Understanding the Five-Paragraph Essay

By Wenya Froling Titzler

How experts recommend we use the structure

W
most students recognize as the modern five-paragraph essay consists of an
introduction and conclusion paragraph sandwiching three body paragraphs with a
topic sentence, followed by a concrete detail and two commentary sentences, ending
with a conclusion sentence. This structure was invented by Jane Schaffer, a high
school English teacher, to support struggling students with organizing their essays. As a college

student, I have written countless essays that conform to the model. Each time I gained confidence
in using the template, but I was left wondering why and how my teachers asked me to use it for
every essay. To better understand the five-paragraph theme, experts have dissected its
effectiveness and application.
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Where does this structure come from?

But first, as with discussing most controversial topics, one must start at the very beginning.
Matthew Nunes, a rhetoric and composition professor at the University of Ohio, argues it’s crucial
to consider the five-paragraph model
as a building block of learning the
structure of English composition. In his
research of composition textbooks
from before the 19th century, Nunes
found many of the texts were written
to aid early writers transition from
Latin
based
texts to English ones. He notes that the prominent influences of
the five-paragraph model actually originate from the act of
teaching English itself. Nunes emphasizes that the model’s origin
lies in the accessibility of education and that the current five-
paragraph essay fulfills the same purpose.

How does this affect student writers?

Bonnie Albertson measured the effectiveness of the five-paragraph essay structure and argued the
more formally organized the essays are, the higher the score on middle and high school
standardized writing assessments. However, Albertson also found that students who scored highest
actually deviated from the five-paragraph theme. Incorporating narrative elements, sarcasm, irony,
anecdotes, among other rhetorical devices added sophistication to student’s essays. Think of it a
little like gambling- if you know a specific essay structure guarantees you an above-average grade,
why chance a completely different model that will either earn you a high score or a meager one? As
shown in Figure 1, out of the top-scoring 8th-grade essays, only about a third use the classic five-
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paragraph structure while nearly two-thirds implemented their own plan. The 7% using a “modified
formula” incorporated the skeletal structure of the five-paragraph theme but varied the number of
body paragraphs. The same goes for the 10th-grade essays, this time with a larger percentage of
students with a different “other” organization style. The students who played it safe and stuck with
the traditional five-paragraph theme scored moderately well but did not exhibit the complex
thinking that the assessment called for.

Figure 1. Pie charts for organization scheme for top-scoring grades 8 and 10 essays.

Richard Argys (left) is an English instructor at the University of

Colorado Denver. He reviewed Albertsons’ findings and
wondered what the effects of exclusively using the five-
paragraph theme were in intermediate students. He found
that such formulaic writing may in fact restrict students from
developing complex arguments and thinking processes. As
students become comfortable with the predictable structure
and are rewarded with high scores, they learn to fit all their
writing into the formula.
Argys worries that the lack of encouragement to develop
complex thinking and writing skills that arise from the
enforcement of the five-paragraph theme will hinder
students’ writing in college and with advanced concepts. He
urges the method to be used only as a guide for struggling writers in grades 8-10.
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Why teachers continue to employ this method

Tara Johnson (right), an associate professor of English at Purdue
University, proposes teachers continue to use the method even
if they acknowledge its disadvantages, because of societal and
academic pressure within schools and communities. Specifically,
Johnson researched what prompted a teacher to use the five-
paragraph structure in her middle school English class. She
found that the more frequent categories of influences listed in
Figure 2 are due to the teacher’s mentor during her internship at
the middle school. The methods and subjects suggested by the
mentor heavily affected the teacher’s decisions when she taught
her first year. Johnson’s research investigated further the
outside influences from fellow teachers and administration. She
discovered colleagues, the teacher’s education coursework, and the mandated assessments from
the district restricted teacher’s options in writing instruction. The expectation of students to score
highly on writing assignments guided and shared experiences from other teachers guided the
teacher to use the five-paragraph. Its effectiveness to please administrators, students, and parents
far outweighed the freedom in her classroom and any writing preferences the teacher had.

Figure 2 Codes and frequencies of influences in teaching methods from year of student teaching and first year
teaching position.
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Unfortunately, this sentiment does not change in high school English classes. Mark Wiley (left), a
composition coordinator at the California State University of
Long Beach, interviewed high school writing teachers to
understand why they taught the five-paragraph method despite
what Argy’s argues in his research. Wiley found that since it is
easy to teach and grade essays with such rigid organization,
teachers instruct students to use the five-paragraph theme for
concepts and genres that don’t necessarily fit its structure. He
criticizes this approach for sabotaging students’ opportunities for
advancing their composition. He also condemns the political
influence of proficiency exams and its pressure on teachers to
produce students who can write and pass tests rather than
compose original essays. From his findings, Wiley argues it’s not
the five-paragraph structure itself that’s the issue but the dependency that develops in teachers.

The authors I mentioned in this post have concluded that the five-paragraph method improves
writing in young writers and that hinders advanced writing. There is also the omnipresent theme of
how influential standardized writing assessments are in the way teachers instruct writing.
Personally, the five-paragraph method helped me to grasp essay organization in middle school.
However, as I begin my college education, I realize there are so many more effective ways to
organize an essay. I do have the question of how students who continuously used the five-
paragraph method throughout middle and high school transition to the writing required in higher
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education. Is it a conscious decision to discover different organizational styles or a gradual process

by sheer exposure to more academic writing? Perhaps it is a mixture of both. Whatever your stance
on the five-paragraph structure, I recommend keeping in mind the model’s ultimate purpose: to
provide accessibility and support in areas of writing you may be struggling in. This structure can
help you learn your style and gain confidence in your writing, but once you graduate to more
complex writing, it may be time to diversify the elements of the organization you work with. Tl;dr:
the five-paragraph method is an effective scaffolding for beginning and struggling writers, but
comes with too many side effects to a writer’s growth to use in high school and beyond.
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References

Albertson, Bonnie R. “Organization and Development Features of Grade 8 and Grade 10

Writers: A Descriptive Study of Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) Essays.”
Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 41, no. 4, 2007, pp. 435–464. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/40171742. Accessed 29 Nov. 2020.

Johnson, Tara Star, et al. “Learning to Teach the Five-Paragraph Theme.” Research in the
Teaching of English, vol. 38, no. 2, 2003, pp. 136–176. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/40171635. Accessed 29 Nov. 2020.

Nunes, Matthew J. “The Five-Paragraph Essay: Its Evolution and Roots in Theme-Writing.”
Rhetoric Review, vol. 32, no. 3, 2013, pp. 295-313. Taylor & Francis Online, https://doi-
org.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:9443/10.1080/07350198.2013.797877. Accessed 29 Nov.
2020.

VanDeWeghe, Rick, and Richard Argys. “Research Matters: One More Thing: Can We Teach
Process Writing and Formulaic Response?” The English Journal, vol. 97, no. 3, 2008, pp.
97–101. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30046839. Accessed 29 Nov. 2020.

Wiley, Mark. “The Popularity of Formulaic Writing (And Why We Need to Resist).” The
English
Journal, vol. 90, no. 1, 2000, pp. 61–67. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/821733. Accessed
29 Nov. 2020.