Bottom line: the five-paragraph essay’s inherent prioritization of structure over style can have long-term damaging effects on students who never learn to move beyond it, but teaching the form ...

The five-paragraph essay is a mainstay of high school writing instruction, designed to teach students how to compose a simple thesis and defend it in a methodical, easily graded package.

In especially long essays (20-plus pages), this outline of the essay’s structure may demand a paragraph of its own (usually the second paragraph). Example Introduction Paragraph. Here is an example of ...

The essay counted down each year ("three years ago," "two years ago," etc.) and concluded with this paragraph: One month ago, I needed my powers more than ever before.

Illustration – evidence and examples that reinforce the main point; Explanation – evaluate the evidence in the illustration, discuss its significance, and show how this paragraph connects to the ...

Sample Essay Here is a sample essay, written by a first-year student in a humanities course I TA-ed for a number of years ago, ... It states the central point of the paragraph, and the rest of that ...

In his blog The White Rhino: A Chicago Latino English Teacher, Ray Salazar argues that the five-paragraph essay should be tossed out the window. The Chicago public school teacher writes that the ...

Suppose you are a professor of pedagogy, and you assign an essay on learning styles. A student hands in an essay with the following opening paragraph: The construct of “learning styles” is ...

John Warner has read enough college student essays to diagnose what's wrong with the way Americans write. After 20 years teaching undergraduate writing courses, including a recent stint at the ...