The word essay derives from the title of a 1580 collection of writings by the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne. In his Essays, Montaigne set down his thoughts on whatever subject snared his ...

Has the five-paragraph essay, long a staple in school writing curricula, outlived its usefulness? The venerable writing tool has largely fallen out of favor among influential English/language arts ...

Dennis Allen doesn’t think the five-paragraph essay is dead. In the years before his retirement in May from West Virginia University, the Professor Emeritus did not assign “strict” five-paragraph ...

The five-paragraph essay makes you a more competent human, able to digest, analyze and articulate information with concision and clarity. But fundamentally, I struggled with this. I was a disorganized ...

Headline: As Children’s Freedom Has Declined, So Has Their Creativity. Biggest decline? Creative elaboration--expanding on ideas in novel and creative ways. Have we done this to children, with ...

Let’s just go ahead and kill the 5-paragraph essay at all levels, everywhere. Seriously. Let’s end it. We can have essays that happen to be 5-paragraphs long, but there shall be no more “5-paragraph ...

Regular readers are well-familiar with my campaign to move beyond the teaching of the five-paragraph essay. For this reason, I was thrilled to be introduced to a new book, Changing Practices for the ...

Many college applications require a personal essay, which can be daunting for students to write. But a few simple tips, some introspection and insight into what admissions officers are looking for can ...