. Words that seem redundant when close together in an outline will be separated by the actual paragraphs of your essay. So in the essay instead of seeming redundant they will be welcome as signals to the reader of your essay’s main parts.

Finally, when the topic is an academic one, your first goal is the same: create a list of three.

Topic: Why do so many students fail to complete their college degree?

• First, students often...
• Second, many students cannot...
• Finally, students find that...

Regardless of the reasons you might come up with to finish these sentences, the formula is still the same.

Secret #2: The Thesis Formula

Now with your list of three, you can write the sentence that every essay must have—the thesis, sometimes called the "controlling idea," "overall point," or "position statement." In other words, it is the main idea of the essay that you will try to support, illustrate, or corroborate.

Here’s a simple formula for a thesis: The topic + your position on the topic = your thesis.

Let’s apply this formula to one of our examples:

Topic: Essential characteristics of a good parent Your Position: patience, respect, love Thesis: The essential characteristics of a good parent are patience, respect, and love.

As you see, all we did was combine the topic with our position/opinion on it into a single sentence to produce the thesis: The essential characteristics of a good parent are patience, respect, and love.

In this case, we chose to list three main points as part of our thesis. Sometimes that’s a good strategy. However, you can summarize them if you wish, as in this example:

Topic: Women in combat duty in the military Your Position: They deserve it Thesis: Women deserve to be assigned combat duty in the military.

This type of thesis is shorter and easier to write because it provides the overall position or opinion without forcing you to list the support for it in the thesis, which can get awkward and take away from your strong position statement. The three reasons women deserve to be assigned combat duties--equality, teamwork, courage--will be the subjects of your three body paragraphs and do not need to be mentioned until the body paragraph in which they appear.

Secret #3: The 1-3-1 Outline

With your thesis and list of three main points, you can quickly draw a basic outline of the paragraphs of your essay. You’ll then see why this is often called the 1-3-1 essay.

• Supporting Evidence for Claim 1    
• Supporting Evidence for Claim 2
• Supporting Evidence for Claim 3

The five-paragraph essay consists of one introduction paragraph (with the thesis at its end), three body paragraphs (each beginning with one of three main points) and one last paragraph—the conclusion. 1-3-1.

Once you have this outline, you have the basic template for most academic writing. Most of all, you have an organized way to approach virtually any topic you are assigned.

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Unmasking the Mythical Narrative Surrounding the Five-Paragraph Essay

NCTE 11.10.21 Writing Instruction

This post was written by NCTE member Anastasia Gustafson.

During my first year  of college, I was sitting in my ENG 122 class when I ran into a problem.

“Mrs. P,” I began, “If I follow these revision suggestions, I will probably go over five paragraphs. Is that okay?” My professor gave me a funny look and told me that of course that was okay. Her expression seemed to ask,  Why would that not be okay? I sat there equally confused by her reaction and awkwardly got back to my revision work. And then, for the first time in my collegiate and professional writing career, I crafted a literary argument that extended beyond five paragraphs. This was also the first time I started to realize that something might be wrong in the way I conceptualized collegiate and professional writing.

Ask any high school student in the United States and you will probably find that they have a pretty solid (and grim) understanding of “formal” writing. They know it as “the five-paragraph essay.” And they will certainly be able to tell you all sorts of things about it. They can tell you that it has an intro, a thesis, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. They will most likely know that it does not have contractions, and that students are forbidden from using I, me, or we statements. High schoolers might also note that this kind of writing does not allow for paragraphs under three sentences. In short, a proper five-paragraph essay comes packing a myriad of rules, regulations, and restrictions.

It might then come as a surprise to some to hear an argument that, on its own, the five-paragraph essay is not inherently bad. In fact, it might be a good place to start emerging writers. However, what becomes a problem is that the idea has somehow become ingrained in our students that the five-paragraph essay is the only way to write—not only in high school and college but also in professional writing careers. Instead of teaching the five-paragraph essay as an option within the world of formal writing, we teach it as the standard, or worse, as the only option.

With all this in mind, there is still room to discuss the positive aspects of the five-paragraph essay. In defense of the format, this essay type can function as a strong foundation for emerging writers. According to a Writing Center resource page from the Jackson State Community College, “when it comes to writing essays in college, we all need a place to start. Think of the five-paragraph essay as just that. . . . Five-paragraph essays are incredibly useful in two situations—when writers are just starting out and when a writing assignment is timed.”

The methods used to compose a five-paragraph essay are formulaic, reliable, and easy to remember. This means that this format can help students who need to write quickly or can support students beginning the process of learning how to write well. Further, author Zachary M. Schrag explains in this Inside Higher Ed op-ed that “short essays—800 to 1,200 words—are essential tools of communication. Whether they take the form of op-eds, blog posts, executive summaries, or business pitches, they are just long enough to provide some evidence for one’s claims while still attracting busy readers.”

There are real-world applications for the five-paragraph essay, and therefore, it might be beneficial for students to learn how to wield it.

The Five-Paragraph Format as the Only Way

As a format, the five-paragraph essay is not inherently a bad thing for students to learn. What becomes problematic, however, is the way that we teach it.

In the minds of current and recently graduated high school writers, the five-paragraph essay is often seen as the only way to approach collegiate and professional writing. In a Get It Write article, professional writing consultant Nancy Tuten  writes about the “pernicious myth . . . that writers should always employ the five-paragraph essay template,” and how this ideology often restricts writers from taking their ideas and producing high-quality content.

A majority of students believe that when they are asked to write in any English class, the five-paragraph essay is “what the teacher is looking for” rather than the format that will help them best communicate their ideas. And this problematic context did not happen without cause. Author John Warner, in his book Why They Can’t Write: Killing The Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities, argues that “the ubiquity of the five-paragraph essay is a primary sign of bad incentives and dysfunctional practices. . . . [A]t its inception, the five-paragraph essay was a tool of convenience and standardization.”

There is a problematic focus in the American education system to put an incredible amount of pressure on students and teachers to score well on standardized exams and assessments as a means to measure not only the quality of the education received, but to measure the academic achievement of the students themselves. Rather than using the five-paragraph essay as simply one of many methods to write, the five-paragraph essay has been pigeon-holed into the only way students are expected to write because it fits within the tidy and streamlined narrative of a standardized education.

