5-paragraph vs. "Just an essay" essays

I accidently wrote a 5-paragraph precis last week--I am ashamed. Bad instructor, no new Mac for you. (And so on.) Of course, it really was an accident. I was taught to write 4 sentence precis (ergh! what's the plural of that?). Ours had to be longer, so I wrote a 4 sentence one, and the piece I was writing it about happened to have 3 examples which made nice little summary paragraphs to insert in the middle and make it longer. Still, suddenly being told to write a 2 pager hurt my "but this is the form" sensibilities.

And that's exactly how students probably feel at first when told they don't have to, and indeed shouldn't, continue writing X-paragraph form essays. Hell, that's probably how some teachers feel when told they should be teaching something else. 5-paragraph essays are really easy to check and grade. Students still can put a lot of original thought into their body paragraphs (I've seen it, so I know it can be done, though I don't think I'm capable personally), and they're a decent way to get students to barf back up facts.

I've told students that 5-paragraph essays are the way to go on essay tests in some teacher's classes (and at other institutions I could even tell you what those teachers were, and that writing your in class essay answers in this form was the only way to get an A on blue book exams).

So I'm not entirely against the 5-paragraph essay. It has its place, I learned it in high school, and I put it to good use in my undergraduate education to get myself some rather undeserved A's in history courses (and one about Chaucer). I knew what I was doing wasn't good writing, heck, I don't even consider myself a good writer. But, I was able to figure out when 5 paragraph was expected and not.

I think what process specialists and expressivists like Elbow are trying to teach students is to move beyond the 5 paragraph form. It has its place, but its place is limited. Nobody's gonna publish a 5 paragraph essay in a journal for ANY discipline. Nobody is going to truly be interested to read writing that just barfs back what a person has read or heard in class. In testing, when we want to know what you've read or heard in class, then the 5-paragraph essay works well. But I'm not testing my students when I assign an essay, and I have to let them know that. Many teachers use the essay as a test of what they've learned, and this particular form in question is a fairly good way of demonstrating that.

But all writing is not a test. All writing is not being judged as a test. Sometimes writing is just being judged as effective communication of ideas--proof of having ideas--and that's when the 5-paragraph essay fails (and it doesn't just begin to fail, it crashes and burns).

It's problematic, however, that the essay form may be expected of students by other instructors throughout their college career. Instead of teaching it in a course, I might like to see it moved to some weekend seminars that students that don't know it can sign up for. That we composition instructors can safely move beyond it without feeling like they are shortchanging their students an essential tool in getting by at school.

I, like Ellen, am not sure if the touchy-feely-ness of the expressivists is the way to go. But they wrote in the 60s, and were probably high, and what the heck do I expect anyway? I call my pedagogy a "student advocate," I'm on their side, seeing to their needs, and yet I'm still snarky, sarcastic, and a hard ass if its called for. I don't think that anybody needs to be a "oh let's value ideas over grammar and form" person all the time. "Your ideas rock, your writing needs revision" is a fine comment, though perhaps needs to be rephrased. But without ideas, writing is pretty empty, so what else can we say?