In “Unteaching the Five-Paragraph Essay,” Marie Foley describes the Five-Paragraph Essay formula as a silly monster with menacing grin (introductory paragraph), an unpleasingly pump middle (three middle paragraphs), and a somewhat limp and drawn out conclusion/tail. She pinpoints that the Five-Paragraph formula restricts students’ thinking to just only three paragraphs, thus resulting in impairment of students’ ability to think critically and generate more complex ideas. She reasons that when the teachers have to teach a big number of students how to write an essay, they just teach this formula to all of their students. Considering this reason, she wonders whether she too might be tempted to teach with a formula if face with that many students.