These motivations have led to some pretty severe consequences in regard to the quality of student writing. In Writing Rhetorically: Fostering Responsive Thinkers and Communicators, author Jennifer Fletcher argues,

The actual writing that goes on in typical classrooms across the United States remains dominated by tasks in which the reader does all the composing, and the students are left only to fill in missing information, whether copying directly from a teacher’s presentation, completing worksheets and chapter summaries, replicating highly formulaic essay structures, . . .  or writing to “show they know” the particular information the teacher is seeking.

The circumstances surrounding why students write in school facilitate a kind of writing that is not conducive to fostering passionate, authentic, or meaningful work. This often means that the writing itself is not very good. According to Warner in Why They Can’t Write , “much of the writing students are asked to do in school is not writing so much as it is an imitation of writing, creating an artifact resembling writing which is not, in fact, the product of a robust, flexible writing process.”

If students are told that writing is a space that exists only for them to “fill in the blanks” of already curated knowledge, if students think that they need to rely on the teacher to understand exactly what to say and what to do, and if they also believe that writing is not is a creative endeavor where new ideas are forged, then how could anyone expect student writing to be any good at all?

When the education system standardizes writing, it also negates the thinking processes that are responsible for producing original, passionate, and high-quality writing. In the NCTE blog post “ If Not the Five-Paragraph Essay, Then What ,” David Slomp keenly explains that, “over the long term, teaching kids how to master particular structures doesn’t help them.” To borrow from an old adage, he says, “Give students a structure and you enable them for a day; teach students to analyze and you enable them for a lifetime.”

If teachers want to begin the process of fostering stronger writers in our classrooms, we have to first foster stronger thinkers . No kind of template, format, rubric, or standard can ever generate writing as good as the writing that comes from robust, collaborative, and generative thinking. This, as teachers, is what we should be striving to cultivate.

Giving Students More Agency

So, if teachers know what they must do, they must also figure out how to do it. Luckily, many educators and scholars have been working out a viable solution. Writer and professor of education, P. L. Thomas, argues in his Radical Eyes For Equity blog post that,

Instead of templates and prompts, I invite students to investigate and interrogate a wide variety of texts, to read like writers. With each text, we try to determine the type of writing, developing genre awareness and building a toolbox of names for types of writing. Next, we identify the conventions that define that type of writing before asking how the writer both conforms to and also writes against those conventions. We stress that writing is about purposeful decisions—not rules, or templates. We also begin to highlight what modes (narration, description, exposition, persuasion) the writer incorporates, where and why. We also identify the focus of the piece (I do not use “thesis”) and explore how the writer’s craft accomplishes that. Instead of introduction, body, and conclusion, we analyze openings and closings as well as claims, evidence, elaboration (explanation, synthesis/connection, transition). And again, we are building the students’ writer’s toolbox—but I do not do the writer’s work for the student in the reductive ways the five-paragraph essay does.

Thomas offers some very constructive methods for how teachers might invite students into the world of writing. Instead of seeing a linear, formulaic path to the creation of writing, Thomas suggests that teachers broaden the scaffolds of the writing process and that we give students more agency in how they craft their work.

Further, as outlined in this Edutopia article by Brian Sztabnik, teachers might consider supplementing the traditional five-paragraph essay with other, more authentic writing-based artifacts such as, “blogs, multigenre research papers, infographics, debates, or parodies/satire,” in order to broaden the scope of how students view professional and collegiate writing. There are a multitude of ways to teach writing in a way that offers the praxis dignity and depth. By moving beyond the five-paragraph essay within the English language arts classrooms, teachers acknowledge that students need to know a variety of writing methods and that there are multiple valid ways to write that diverge from the status quo. It is imperative that ELA teachers move away from the current ubiquitous five-paragraph essay methodology so that our students may begin to conceptualize in a way that is both broad and helpful to them in their journeys as writers.

The Teaching of Writing as Synonymous with the Teaching of Thinking

It is far past time to address the mythical methodology surrounding the five-paragraph essay in English classrooms across America. Overwhelmingly, students all over the country struggle to write—and it’s not their fault. As it stands, standardized writing instruction is more inhibitive of producing high-quality writers than it is successful at facilitating student growth. To begin to dismantle these harmful educational structures, we need to start thinking about the teaching of writing as synonymous with the teaching of thinking; then, we need to broaden the ways we invite students to think and write.

If English language arts teachers begin to address these problematic pedagogical approaches, students may soon begin to improve not only their opinions on writing as a subject, but  may also find themselves growing as writers.

It is the policy of NCTE in all publications, including the Literacy & NCTE blog, to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, the staff, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified.

Module: Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay

Why it matters: beyond the five-paragraph essay.

College writing is different from high school writing. College professors view you as independent junior scholars and imagine you writing with a genuine, driving interest in tackling a complex question. They envision you approaching an assignment without a pre-existing thesis. They expect you to look deep into the evidence, consider several alternative explanations, and work out an original, insightful argument that you actually care about. This kind of scholarly approach usually entails writing a rough draft, through which you work out an ambitious thesis and the scope of your argument, and then starting over with a wholly rewritten second draft containing a more complete argument anchored by a refined thesis.  In that second draft, you’ll discover holes in the argument that should be remedied, counterarguments that should be acknowledged and addressed, and important implications that should be noted. That means further reading and research, more revision, and more drafting. When the paper is substantially complete, you’ll go through it again to tighten up the writing and ensure clarity, cohesion, and coherence.

Writing a paper isn’t about getting the “right answer” and adhering to basic conventions; it’s about joining an academic conversation with something original to say, borne of rigorous thought. That’s why, as a college writer, you’ll need to move beyond the five-paragraph essay. In this learning module, you’ll discover how simplistic forms like the five paragraph essay lack depth and should be remedied.  When you write organically you (1) diversify your language choices, (2) use a unique style, and (3) craft ideas using an organizational strategy that is coherent, yet not pretentious or expected/dully anticipated.

