Don't Let the Five-Paragraph Formula Silence Your Voice
- johanap
- Feb 2, 2020
- 2 min read
The five-paragraph formula is an academic concept which is interpreted in many classrooms. The notion was laid out like wildfire harming the education of multitude students. The method is a formulaic way of easily writing academic essays. It is a 5 step formula that consists of an introduction, three analytical paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph that restates the thesis. In my opinion, a well developed essay does not follow a certain structure, format, or template. Don’t get me wrong, the five-paragraph is a great way of learning to write essays. It has certainly helped me during elementary and my early phases of middle school, but I learnt to develop more concrete details onto my essays which ended up dispatching me from using the formula. However, some don’t understand that one needs to step out of their comfort zone and disobey the constraints of following the five- paragraph essay in order to grow as a writer which means putting an end to the simple five- paragraph formula. Teachers are harming our education by stressing the importance of this formula to succeed in academic discourses. But for me, my ideal academic essay is "free-form." This concept of writing helps me grow as a writer because the amount of sentences, evidence, and the orientation is entirely up to me. My high school English teacher always stressed the importance of “quantity over quality,” therefore, I personally do believe that content is the key to developing a well structured essay that contains rich thoughts towards analyzing a topic. Free form worked well for me because it allowed me to pour all of my thoughts onto my writings without feeling held back by using the basic formula. Demolishing the formula from my academics has helped me find my voice and grow as a writer. In fact, our class was introduced to the concept of the "Paraburger." The paraburger is a guideline of how our paragraphs in our academic writings should be structured. When interpreting the “paraburger” method onto my writings, I realized that my free-form style is quite similar. Unlike the five-paragraph formula, the paraburger is a rhetorically effective method that doesn’t constraint students from writing their thoughts but rather gain total freedom to think beyond the obvious. The concept grants the rhetor the ability to organize their essay in which brings them satisfaction, as long as it meets the requirements of deep critical thinking when transitioning from one idea to another.
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