It’s been over a decade and a half, but I had the opposite problem with my English courses.
My writing classes established such a rigid pattern to our essays that they would give us an outline with what kind of sentence went where, you filled in the blanks and ended up with an essay. Which is great for kids struggling, but it didn’t allow for any fucking deviation from the pattern at all.
Only need two supporting paragraphs with a little more in each to make your point? Like hell you do! Three supporting paragraphs or you lose points.
Things would flow better if you broke one of your supporting paragraphs into two smaller ones, for a total of four? Well that’s just impossible! Three supporting paragraphs or you lose points.
One of your supporting paragraphs have a point that needs two sentences to communicate well? No it doesn’t! One sentence for each detail in your supporting paragraph!
You have four supporting details/sentences instead of just three? Get fucked kid!
Lose points for any deviation.
It wasn’t until my junior year of high school (penultimate year of non-university school, for folks who use a different structure) that one teacher finally went “Hey, this kid is reading college literature course books for fun (Don Quixote, at the time) and can hold a decent conversation about the themes and such. Maybe I could try letting him off the leash.”
I went from the English class for kids who underperformed to the “Hey, take a college course for college credit early kiddo!” class, and killed it.
Oh hey I just wrote a comment about those damn five paragraph essays!
Holy shit I forgot about the struggle of either getting 3 good arguments or choosing only 3 arguments. Also the way they insisted we state the arguments 3 times, once I the introduction, once in that arguments section and once in the conclusion was clunky as hell and they did not like me trying to make it more elegant and have the writing flow better. You also reminded me of those fill in the blank worksheets that were just…holy shit.
It’s been over a decade and a half, but I had the opposite problem with my English courses.
My writing classes established such a rigid pattern to our essays that they would give us an outline with what kind of sentence went where, you filled in the blanks and ended up with an essay. Which is great for kids struggling, but it didn’t allow for any fucking deviation from the pattern at all.
Only need two supporting paragraphs with a little more in each to make your point? Like hell you do! Three supporting paragraphs or you lose points.
Things would flow better if you broke one of your supporting paragraphs into two smaller ones, for a total of four? Well that’s just impossible! Three supporting paragraphs or you lose points.
One of your supporting paragraphs have a point that needs two sentences to communicate well? No it doesn’t! One sentence for each detail in your supporting paragraph!
You have four supporting details/sentences instead of just three? Get fucked kid!
Lose points for any deviation.
It wasn’t until my junior year of high school (penultimate year of non-university school, for folks who use a different structure) that one teacher finally went “Hey, this kid is reading college literature course books for fun (Don Quixote, at the time) and can hold a decent conversation about the themes and such. Maybe I could try letting him off the leash.”
I went from the English class for kids who underperformed to the “Hey, take a college course for college credit early kiddo!” class, and killed it.
Oh hey I just wrote a comment about those damn five paragraph essays!
Holy shit I forgot about the struggle of either getting 3 good arguments or choosing only 3 arguments. Also the way they insisted we state the arguments 3 times, once I the introduction, once in that arguments section and once in the conclusion was clunky as hell and they did not like me trying to make it more elegant and have the writing flow better. You also reminded me of those fill in the blank worksheets that were just…holy shit.