Russ' point about the Russ Hunt wrote: >Jamie raises an interesting point . . . > > > >>Though I, as noted, have never seen (as student, teacher or >>citizen-reader) the famous 5-para essay, >> >> > >I have, but _only_ in the context of writing courses. I've >never seen one in the wild (but on the other hand, I can't >remember ever seeing any of the other academic essay formats we >teach (or use for teaching) in the wild, either. > > > >>If I had to guess, I'd guess that the form was created out of >>thin air (i.e., with few real-world antecedents) by teachers >>for teaching purposes (for better or worse). >> >> > >Yep. But I think I'd argue that the 5pe is just a special case >of a much larger problem with "academic" (= class-based) writing >formats. > Reading your posts, it strikes me how that larger problem is so much different than the examples you both used of rhetorical writing in communicative practice. So many of the paper assignments that my students get are exercises to allow professors and TA's to be able to mark students' understanding of curriculum through their writing about their reading. The essay form has been high jacked for the purpose of marking a students' ability to use discourse appropriate to the course curriculum and make an argument using concepts from the readings. It's much more of a performance than a communicative exercise. And, the five paragraph essay may have been developed to help students' do some of the formulaic work of that performance. Didn't someone use the dance metaphor of bar exercises earlier? It takes an act of creativity, perhaps, to step outside the parameters of some of these assignments and actually create your own "communicative exigencies" to write well, and perhaps that's expecting too much, considering much of the academy is unwilling to change how they create assignments. Writing teachers may be caught because we work, often, on the margins helping students to create those "rhetorical exigencies" but not able to influence the greater problem. And, the five paragraph essay may well be one of those bad, even "Evil" or "Lucifer" like, compromises to a writing teacher's dilemma of how to teach people how to write well given that their assignments encourage curriculum performance and not good writing. Maybe though we are talking about shifting the focus of the discussion both for our students and our colleagues. Cheers, Victoria Littman Learning Strategist University of Toronto > >-- Russ >St. Thomas University >http://www.StThomasU.ca/~hunt/ > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to > [log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties, > write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask] > >For the list archives and information about the organization, > its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to > http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/ > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to [log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties, write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask] For the list archives and information about the organization, its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-