Re: Big Yes for Formulaic Writing

["Jeanne H. Simpson" <csjhs@ux1.cts.eiu.edu>]

I was asked, when do I think it is worthwhile to teach the 5-par. essay.

While there is no doubt that most students who arrive at this university
have seen it, I have encountered students, specifically some who came to
the writing center, who didn't have a clue about *any* structure for
writing, 5-paragraph or otherwise.  So, as a means of teaching the concept
of a structure, it seems to me the 5-par. essay has the same value as
using the structure of a sonnet or a snake skeleton.  I learned long ago
never to underestimate what students do not know about writing, to assume
ignorance until knowledge is proved.  That includes a recognition that
there is such a thing as structure.  Introducing the 5-para. essay to such
students not only teaches the concept of structure, it also provides a
format that can be used in a variety of academic settings, thus giving the
student some important help early on.    

Is it the only structure? No, of course not. And to teach it as if it were
is to do the student a horrible disservice.   Even so, I do not see that
there is harm in teaching an element of discourse in isolation, as long as
the connection to other elements is understood and, ultimately, a sense of
the whole achieved.  We have to start somewhere.

A 5-par. essay, as another respondent noted, can be a useful response on
an essay exam.  And I would not be able to look a student in the eye and
say, well, using this is just prostituting yourself to the desires of the
instructor and perhaps violating your personal integrity as a writer.  The
student has a direct, personal, reasonable interest in doing well on the
exam. A 5-par. essay meets the interests of allowing the student to
demonstrate sufficient knowledge and of providing both student and
instructor with an efficient format.  A 5-par. essay offers the reader
clarity, predictability, symmetry.   

Another point at which I might offer the 5-par. essay would be to assist a
non-western student in understanding some of the rhetorical conventions of
western academic writing.  

I return to the question of why a writer would choose a particular format,
with its defined constraints. Why a sonnet and not an epic poem written in
rhymed couplets?  Why a 5-par. essay and not a 10-para. essay?  Why an
epistolary novel and not a 3-act play?  Why even think in terms of acts?

Because form is an interface where reader, writer, and message converge.
It is itself a kind of meaning, a cultural artifact.  If I compose a
sonnet, my readers expect a certain kind of thing to happen in it.  If I
write a play, my readers expect something else to happen than would occur
in the sonnet.   And if I write a 5-par. essay, yet another set of
expectations occur.  My job as a teacher is to help my students
understand the implications of those choices, to provide recognition of
the existence of the choices.  The students don't need to re-invent structure,
they just need to know the range of variation and have some principles by
which to choose.  

When the 5-para. essay has been taught badly, it has been presented as
the total of the rhetorical universe.  And yes, the issue is really bad
teaching, not bad writing per se.

Jeanne Simpson
csjhs@eiu.edu