Kill The Five Paragraph Essay By John Warner

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Is the five-paragraph essay taught throughout high school and college more harmful or hurtful to students? According to John Warner in his article “Kill the 5-Paragaph Essay,” the schools should eliminate the five-paragraph essay, for the essay is more harmful to the students than it is helpful. He states how the five-paragraph essay turns into a “Frankenstein’s monster” and “lurches and moans across the landscape, frightening the villagers” (Warner). This comparison demonstrates Warner’s disapproval towards the essay and shows that the “essay” no longer looks like an essay but looks more frightening. Warner then states how writing should instead be “done for audiences” rather than a “performance meant to impress a teacher or score well on a …show more content…

However, though John Warner’s argument is strong, Kerri smith’s argument is stronger. In Kerri Smith’s article “In Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay,” She claims that the five-paragraph essay should stay taught in schools as a guideline for a well-structured essay. She explains the five-paragraph essay as an “introduce-develop-conclude structure” that even great expository writing follows this structure (Smith 16). She purposefully communicates to her audience this idea to show that this structure gives students the knowledge and capability to write a professional essay. The five-paragraph essay includes the three key points to have a well-structured and organized essay. By mentioning that other great writers use this form of structure, she creates a stronger argument as to why the five-paragraph essay is important to education. She continues her article by explaining her early stages of writing and how she was taught; over time, her teachers would show her new ways to improve her writing which, in the end, she was told to think “of those five paragraphs simply as a mode of organization” (Smith

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