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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/
>
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                -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
  To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
  [log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
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For the list archives and information about the organization,
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              http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/
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