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By Quentin Vieregge

The five-paragraph essay (5PE) doesn’t have many vocal defenders in Departments of English in higher education, but for some instructors, the 5PE remains a useful tool in the pedagogi cal kit. Most college writing instructors have eschewed the 5PE, contending that it limits what writing can be, constricts writers’ roles, and even arbitrarily shapes writers’ thoughts. Yet, defenders of the 5PE counter that beginning writers need the guidance and structure that it affords. It works, they say, and it gives writers a place from which to start.

Reflect as You Read

Why does the reader begin by discussing the viewpoints of people who might be proponents of the 5PE? How does starting with acknowledging the validity of the form affect his argument?

The 5PE may sound familiar. In its most basic form, it is an introduction, three points, and a conclusion. Students are often given a topic to discuss, a passage to respond to, or a question to answer. The introduction and body paragraphs typically follow prescribed conventions regardless of content. For instance, the introduction has an attention-getter and explains what others have said about the topic, and the thesis usually comes close to the end of the paragraph. Each of the body paragraphs has a topic sentence that makes a claim that can be backed up with evidence and that refers back to the thesis. Each topic sentence is followed by sentences that provide evidence and reinforce the thesis. The body paragraphs end with a wrap-up sentence. The conclusion reminds the reader of the main idea, summarizes the main points, and might even leave the reader with one lasting impression. If all that sounds familiar, then it might be because you were taught the 5PE. Defenders of the 5PE can sometimes be found in high schools or two-year colleges, where they might work with students who struggle with writing or are learning English as a second language. One such teacher, David Gugin, writes about how the five-paragraph model benefits students learning English as a second language. Like many proponents of the 5PE, he assumes that the main impediment to expressing an idea is knowing how to organize it. As he puts it, “Once they have the vessel, so to speak, they can start thinking more about what to fill it with.”

This type of metaphor abounds. Byung-In Seo compares writing to building a house: One builds a basic structure and the individ ual spark comes from personalizing the details, either decorating the house or the content of the essay. She refers particularly to her experience with at-risk students, usually meaning students who come into college without the writing skills needed to immediately dive into college-level work. Similarly, Susanna L. Benko describes the 5PE as scaffolding that can either enhance or hinder student learning. A scaffold can be useful as construction workers move about when working on a building, but it should be removed when the building can stand on its own; the problem, as Benko observes, is when neither teacher nor student tears down the scaffold.

Here is the thing, though: When writers (and critics) talk about the 5PE, they’re not really talking about five paragraphs any more than critics or proponents of fast-food restaurants are talking about McDonald’s. Most defenders of the 5PE will either explic itly or implicitly see the sentence, the paragraph, and the essay as reflections of each other. Just as an essay has a thesis, a paragraph has a topic sentence; just as a paper has evidence to support it, a paragraph has detail. An essay has a beginning, middle, and end; so does a paragraph. To quote a line from William Blake, to be a defender of the 5PE is “To see a World in a Grain of Sand.” There are circles within circles within circles from this perspective. If you take this approach to writing, form is paramount. Once you under stand the form, you can say anything within it.

This focus on form first (and on the use of the 5PE) is a hall mark of what composition scholars call the current-traditional approach to writing instruction. The current-traditional approach is traceable to the late 19 th century, but still persists today in the 5PE and in writing assignments and textbooks organized around a priori modes of writing (the modes being definition, argument, exposition, and narrative). Current-traditional rhetoric valorizes form, structure, and arrangement over discovering and developing ideas. In current-traditional pedagogy, knowledge does not need to be interpreted or analyzed, but merely apprehended. Writing processes are mostly about narrowing and defining ideas and about applying style as external dressing to a finished idea.

The article focuses on a distinction between writing for form or structure and writing for the rhetorical situation. Which of these have you done before?

Detractors of the 5PE claim that it all but guarantees that writing will be a chore. What fun is it to write when you have no choices, when the shape of your words and thoughts are controlled by an impersonal model that everyone uses, but only in school? Teaching the 5PE is like turning students into Charlie Chaplin’s character from Modern Times , stuck in the gears of writing. The 5PE allegedly dehumanizes people. A number of writing special ists from University of North Carolina–Charlotte wrote an arti cle called, “The Five-Paragraph Essay and the Deficit Model of Education.” One of their critiques is that this model means that students aren’t taught to think and feel fully; rather they’re taught to learn their place as future workers in an assembly line econ omy: topic sentence, support, transition, repeat. Finally, as several writing instructors have observed, the 5PE doesn’t comport with reality. Who actually writes this way? Who actually reads this way? Does anyone care if an essay in The Atlantic or David Sedaris’s non-fiction collection Me Talk Pretty One Day doesn’t follow some prescriptive model? If the model doesn’t connect to how people actually write when given a choice, then how useful can it be?

Well, as it happens, formulaic writing has some support. Two such people who support it are Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, coauthors of one of a celebrated writing textbook, They Say/I Say . Graff and Birkenstein’s book rests on the assumption that all writers—especially skilled writers—use templates, which they’ve learned over time. For instance, there are templates for thesis sentences, templates for counterarguments, templates for rebut tals, templates for introducing quotes, and templates for explaining what quotations mean. One example from their book is this: “While they rarely admit as much, __________ often take for granted that _______,” which is a template students might use to begin writ ing their paper. Students are supposed to plug their own thoughts into the blanks to help them express their thoughts. Graff and Birkenstein tackle the issue of whether templates inhibit creativ ity. They make several of the same arguments that proponents of the 5PE make: Skilled writers use templates all the time; they actually enhance creativity; and they’re meant to guide and inspire rather than limit. This doesn’t mean Graff and Birkenstein love the 5PE, though. In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education , they contend that templates are an accurate reflection of how people write because templates are dialogic, but the 5PE is not.

Formulas, including templates, can be effective, and arbitrary formulas can be useful under the right circumstances too. They can be useful if they are used as a point-of-inquiry, meaning if writers use them as a starting place rather than a destination when writing. In what ways does the five-paragraph model work for this partic ular assignment? How should I deviate from it? Should I have an implied thesis rather than an explicit one?

