Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities

by John Warner

For example, consider a basic assignment in a college first-year writing course: an article summary. The goal is for the student to read the argument of another writer, and then distill that argument to its essence while hewing as closely to the original writer’s meaning as possible. If a writer cannot accurately convey the ideas of others, they will not be able to use those ideas to shape their own expression. The students I have worked with over the years often struggle with this assignment. In their previous experiences, many of them have been asked to prove comprehension at the level of “I have read and genuinely understood the broad subject of this article.” They have rarely been required to distill or synthesize an argument to its essence, a higher order task than mere