We’ll use Perusall to annotate and read together. 
WRITING RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME – W.R.E.A.M.
- Do an analysis of the kinds of writing you see in your daily life? What genres and structures can you see in the reading you do (inside and outside school)? Any evidence of the 5P essay outside of school?
Sup, party people. Not gonna lie, I’m really wingin’ the blog this week because I haven’t done any of the readings, so I chose to answer the generic prompt above, which doesn’t require me to have read anything!
So, to answer this question – I see ALL forms of writing in my daily life. Like, ALL the time, too. There is literally too much writing in my life for me to consume. And because I am also a full time student, I get to experience even higher academic forms of writing, in addition to the novels, newspapers, internet articles, blogs, subtitles, advertisements, and pretty much everything else in my life that contains words.
I would have to say that the most prominent reading for me, at this point in my life, probably takes the form of academic articles and literature. Right now, I have been reading a lot of scholarly articles about language, composition theory, learning practices, and all that jazz. For fun, I generally read books, both fiction and nonfiction (literature and otherwise), and more casual genres of writing like newspapers or internet articles – usually heavily opinionated.
Do I ever see any evidence of the 5 P essay outside of school? Hell no. It’s almost non-existent outside High School introductory composition classes. But I will argue that it IS useful! When a teacher asks you to write an essay, one draft, in 45-50 mins or so, the 5 P structure serves very useful as a rugged guide to neatly organizing your ideas. However, I would also say that the “ideal” 5 P essay probably would not even be only 5 paragraphs, but a more polished version would probably have multiple paragraphs within each “body” section, in order to create a sense of organization of ideas as well as clarity for the reader. So, even though I have yet to read (I will, I swear) the article on the 5 P essay, I feel that it does serve useful in limited situations.
One Reply to “WRITING RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME – W.R.E.A.M.”
I really have to agree with you on this. I think though in general essays written in school lack the same kind of information and authority that essays written outside of it have – though they are rarely the way people convey information outside of school. Maybe that’s just a factor of schooling itself at least with lower division schooling. 5 paragraph essays are extremely organized and remind us to build a piece of writing. I think in the end, that’s what we learn from it, what information to include in an academic piece of writing. We learn to embed examples, quotes, citations, etc. into our writing and then learn to explain all those things in the context of our thesis. Organizing the information helps us make sure we didn’t leave anything out and probably makes it a lot easier for a teacher to grade. As we go through school though, we are told to write differently (which can be hard when you’ve done 5Ps your whole life) but even as we do, we usually need the exact information somewhere in the writing.
I agree that splitting up the body paragraphs makes sense, that’s usually what I end up doing with my own essays. I think it keeps it more cohesive and allows for a better transition to your next piece of information. Plus the smaller paragraph makes it easier to not lose your line and have to go digging for it like I tend to end up doing.
As for your blog wingin’ I was totally feeling that too. I wasn’t up to in depth reading after cleaning out my 24 x 12ft chicken coop over the weekend… I guess you could say I was winging it too! (Bad pun, please ignore) I think you did bring up a good point though with how the 5Ps really do help with organization.