The Five Paragraph Essay

1 - I can do better 2 - Jury's out 3 - Pretty darn good 4 - Splendiferous 5 - Awesometastic by 9 people | Log in to rate

Ranked #622 in How-To, #6,354 overall

What's In A Name?

The 5-paragraph or 3-point essay is also known as a keyhole essay or hamburger essay.

It is a basic essay form that has been used by countless generations.

Its advantages include its simplicity which makes it an easy essay to understand and write.

Its disadvantages include its simplicity which does not cover an issue or question in any depth.

The basic 5-paragraph essay is suitable for in-class writings and essay exams, but is not enough for papers. It should also be considered only a starting point for essay exams as more development or an altered format may be needed to appropriately answer the prompt/question. It is a starting point only.

Lens Sponsor 

Teaching writing
Teaching writing skills

Structure 

How do you build a five-paragraph essay?

1st paragraph--Introduction including thesis (3 points, all topics/supporting points should be stated or implied in the thesis)

2nd paragraph--Topic/supporting point 1

3rd paragraph--Topic/supporting point 2

4th paragraph--Topic/supporting point 3

5th paragraph--Conclusion (bring back to main question/issue/statement/thesis)

Pick A Position

Staying focused is key when you have a short time to write and a limited word count. Brainstorm and develop a thesis before you start writing and then the structure of your essay will easily follow.

Match your thesis to your five-paragraph structure. Take a position (Colleges should not require general education classes because...) and then list three reasons to support your position. Those three reasons then become your body paragraphs for your five paragraph essay.

Details Are Key!

Think specific, come up with examples while brainstorming and make sure you have details and examples for all your major points. You need to develop and support each of the points you make.

"The keyhole essay is easy to use and just as easy to abuse -- so take care!"

A Few Final Notes 

I like to teach the five-paragraph essay to my composition students as I think it is an useful format. Students who struggle with writing find this structure a comfortable place to begin and it works well if time to write is tight (such as with an essay exam).

However some compositionists argue against teaching it at the college level as there are many limitations. The first is that clearly this format will not work for a 1000-word essay. Another is that some students do not flex the format to fit the writing situation or prompt. Remember, the form is only a tool or a suggested place to start. As the writer you have the power to alter the form to suit the task at hand. If your prompt calls for four paragraphs or six paragraphs then change the form.

"Fit the essay to the prompt. Don't try to shoehorn a 6-paragraph essay into this format."

What is an essay? 

An essay is usually a short piece of writing. It is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author.

The definition of an essay is vague, overlapping with those of an article and a short story. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g. Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population provide counterexamples.

It is very difficult to define the genre into which essays fall. Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, gives guidance on the subject:

Like the novel, the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything, usually on a certain topic. By tradition, almost by definition, the essay is a short piece, and it is therefore impossible to give all things full play within the limits of a single essay. But a collection of essays can cover almost as much ground, and cover it almost as thoroughly, as can a long novel. Montaigne's Third Book is the equivalent, very nearly, of a good slice of the Comédie Humaine. Essays belong to a literary species whose extreme variability can be studied most effectively within a three-poled frame of reference. There is the pole of the personal and the autobiographical; there is the pole of the objective, the factual, the concrete-particular; and there is the pole of the abstract-universal. Most essayists are at home and at their best in the neighborhood of only one of the essay's three poles, or at the most only in the neighborhood of two of them. There are the predominantly personal essayists, who write fragments of reflective autobiography and who look at the world through the keyhole of anecdote and description. There are the predominantly objective essayists who do not speak directly of themselves, but turn their attention outward to some literary or scientific or political theme. ? And how splendid, how truly oracular are the utterances of the great generalizers! ? The most richly satisfying essays are those which make the best not of one, not of two, but of all the three worlds in which it is possible for the essay to exist.Collected Essays, "Preface"

What is a five-paragraph essay? 

The five-paragraph essay is a form of written argument. It is a common requisite in assignments in middle school , high school, university, and sometimes elementary school. The format requires an essay to have five paragraphs: one introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs with support and development, and one concluding paragraph. Because of this structure, it is also known as a hamburger essay or a three tier essay.

The five-paragraph essay format is also applied to speech making, with some college classes teaching the five-paragraph format, along with an organized system of outlining and pre-writing the speech. Nonetheless, there seems to be anecdotal evidence that not all students work best with this format and approach to writing a speech, as some prefer to write a draft and then refine the material.

The introduction is a "grabber", or narrative hook. When a thesis essay is applied to this format, the first paragraph typically consists of a narrative hook, followed by a sentence that introduces the general theme, then another sentence narrowing the focus of the one previous. (If the author is using this format for a text-based thesis, then a sentence quoting the text, supporting the essay-writer's claim, would typically go here, along with the name of the text and the name of the author. Example: "In the book Night, Elie Wiesel says..."). After this, the author narrows the discussion of the topic by stating or identifying a problem. Often, an organizational sentence is used here to describe the layout of the paper. Finally, the last sentence of the first paragraph of such an essay would state the thesis the author is trying to prove. The thesis is often linked to a "road map" for the essay, which is basically an embedded outline stating precisely what the three body paragraphs will address and giving the items in the order of the presentation. Not to be confused with an organizational sentence, a thesis merely states "The book Night follows Elie Wiesel's journey from innocence to experience," while an organizational sentence directly states the structure and order of the essay.

More tips 


how to write a 5 paragraph essay?

Runtime: 2:05
6222 views
4 Comments:


How to write a 5 paragraph essay.

Runtime: 4:53
89855 views
10 Comments:


Outline of five paragraph essay

Runtime: 8:09
12907 views
10 Comments:


Basic five-paragraph essay format

Runtime: 3:12
4930 views
7 Comments:


ORGANIZING YOUR ESSAY

Runtime: 2:45
791 views
0 Comments:

Need more advice? 

College writing
The Writing Center
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
How to Write an Essay | What is an Essay?
How to Write an Essay, Dissertation or Report
Structure of the Five Paragraph Essay
Outline of the Five Paragraph Essay
The 5 Paragraph Essay Format
The 5 Paragraph Essay Format
Baker Keyhole Essay
WHAT ARE THE COMPONENTS OF A BAKER KEYHOLE
ESSAY?

Questions or comments about the five-paragraph essay? 

blue22d wrote...

Very useful lens and I have lensrolled it to my lens: Best On-line Reference. Five stars and thanks for sharing.

ReplyPosted July 10, 2009

jipock wrote...

Great Lens! 5*****

ReplyPosted June 25, 2009

kellywissink wrote...

Welcome to the Squidoo 100 Club!

ReplyPosted February 12, 2009

BigGirlBlue wrote...

Nice refresher.

ReplyPosted December 23, 2008

teeray wrote...

This is a very helpful lens - I put it in my favourites.

ReplyPosted December 13, 2008

 
1 of 2 pages

by rwoman

I have come to terms with my Squidoo addiction at Squidooholic by taking the Squidoo Pledge! But being a Squidooholic can't be all bad as it helped me...

(more)

rwoman Recommends...

Create a Lens!