Now, you might be thinking, that’s well and good for begin ning students, but what about advanced students or professionals? They never use formulas. Well, when my proposal for this piece was accepted, the two editors sent me explicit instructions about how to organize the essay. They divided their instructions into “first paragraph,” “middle paragraphs,” and “later paragraphs,” and then instructions about what comes after the essay. Within each part, they gave specific directions; everything was spelled out. I had a problem; I planned to argue in favor of the five-paragraph essay, so I couldn’t use their formula, which presupposed I would argue against the bad idea.

Hmm. That conundrum required me to ask myself questions, to inquire. How should I innovate from the model? How should I not? Their prescriptive advice was a point-of-inquiry for me that forced me to think rhetorically and creatively. Maybe the five-para graph model can be a point-of-inquiry—a way to start asking ques tions about rhetoric and writing. When I wrote this piece, I asked myself, “Why do the editors want me to write using a specific format?” And I then asked, “In what ways does this format prevent or enable me from making my point?” Finally, I asked, “In what ways can I exploit the tension between what they want me to do and what I feel I must do?” Asking these questions forced me to think about audience and purpose. But, perhaps more crucially, I was forced to think of the editors’ purpose, not just my own. By understanding their purpose, the format was more than an arbi trary requirement but an artifact indicating a dynamic rhetorical context that I, too, played a role in.

Once I understood the purpose behind the format for this essay, I could restructure it in purposeful and creative ways. The 5PE follows the same logic. Teachers often, mistakenly, think of it as an arbitrary format, but it’s only arbitrary if students and teachers don’t converse and reflect on its purpose. Once students consider their teacher’s purpose in assigning it, then the format becomes contextualized in consideration of audience, purpose, and context, and students are able to negotiate the expectations of the model with their own authorial wishes.

Reflect on Your Reading

• Where does Vieregge’s argument agree with the one made in “The Five Paragraph Essay Transmits Knowledge”? Where does Vieregge disagree?
• Who do you think the audience is for this essay? Think about which audience might need this information or be already thinking about this topic? What context clues in the essay support your answer?
• How can asking questions and analyzing a writing task help you apply the knowledge you already have?

Further Reading For more information about the connection between the five-paragraph essay and current-traditional rhetoric, you might read Michelle Tremmel’s “What to Make of the Five-Paragraph Theme: History of the Genre and Implications.” For a critique of the 5PE, you might read Lil Brannon et al.’s “The Five-Paragraph Essay and the Deficit Model of Education.” If you’re interested in reading defenses for the 5PE, you might start with Byung-In Seo’s “Defending the Five-Paragraph Essay.” A longer more formal argument in favor of the 5PE can be found in David Gugin’s “A Paragraph-First Approach to the Teaching of Academic Writing.” In the essay, “In Teaching Composition, ‘Formulaic’ Is Not a 4-Letter Word,” Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff criticize the 5PE but defend writing formulas done in more rhetorically effective ways.

Defenses of the five-paragraph theme often frame the genre as a scaffolding device. Susanna Benko’s essay, “Scaffolding: An Ongoing Process to Support Adolescent Writing Development,” explains the importance of scaffolding and how that technique can be misapplied. Though her essay only partially addresses the 5PE, her argument can be applied to the genre’s potential advantages and disadvantages.

Keywords basic writing, current-traditional rhetoric, discursive writing, five-paragraph essay (or theme), prescriptivism

Author Bio Quentin Vieregge is a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin–Barron County, a two-year liberal arts college. He teaches first-year composition, advanced composition, business writing, literature, and film courses. He can be followed on Twitter at @Vieregge. His website is quentin vieregge.com.

To the extent possible under law, Lisa Dunick has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Readings for Writing , except where otherwise noted.

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Structuring the Five-Paragraph Essay: Examples of Five-Paragraph Essays

• Examples of Five-Paragraph Essays

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Sample of a Persuasive / Argumentative Five-Paragraph Essay

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This model essay is a good example of an Argumentative (or Persuasive) Essay. 

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Should You Teach the Five-Paragraph Essay?

People have strong feelings about the five-paragraph essay. For the past several decades, educators have debated the benefits and consequences of teaching the five-paragraph essay. Apparently, it’s not just educators who have opinions about the five-paragraph essay. I recently came across these comments on another website:

In High School, I was “taught” to write five-paragraph essays (and when I say “taught,” I mean “forced.”) The five-paragraph essay was the only form allowed in Sophomore English class.

…my daughter hated it. She would have crying fits each and every time.

I understand when people get emotional over controversial topics—global warming, budget cuts, tax increases—but I was not aware that the five-paragraph essay fell into this category. What exactly is going on here? Let’s find out!

A Personal Five-Paragraph Essay Story

When taking the CBEST test to become a teacher, an experienced middle school science teacher told me, “Just write a five-paragraph essay. Don’t write about anything you care about. Just write an introduction, three paragraphs, and a conclusion—that’s it. Nothing more! You’ll be guaranteed to receive a passing grade.”

I thought that was strange advice, as I had never worried about getting a passing grade on a writing assignment. Looking back, I can only assume that this science teacher had worried.

Did I take the science teacher’s advice? No. But half way into the essay section of the test, those words of advice echoed in my mind, while I sat in frustration. I was lost. I hadn’t planned properly, and I was in over my head. I began to wonder, “What’s my point? Where am I headed? How am I going to finish this? What am I trying to say?”

Well, I got out of that jam, and I’m happy to say I received a high score. That being said, the science teacher’s five-paragraph essay advice stuck in my mind long after the CBEST test was over, and even influenced how I taught writing once I became a teacher. I realized that I had always been a naturally proficient writer, but I didn’t fully understand what I did. Is that what I wanted for my future students?

What I learned from that experience was that students, and all writers, need specific writing skills to fall back on, and by writing skills, I don’t mean just grammar. Real power and real confidence in writing comes from knowing what one is doing and knowing how one is doing it—and not just by being able to do it.

What is a Five Paragraph Essay?

