The Five-Paragraph Essay-RIP?

New AI Software Upends a Composition Standard

“The song has ended but the melody lingers on.”

                                                            --Irving Berlin

Last week I learned of an untimely death in my pedagogical family.  During a discussion of our English faculty at a small liberal arts college several of my colleagues declared the five-paragraph essay was no longer the gold standard of composition architecture.  It has fallen victim to Chat/GPT, the first of new-generation AI software capable of writing coherent essays based on a user’s query. 

Ask Chat/GPT questions like, “How would Bob Dylan update The Star-Spangled Banner?”  Or, “Using Aristotelean logic can you find solutions for the stalemate over the debt ceiling?”  The program would provide meaningful answers parsed out in five-paragraph fashion.  The hazard is obvious in that technology has released the Kraken Dragon of instant plagiarism. 

This terror attack on the English language shouldn’t really be a surprise in that search engines like Google have been getting progressively smarter at answering questions, and content analyzers like Grammarly will not only spot errors but the “premium” version will help you polish your writing style.  Still, until now, the five-paragraph essay informed the rubrics of many instructors, including mine, figuring that we could pan out meaningful nuggets from formulaic dross.

As a reminder, the five-paragraph format is a thesis statement, followed by three well-integrated supporting paragraphs and buttoned up with a modified recapitulation of the premise.  This is the old bottle to shape the new wine of ideas, turning inchoate thoughts into logical arguments.  Yet what is this vintage without the yeast of original thought?  

Long before Chat/CPT lit a fire under the Google slumbering giant, the five-paragraph paradigm had detractors.  Among them, John Warner, author of Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.  He notes that the format is a Frankenstein, “…something that looks vaguely essay-like, but is clearly also not as it lurches and moans across the landscape, frightening the villagers.” 

Well, if not five paragraphs and a cloud of dust, then what?  Our faculty forum yielded some interesting answers.  For example, students could create “data sets”, in effect, developing content from the inside out, then start drafting.  Teachers and students might define evaluation rubrics together creating a contract based on mutual expectations.  Make students share documents in an iterative process.  Another thought: “Meet students where they are.”

The bottom line:  Make content the priority, not the format.  No doubt, this is true, but no matter how you get there, doesn’t the final product have to be about something?  Otherwise, what’s the point?  This discussion raises a bigger issue:  How do we evaluate the “process” of writing?  Do we impose a “rigorous” standard, or do we acknowledge that not all learners are created equal and accommodate to a mean?  As an instructor, it’s hard for me to know what “process” a student used to create an essay.  It’s easier to measure grammar and syntax.  Yet, I can see that what goes into an essay is not always reflected in what comes out at the other end.

This means grading is a lonely business because I’m left to make decisions based on a number of subjective factors, aside from whether a student climbed the five-paragraph ladder.  Writing an essay isn’t like solving a math problem; composition requires the integration of verbal skills and creativity.  Yes, I tell students to highlight their thesis statements and the topic sentences of the supporting paragraphs.  This is spelled out in my rubric…or it has been.

Yet in the end, if a student shows me something happened to him/her in the writing process, I must respect that.  In addition, I need to understand that different students have arrived in my classroom coming from very different places.  How can I not take that into consideration?

To get through my class you have to show some “rigor.”  You have to do the work.  If so, I’ll meet you halfway.  If the five-paragraph essay is your rock, then cling to it. If you want to climb the mountain I’m here to help. 

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