THE VALUE OF ESSAY WRITING SKILLS
Writing education, a precursor to the literary teachings of advanced high school classes and a variety of college majors or electives, begins in kindergarten. Children learn the alphabet, they learn to read, and practice their penmanship on papers with lines that have been divided like roads. Then they learn to string letters and words together into a sentence, a paragraph — pages upon pages every day till every student knows the difference between a run-on and a sentence fragment. And then, only upon completion of this task, they learn to write essays.
They learn the five-paragraph method; they have it etched into their minds till it becomes an instinct. Then, with little warning, they are finally plopped into high school, and promptly told that they should never turn in a five-paragraph essay again. Most students shift to four paragraph essays. But what happens then?