Looking for the most generic definition of a five-paragraph essay I could find, I went to Wikipedia. Wikipedia describes the five-paragraph essay as this:

The five-paragraph essay is a form of written argument. It is a common requisite in assignments in middle school, high school, and university and sometimes elementary school. The format requires an essay to have five paragraphs: one introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs with support and development, and one concluding paragraph. Because of this structure, it is also known as a hamburger essay or a three tier essay… The five-paragraph essay format is also applied to speech making, with some college classes teaching the five-paragraph format, along with an organized system of outlining and pre-writing the speech.

Should You Be For or Against the Five Paragraph Essay?

After reading that definition above, do you think people should be upset over the five-paragraph essay? But before you answer that question, please ask yourself these four questions:

1.   Are you against paragraph form? 2.   Are you against beginnings, middles and endings? 3.   Are you against introductions, bodies, and conclusions? 4.   Are you in favor of rambling and pointless essays?

Put simply, the five-paragraph essay should not be viewed as an end—because in reality—it is a means to an end. Teaching the five-paragraph essay teaches young students a variety of important skills. And I say young students, because if student master these skills when they are young, they won’t be an issue when they are old.  Here are a few facts:

1.   Students must write in paragraph form. 2.   Students must have a beginning, middle and ending. 3.   A beginning, middle and ending is essentially the same thing as an introduction, body, and conclusion. 4.   Students must understand that they cannot ramble. Students must be headed in a purposeful direction in their writing—and they must get there.

The five-paragraph essay is the easiest, fastest, and best way to teach all this. It teaches good thinking.

A Foundational Essay for Beginning Writers

The five-paragraph essay is a foundational essay. It’s an essay to be built upon. But a variety of questions remain:

1.   When should the five-paragraph essay be taught? 2.   How long or how often should students write in five-paragraph essay format? 3.   In what way should the five-paragraph essay be taught?

The five-paragraph essay is an essay for beginners. All students past a certain age should be able to write a five-paragraph essay quickly and easily. What is that certain age? Personally, I think the five-paragraph essay should be mastered in elementary school , but only because it CAN be mastered in elementary school. It definitely should not be an issue in high school for any student. Even struggling writers should be able to master the five-paragraph essay before leaving middle school.

I’ve mostly taught beginning writers and struggling writers, and I don’t teach a strict five-paragraph formula. However, I do work with five-paragraphs quite often because five paragraphs just happen to be the very best length to work with. Five paragraphs is the length that best helps students to develop the rhythm of beginning, middle, and ending in paragraphs, along with having a beginning, middle, and ending in the whole composition (two levels of beginning, middle, and ending).

I use the A, B, C Sentence ™ and the Secret A, B, C Sentence ™ to achieve this. It’s the fastest, most effective way to achieve this! It is also the most flexible and natural way to achieve this. Be sure to check out the Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay writing curriculum on the homepage. Personally, I don’t think teaching writing should ever be static or dogmatic. For me, teaching the five-paragraph essay is mostly about teaching fantastic paragraph form and logical construction.

Please note, other paragraph lengths are also of value. For instance, four paragraphs is the best length for teaching beginning writers and struggling writers the two-sided thought patterns: cause-effect, compare-contrast, pro-con etc. Always remember, five is just number, and so is four. Different numbers serve different purposes.

A Foundational Essay for Older Writers

Even though the five-paragraph essay is an essay for beginners, it is fine if there is still a strong emphasis put on it in high school and in college. But in high school and in college, it should be the equivalent of knowing one’s multiplication tables. The five-paragraph should be used as a tool that helps students access a variety of different types of essays and a variety of the different organizational patterns found in writing. Put simply, the five-paragraph essay is a tool. It is not an end in itself.

The greatest benefit that comes from being able to write the five-paragraph essay is the awareness of five-paragraph essay thinking. Five-paragraph essay thinking provides value for a lifetime. The same thinking that creates five-paragraph essays can be used to write four paragraphs, seven paragraphs, or fifteen paragraphs.

A word of warning: If teachers will only accept five paragraphs, nothing more or less, always and forever, their students will eventually feel as the people at the top of this page felt. I do not recommend this. The five-paragraph essay is a teaching tool, not an end result.

Revisiting the Science Teacher Who Writes Five-Paragraph Essays

I recently spoke with the science teacher who advised me to write the five-paragraph essay on the CBEST test so many years before. I asked him if he was still such a rabid fan of the five-paragraph essay. He was. He told me he uses it all the time to make the points he wants to make. With social media, everyone is an author. The science teacher posts comments on important issues, and also participates in several forums for several of his hobbies. He enjoys helping others and debating.

He explained that he is not particularly interested in writing, but that he has opinions and enjoys making points.  The five-paragraph essay lets him do that quickly and effortlessly. The science teacher says that the five-paragraph essay was not drilled into him, and that he only really discovered its benefits in college. It’s then that he became a fan.

The science teacher showed me a number of his posts, and they would not have jumped out at me as being five-paragraph essays. In fact, he wrote posts that were four, six, and eight paragraphs also. Apparently, the teacher likes five-paragraph thinking as much as he likes the five-paragraph essay. In short, he just likes to make points and provide proof that his points are valid. He considers the five-paragraph essay to be the backbone of his writing. He says that people take his comments and opinions seriously, and that he is even a trusted authority in some places he posts. It seems that his readers focus on the points he makes and not the fact that he is using five-paragraph thinking.

A Final Note

The first step in making a person love to write is to make the person a competent writer. That opens the door and the mind to more possibilities. As teachers our job is not just to teach the students who love to write, but also to teach the students who are afraid to write or who don’t like to write.

The five-paragraph essay is a teaching tool. Most criticism of the five-paragraph essay comes down to its overuse, along with a dogmatic approach to using it in the classroom. Personally, I agree with much of that criticism. The five-paragraph essay is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

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More than three reasons why the five paragraph essay is bad

From Household Opera comes this good discussion about the five paragraph essay. For anyone invested in composition and rhetoric theory and practice, this isn’t exactly a news flash, but this discussion and the many links Amanda has here suggests to me that it is becoming the conventional wisdom for all kinds of folks outside of composition studies, too.

