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Pros And Cons Of The Five Paragraph Essay

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Five Paragraph vs. Essais
From a young age, I have always considered an essay to contain five paragraphs. Starting in elementary school I learned that an essay consists of five paragraphs, and from then on out that is the outline for an essay that I used in my writing. I used this outline in many situations, such as simple warm ups in class to get started to much bigger things like the SAT and AP testing. Reading Paul Lynch’s, “The Sixth Paragraph Essay: A Re-Vision of the Essay,” has given me a different perspective on the five paragraph essay. Lynch’s article is informative and persuasive about other essays, such as Michel de Montaigne’s; however, he does not give enough credit to how useful the five paragraph essay actually is for beginner writers. Lynch talks about other writing that some people believe is better than the five paragraph essay. One of those other writings is the writing from Michel de Montaigne, who was considered the inventor of the essay. He wrote …show more content…
The first form of essay that most students are taught is the five paragraph essay. They are normally taught this in about third or fourth grade, and it stays with them throughout most of their writing career. Through a student’s writing career, they will write many essays, the essays will range in how important they are. They will use the five paragraph essay on important writing exams and other academic applications. These writing exams could be the scholastic aptitude test (SAT), advanced placement (AP) exams or any other type of exams. Students use this writing on those tests because it gives them a solid outline that they can produce fast and they have a solid structure in their writing. Another use for the five paragraph essay is in class for big writing assignments that they have a few days or a few weeks to work on. The five paragraph essay is also used for daily warm-ups in some

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