Do Colleges expect students to write 5 part essays?

amother

Ruby

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 7:22 pm

amother [ OP ] wrote:

Do Jewish Colleges expect students to write 5 part essays otherwise known as the Classic Argument?

Do other colleges?

If yes, what school?

TY

Well, my kids were supposed to be writing like that since about 6th grade, although I've never heard it called the "Classic Argument" (I had to google the term) as opposed to a "well organized essay."

Every college will expect students to be able to write a well-organized essay.

agreer

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 7:58 pm

I taught at a writing center at a secular college. The students were expected to write multi-paragraph papers (usually a certain page length or number of words). The 5-paragraph essay is an excellent building block.

ALL papers need a strong introduction, well-developed body paragraphs that transition nicely into each other, and a solid conclusion.

If you can write a 5-paragraph essay, you can write a 25-paragraph research paper.

Optione

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 8:17 pm

agreer wrote:

The 5-paragraph essay is an excellent building block.

ALL papers need a strong introduction, well-developed body paragraphs that transition nicely into each other, and a solid conclusion.

If you can write a 5-paragraph essay, you can write a 25-paragraph research paper.

This. By 7th grade (maybe 6th?) we were expected to write a 5 - 7 page paper using the 5- paragraph format.

amother

Gray

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 8:27 pm

I went to a very good public school in the 1990's until 8th grade, and we learned the 5 paragraph essay in 6th grade, if I recall correctly.

The first time we wrote one, the teacher guided us through it step by step, with the writing broken up into components and assigned a bit at a time.

But yes, the same approximate format works for longer papers throughout college.

amother

Sapphire

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 8:28 pm

Wow... these are exactly the types of questions that concern me regarding my child's future education. I went to a more MO elementary and high school, and definitely recall writing 5 paragraph essays, at least from the 6th grade, if not earlier. In college, we were writing pages (usually minimum of 5), and I am not counting research classes. Although I have grown in religiosity, and cannot imagine sending my child to the school I went to, I am genuinely worried of the sub-par academics Ive heard of, first hand, from teachers in colleges with a "frummer " student body. While I hope this discrepancy in the education of these institutions gets resolved, the more I hear, the more likely I'll look for outside/extra tutoring.

miami85

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 8:43 pm

When I was in Touro, Essays were mandatory part of English Composition class. Were they specifically "5-paragraph?" I'm not sure but I think they were supposed to be a "certain length"--maybe 500 words, but I don't remember it's been a long time. The idea was to present a thesis and then support it with your ideas, 3 is a standard number. In the 2nd semester of English Composition you had to compose a much longer "essay-type" paper which is based on the 5-paragraph essay but doesn't list all 10-15 parts of what you will go on to write. 5-paragraph essay is the "Basic formula" and once you master that, you can write any length paper.

When I attended TTI for my masters, again this is a while ago, I had a number of women in my class who apparently never learned essay writing, and the professors were shocked when several ladies in my cohort asked "what's a thesis sentence?" I've heard since then the first semester includes a mandatory "writing class."

amother

Pearl

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 8:50 pm

amother [ Sapphire ] wrote:

The hashkafa of the school doesn't matter as much as the specifics of the individual school. I've worked in many schools across the range (from PS to pluralistic and through the range of orthodoxy) and while some schools definitely had a better developed curriculum, that did not necessarily translate to the students getting a better education overall. My local MO school and the right wing yeshiva have similar curricula and the learning seems to be on par with one another when it comes to secular studies at the elementary/ middle school level.

amother

Gray

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 8:51 pm

miami85 wrote:

When I attended TTI for my masters, again this is a while ago, I had a number of women in my class who apparently never learned essay writing, and the professors were shocked when several ladies in my cohort asked "what's a thesis sentence?" I've heard since then the first semester includes a mandatory "writing class."

I went to an Ivy League undergrad, and two semesters of freshman writing were required across the board. You could get out of one of the two with AP credit, but not out of both. We had to peer edit each other's papers, and I remember being shocked by how bad some of the writing was. Writing is a problem everywhere. I'm sure it's worse in some schools than others, but a surprisingly large proportion of "educated" people are bad writers.

amother

Taupe

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 8:59 pm

My son is in a chassidish yeshiva and they are really working on improving the curriculum. He was in 4th grade last year and they learned how to write the 5 paragraph essay. It was a big deal and they worked on it for a while. He def still needs practice (and he has terrible spelling) but I’m glad he’s on the right track.

seeker

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 9:52 pm

I never (iirc) had the experience of a college class specifically requesting a five-paragraph essay. Like someone else said, the 5-paragraph format is a building block to help developing writers get the hang of organizing a composition - like the 5-sentence paragraph a couple of years earlier. By the time you get to college they should be able to just ask you for an essay of __00 words and you'll figure out how to structure it.

miami85

Thu, Aug 01 2019, 11:15 pm

amother [ Gray ] wrote:

I understand what you are saying, in this case it was because back then many of the TTI graduate students had no or minimal English writing requirement in undergrad as it was still mostly CLEPs and other similar tests for college credit. Many of the women asking this were out of school for a long time, or they came from schools that probably did not have much English writing in high school.

SacN

Fri, Aug 02 2019, 1:54 am

Quote:

By the time you get to college they should be able to just ask you for an essay of __00 words and you'll figure out how to structure it.

This! I've never heard of a paragraph or format requirement in university. Even page or word count limitations are juvenile and you don't find them much past undergraduate studies (though I remember 5-7 page guidelines or 8-10 pages...). You need to cover the information well, in the level of comprehensiveness expected of you. Zehu. My masters thesis didn't give any such requirements.

Any decent writer should know the rules well enough to bend and break them, so requiring exactly one format really restricts students academic growth past a certain basic educational level (that should have happened in elementary/middle school).

I interpreted this question as do they still require the 5 part essay in college, and thought the answer would be, of course not!
Now I see most people interpreting it as, do you need to know how to do a 5 part essay. Which, I suppose, yes you do.

FranticFrummie

Fri, Aug 02 2019, 2:03 am

DD started learning all the basic elements of style in 4th grade, including outlines, rough drafts, 5 part stories, first person narrative, book reviews, literary critique, etc.

Nobody was expecting Shakespeare from these kids, but I think it's great that the sooner kids are gotten used to these concepts, the better. We had a lot of fun going over homework together. She loves creative writing, but struggles with executive functioning and organization, so this was the perfect balance for her to work on both things at once.