My favorite critique of the five paragraph essay is in Jasper Neel’s book Plato, Derrida, and Writing; he argues the five paragraph essay comes from Plato’s notions of the way rhetoric and arguments work, and Neel convincingly explains why the five paragraph essay is “anti-writing.” A very worthwhile read.

In my own mind, learning how to write a five paragraph essay is the same as learning how to fill out a form. Filling out a form is obviously not the same as writing, though people do need to learn how to fill out forms, and the five paragraph essay does have its uses. For example, the five paragraph form works well for any sort of timed writing like an essay test. But the five paragraph form becomes a problem for students when they learn it is the only tool they will ever need to write anything, sort of like using a hammer to bake a pie.

Yet, as easy as it is to note how wrong the five paragraph essay is, we do see its form in all sorts of different kinds of writing and settings. Ultimately, it is an embodiment of the “holy trinity”– a beginning and an end, sure, but also a division of everything into three mysterious parts, a father, a son, a holy spirit/ghost. This division of three is everywhere– small, medium, large, etc. And most dissertations (including mine) are divided into… five chapters…

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What Is A Five-Paragraph Essay & How Do You Write One?

• What Is A Five-Paragraph Essay?
• How To Write One
• Essay Outline

If you’re a student in the US, there’s a good chance you’ll be asked to write a five-paragraph essay at some point in your academic career. In fact, you’ll probably be asked to write one several times in your academic career. By the time you graduate, you may have written these essays so many times that you groan at the mere mention of them. We can’t blame you for that, but there’s a reason why so many teachers require them.

The five-paragraph essay is a perfect introduction for learning how to research, structure, and write a succinct and effective essay. Once you master the style, you can move on and become an expert at so many other styles of writing. The five-paragraph essay is foundational, so if you’ve been assigned one, breathe easy. You’re doing important work, and this handy guide to writing a five-paragraph essay will help make the writing process a breeze.

What is a five-paragraph essay?

The five-paragraph essay is primarily used in academic writing, and it’s one of the first styles of essay most students are taught. Within the framework of the five-paragraph essay, students can practice persuasive writing, compare and contrast two ideas, or even write researched informative pieces.

If you’re like a lot of students, you might remember learning the five-paragraph essay using the “hamburger method.” With this method, the parts of the essay are listed just like a hamburger, with the introduction and conclusion acting as “buns” around the detail paragraph “toppings.” Now that we’ve stimulated your appetite right along with your writer’s brain, grab a snack and let’s break down the steps to writing a flawless five-paragraph essay.

How to write a five-paragraph essay

The good news about writing a five-paragraph essay is that it has an easy-to-follow format. It’s clear from the title alone that the process will involve writing five separate sections, each with its own guidelines and specifications. From there, the trick is infusing creativity and your own unique writing style into the essay format.

Before we get to that, let’s talk about the different parts of the typical five-paragraph essay.

1. The introduction

Every five-paragraph essay begins with a thesis statement and an introductory paragraph. The thesis statement is a single sentence that clearly summarizes what the essay will be about , including your opinion on it if you’re writing an argumentative or persuasive piece.

Once you have a clear thesis written, the rest of your introduction should include:

• Basic context or information about your intended topic (if necessary).
• A brief mention of the main points to be expanded on in the body of the essay.

Save the most significant information for the body paragraphs, but offer a preview of the points you intend to make in order to entice readers to read more. When put together, a strong introduction will look something like this:

There’s a lot of debate about which food category hot dogs fit into, but it’s clear from the evidence that a hot dog is a type of sandwich. Hot dogs are an incredibly popular food in America. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council estimates that we consume about 20 billion hot dogs a year. With that kind of devotion, it’s easy to see why people feel so passionate about which food category their beloved hot dogs fit into. But many experts, restaurateurs, and even the dictionary classify hot dogs as sandwiches, and it’s time to end this heated food debate once and for all.

Review the three main types of thesis statements here.

2. Three body paragraphs

The support for your thesis comes in the form of three separate body paragraphs. These paragraphs are where you include relevant details, expert quotes, citations from books or other resources, and any other information you need in order to convey your full argument or knowledge to the reader. Each of your body paragraphs should include the following:

• A topic sentence that clearly defines what the paragraph is about.
• Transition words (like first, lastly, additionally, however, etc.) to help guide the reader.
• Details that specifically support and expand on the thesis.
• Pertinent data, properly cited sources, quotes and/or relevant anecdotes.
• At least five sentences, though higher level writing may call for more.

Remember that each body paragraph should focus on one main argument or supporting detail. Including three body paragraphs means you have three separate paragraphs to write about three separate supports for your thesis. Finally, make sure the information you include is relevant. These paragraphs should be succinct and informative and not include tangential information.

Here’s a sample body paragraph:

To begin, hot dogs fit the dictionary definition of the word sandwich. Sandwich is defined as “two or more slices of bread with a layer of meat, fish, cheese, and whatever other filling you’d like between them.” A hot dog is a grilled or steamed sausage, usually made of pork or beef, which qualifies as a layer of meat. They can also have toppings, such as condiments or cold vegetables, just like other kinds of sandwiches might. Hot dogs are served on buns, which are a type of split sandwich roll. In many delis, other types of sandwiches are served on split rolls. Since they are served on the same bread as many sandwiches, hot dogs are clearly a type of sandwich.

When it comes to research and citations, do your essay justice by reading this tips on how to avoid plagiarism.

A five-paragraph essay outline

Now that you know the parts of a five-paragraph essay, it might help to see them in action. Here’s an outline format you can use to plan your own essays, filled in with examples of a thesis statement, topic sentences for your body paragraphs, and the main parts of a strong conclusion.

Introduction

• Thesis statement: There’s a lot of debate about which food category hot dogs fit into, but it’s clear from the evidence that a hot dog is a type of sandwich.

