RE: Big Yes for Formulaic Writing, reply

[Lynne Belcher <lrbelcher@saumag.edu>]

Linda Bergman said "I've helped students take their muddled,
jumbled, disorganized writing (what they called a draft, but what 
read like brainstorming) and turn it into a reader-friendly 
communication by using the 5-paragraph model, expanded perhaps, 
and adapted to the particular issues and purposes they were 
aiming at.  There's no intrinsic reason, it seems to me, that 
this form or any form (the sonnet, for instance, or the
sestina) necessarily leads to mindless writing or prohibits more 
complex thinking."

I don't believe I ever said that the form leads to "mindless 
thinking."  What I said is it has limited applications.  You say 
you help students, ". . . turn it into a reader-friendly 
communication by using the 5-paragraph model, expanded perhaps, 
and adapted to the particular issues and purposes they were 
aiming at."  What that says to me is that you help students 
change the structure to fit the ideas, which was what I was 
trying to say, too.  

If we want to show student how writers use structure, why don't 
we look at some of those other structures?  My experience has 
been that once students learn one structure (the five-paragraph 
theme structure), they use it for everything.  When I talk to 
those students about others ways to structure complex ideas, they 
seem amazed that there is any other way to organize.  What's the 
problem with looking at other structures? I simply haven't had 
much luck with teaching this structure except as a way to 
organize responses to particular types of essay questions.  

Lynne Belcher
Southern Arkansas University