Academic Writing: Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay

From VOA Learning English, welcome to the Education Report in Special English. Millions of students have been taught a formula that has nothing to do with chemistry or mathematics. The formula is for writing a five-paragraph essay. First, write an introductory paragraph to state the argument. Then, add three paragraphs of evidence. Finally, write a conclusion. Linda Bergmann is director of the Writing Lab at Purdue University in Indiana. Her job is to help students, including international students, improve their writing. Professor Bergmann has worked with many students who learned this traditional five-paragraph formula. She says international students sometimes have difficulty with this formula if they learned a different writing structure. But just knowing how to write a five-paragraph essay is not going to be enough for a college student who has to write a longer academic paper. As Professor Bergmann notes, the formula is too simple to deal with subjects that require deeper thought and investigation. Kare