5 Paragraph essays and why they're lame

Every year on the WASL tests, we are given a generic prompt and told to write a multi-paragraph essay about it. In addition to being boring and lame, it takes no skill or ability. I see kids trying to make their essays good and creative, and it's a waste of their time. Writing in this manner takes no style, the only thing that takes any measure of creative ability are conclusions and transitions. We are not building writing skills that we will use as adults (for the most part) and after 6th grade there's really not a valid reason to keep practicing it.

This year in a language arts class, my teacher insisted that several essays I wrote were in the five paragraph format. The idea behind the five paragraph format is that there are really only a few things to say about anything before it gets boring. So what we need to do when we write an essay (about anything) we need to pick three easy little ideas, write a first paragraph about all of them, then write one paragraph about each one of the three ideas, and finally, write a conclusion re-stating the three points.

Stick to the points! No need to EVER wander, for ANY reason. As you may have already noted, this is an unrealistic and extremely shallow way to articulate anything, yet we still see it on the WASL in 10th grade.

It took me about 20 minutes each day, mostly because I get the privledge of using a computer, but I feel confident I could have done it in less then 40 minutes without one. Some people took all day and that's just a waste. If it's a stupid assingment and prompt, it's only approprite to give a stupid response.