Body paragraph #1

• Topic sentence: To begin, hot dogs fit the dictionary definition of the word sandwich.
• Supporting detail: Sandwich is defined as “two or more slices of bread with a layer of meat, fish, cheese, and whatever other filling you’d like between them.”
• Supporting detail: A hot dog is a grilled or steamed sausage, usually made of pork or beef, which qualifies as a layer of meat.
• Supporting detail: Hot dog buns are split rolls, similar to the ones used for deli sandwiches.

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Body paragraph #2

• Topic sentence: Secondly, hot dogs meet the legal definition of sandwiches in many places.
• Supporting detail: Mark Wheeler, a food safety specialist with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), says the organization defines a sandwich as “a meat or poultry filling between two slices of bread, a bun, or a biscuit.”
• Supporting detail: In New York state, tax law lists “hot dogs and sausages on buns” as types of sandwiches.
• Supporting detail: Additionally, tax law in California clearly includes “hot dog and hamburger sandwiches” served from “sandwich stands or booths.”

Body paragraph #3

• Topic sentence: Finally, most Americans agree that hot dogs are sandwiches.
• Supporting detail: In a poll of 1,000 people conducted by RTA Outdoor Living, 56.8% of respondents agreed a hot dog is a sandwich.
• Supporting detail: Many fast food chains that serve primarily burgers and sandwiches, like Five Guys burgers and Shake Shack, also sell hot dogs.
• Supporting detail: Lexicographers at Dictionary.com have also declared that hot dogs officially meet the criteria to be included in the sandwich category. (Curious? Read the article here for this and other great food debates explained .)
• Restatement of thesis: Hot dogs are a unique kind of food, but the evidence makes it clear that they are indeed a type of sandwich.

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Why Write A Five-Paragraph Essay?

September 16, 2021 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

There’s a reason that  Bloom’s Taxonomy , a hierarchy of thinking processes, lists “creation” as its most complex category: whether a student is investigating a hypothesis, building a contraption, or  writing an essay , creating something new is a difficult task. A major component of this difficulty is what educators and psychologists call cognitive load, the amount of working memory resources a task demands of the person performing it. In her widely cited article “A Capacity Theory of Writing: Working Memory in Composition,” the educational scholar Deborah McCutchen illustrates the cognitive load of writing: “to compose a text, skilled writers coordinate within working memory planning goals (e.g., plans for content, audience, overall tone, etc.) and product goals (e.g. requirements of grammaticality, plan fulfillment, etc.) while language generation processes retrieve words to express content and organize those words into appropriate text (see Flower and Hayes, 1980, 1981, 1984 McCutchen, 1994).” Understandably, it can be difficult for a writer to attend to all of these processes at once, and if the cognitive load is too high, the writer might not be able to complete the task. One way to lighten this load is to focus on different aspects of the writing process and product at different times; educators have adopted this principle in frameworks like the 6+1 Writing Traits  or  Judith Hochman’s Teaching Basic Writing Skills . Because it offers a consistent structure, one of the major benefits of the five-paragraph essay is that once a writer is familiar with it, using that  framework for planning  frees more of their cognitive load. With their basic organizational scheme already chosen, the writer can attend more fully to other aspects of their work, such as ideas, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation.

In thinking of the rhetorical power of the five-paragraph essay form, rather than the total number of paragraphs, we should consider a different number, a bit of a magical number: three. In his book Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer , Roy Peter Clark  discusses the hidden power of numbers in language. Citing examples such as “Moe, Larry, and Curly. Tinkers to Evers to Chance. A priest, a minister, and a rabbi. Executive, legislative, judicial,” he notes that “In our language and culture, three provides a sense of the whole.” There’s just something about a set of three things that resounds with people. In allowing the writer to use three body paragraphs to set forth three main points, the five-paragraph essay invites the writer to tap into this power. It is worth noting that three is not the only powerful number. For instance, before they learn the five-paragraph essay form, many students learn the four-paragraph essay, which reemerges occasionally in high school. This form allows students to graduate from three-paragraph essays, whose single body paragraph generally explores one major point, to use two body paragraphs to explore a duality within their topic.

The cultural argument for the five-paragraph essay may, at first, seem self-serving: It is useful because it is widely used. But just as it serves a purpose for writers, it serves a purpose for readers. Faced with this familiar form, readers know to look for a guiding claim or thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph. Anticipating how the structure works makes it easier for the reader to comprehend the piece. This is not to say that all five-paragraph essays work the exact same way. As we noted above, the advantage of a familiar structure is to let students concentrate on other aspects of writing, so as students progress, their ideas should grow more sophisticated even within this same form. Their order of body paragraphs should have a perceptible logic, their analyses should be complex, and rather than serving as a simple summary, their conclusion could emphasize the significance of their argument. Even after writers move on to longer and more complex forms, they may still find occasion to access the benefits of the five-paragraph essay. Two of the highest-stakes pieces in high school, the  ACT or SAT  essay and the main  Common Application  statement, lend themselves well to the form. In both the ACT and SAT, testers must compose a complete essay in less than an hour. If they enter the test already tentatively knowing what their structure will be, they will save valuable minutes of writing time. The urgency of time is also a factor for the essays’ audiences. Both the test essays and the Common Application essay are read by people who are consuming a high volume of pieces and consuming them quickly — in the case of the application essay, in  just a few minutes . It is to the writer’s advantage to make the reader’s job easier by giving them a vivid, specific essay in a structure that is easy to follow.

The students who rail against five-paragraph essays might be surprised to hear that the form is controversial in academia as well; in fact, a new book by the college instructor John Warner, titled  Why They Can’t Write , is subtitled  Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities . While we don’t want to kill the five-paragraph essay, we agree that the form has at least one downside: the potential for overuse. If every piece a student composes is a five-paragraph essay, that’s a problem. No single structure, essay or otherwise, should encompass all of a student writer’s experiences in a school year, or even in a single class. Writers of all ages need opportunities to wrestle with form. We don’t want writers to believe, as even some first-year college students do, that big ideas always come in threes, or that one paragraph is always sufficient for sharing their thoughts on one of those ideas. Notably, hardly any pieces of “real world” writing, including published essays, take the form of a five-paragraph essay. That’s another downside: ultimately, the structure is too simple for public discourse. Even as we help students understand and access the benefits of the five-paragraph essay, we must emphasize that the form acts like a set of writerly training wheels. Eventually, with instructors’ guidance, students need to shift from letting form determine their ideas to letting their ideas determine form. At that point, the training wheels should fall away, and writers will zoom forward, perhaps a little wobbly at times, but entirely under their own power.

By  Elizabeth Walters , Private Tutor and Writing Coach

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Tips for Writing an Effective Application Essay

How to Write an Effective Essay

Writing an essay for college admission gives you a chance to use your authentic voice and show your personality. It's an excellent opportunity to personalize your application beyond your academic credentials, and a well-written essay can have a positive influence come decision time.

Want to know how to draft an essay for your college application ? Here are some tips to keep in mind when writing.

Tips for Essay Writing

A typical college application essay, also known as a personal statement, is 400-600 words. Although that may seem short, writing about yourself can be challenging. It's not something you want to rush or put off at the last moment. Think of it as a critical piece of the application process. Follow these tips to write an impactful essay that can work in your favor.

1. Start Early.

Few people write well under pressure. Try to complete your first draft a few weeks before you have to turn it in. Many advisers recommend starting as early as the summer before your senior year in high school. That way, you have ample time to think about the prompt and craft the best personal statement possible.

You don't have to work on your essay every day, but you'll want to give yourself time to revise and edit. You may discover that you want to change your topic or think of a better way to frame it. Either way, the sooner you start, the better.

2. Understand the Prompt and Instructions.

Before you begin the writing process, take time to understand what the college wants from you. The worst thing you can do is skim through the instructions and submit a piece that doesn't even fit the bare minimum requirements or address the essay topic. Look at the prompt, consider the required word count, and note any unique details each school wants.

3. Create a Strong Opener.

Students seeking help for their application essays often have trouble getting things started. It's a challenging writing process. Finding the right words to start can be the hardest part.

Spending more time working on your opener is always a good idea. The opening sentence sets the stage for the rest of your piece. The introductory paragraph is what piques the interest of the reader, and it can immediately set your essay apart from the others.

4. Stay on Topic.

One of the most important things to remember is to keep to the essay topic. If you're applying to 10 or more colleges, it's easy to veer off course with so many application essays.

A common mistake many students make is trying to fit previously written essays into the mold of another college's requirements. This seems like a time-saving way to avoid writing new pieces entirely, but it often backfires. The result is usually a final piece that's generic, unfocused, or confusing. Always write a new essay for every application, no matter how long it takes.

5. Think About Your Response.

Don't try to guess what the admissions officials want to read. Your essay will be easier to write─and more exciting to read─if you’re genuinely enthusiastic about your subject. Here’s an example: If all your friends are writing application essays about covid-19, it may be a good idea to avoid that topic, unless during the pandemic you had a vivid, life-changing experience you're burning to share. Whatever topic you choose, avoid canned responses. Be creative.

6. Focus on You.

Essay prompts typically give you plenty of latitude, but panel members expect you to focus on a subject that is personal (although not overly intimate) and particular to you. Admissions counselors say the best essays help them learn something about the candidate that they would never know from reading the rest of the application.

7. Stay True to Your Voice.

Use your usual vocabulary. Avoid fancy language you wouldn't use in real life. Imagine yourself reading this essay aloud to a classroom full of people who have never met you. Keep a confident tone. Be wary of words and phrases that undercut that tone.

8. Be Specific and Factual.

Capitalize on real-life experiences. Your essay may give you the time and space to explain why a particular achievement meant so much to you. But resist the urge to exaggerate and embellish. Admissions counselors read thousands of essays each year. They can easily spot a fake.

9. Edit and Proofread.

When you finish the final draft, run it through the spell checker on your computer. Then don’t read your essay for a few days. You'll be more apt to spot typos and awkward grammar when you reread it. After that, ask a teacher, parent, or college student (preferably an English or communications major) to give it a quick read. While you're at it, double-check your word count.

Writing essays for college admission can be daunting, but it doesn't have to be. A well-crafted essay could be the deciding factor─in your favor. Keep these tips in mind, and you'll have no problem creating memorable pieces for every application.

What is the format of a college application essay?

Generally, essays for college admission follow a simple format that includes an opening paragraph, a lengthier body section, and a closing paragraph. You don't need to include a title, which will only take up extra space. Keep in mind that the exact format can vary from one college application to the next. Read the instructions and prompt for more guidance.

Most online applications will include a text box for your essay. If you're attaching it as a document, however, be sure to use a standard, 12-point font and use 1.5-spaced or double-spaced lines, unless the application specifies different font and spacing.

How do you start an essay?

The goal here is to use an attention grabber. Think of it as a way to reel the reader in and interest an admissions officer in what you have to say. There's no trick on how to start a college application essay. The best way you can approach this task is to flex your creative muscles and think outside the box.

You can start with openers such as relevant quotes, exciting anecdotes, or questions. Either way, the first sentence should be unique and intrigue the reader.

What should an essay include?

Every application essay you write should include details about yourself and past experiences. It's another opportunity to make yourself look like a fantastic applicant. Leverage your experiences. Tell a riveting story that fulfills the prompt.

What shouldn’t be included in an essay?

When writing a college application essay, it's usually best to avoid overly personal details and controversial topics. Although these topics might make for an intriguing essay, they can be tricky to express well. If you’re unsure if a topic is appropriate for your essay, check with your school counselor. An essay for college admission shouldn't include a list of achievements or academic accolades either. Your essay isn’t meant to be a rehashing of information the admissions panel can find elsewhere in your application.

How can you make your essay personal and interesting?

The best way to make your essay interesting is to write about something genuinely important to you. That could be an experience that changed your life or a valuable lesson that had an enormous impact on you. Whatever the case, speak from the heart, and be honest.

Is it OK to discuss mental health in an essay?

Mental health struggles can create challenges you must overcome during your education and could be an opportunity for you to show how you’ve handled challenges and overcome obstacles. If you’re considering writing your essay for college admission on this topic, consider talking to your school counselor or with an English teacher on how to frame the essay.

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