Moving Beyond the Five-Paragraph Theme

Even students who are skilled wordsmiths and generally clear thinkers can be stuck in a high-school style of writing. They struggle to let go of certain assumptions about how an academic paper should be. Sometimes students who have mastered the five-paragraph essay and enjoyed a lot of success with that form, assume that college writing is simply more of the same. Those students are good at identifying a clear and consistent thesis, arranging cohesive paragraphs, organizing evidence for key points, and situating an argument within a broader context through the intro and conclusion.

In college, however, students need to build on those essential skills. Your professors will be looking for a more ambitious and arguable thesis, a nuanced and compelling argument, and real-life evidence for all key points, all in an organically structured paper.

The figures below illustrate the difference between the format and structure of a high-school level essay and one for a college course.

Figures 3.1 and 3.2 contrast the standard five-paragraph theme and the organic college paper:

Figure 3.1

The five-paragraph essay, outlined in Figure 3.1 may be what you’re used to: the introductory paragraph starts broad and gradually narrows to a thesis, which readers expect to find at the very end of that paragraph. In this idealized format, the thesis invokes the magic number of three: three reasons why a statement is true. Each of those reasons is explained and justified in the three body paragraphs, and then the final paragraph restates the thesis before gradually getting broader. This format is easy for readers to follow, and it helps writers organize their points and the evidence that goes with them.

A college-level essay also requires clear organization and an easy, logical structure for readers to follow, but it does not rely on the 3-points of support. In college, you may need more points or you may have fewer points that are more completely developed. You will also need to include a counter argument, rather than only including points in support of your opinion.

The following diagram gives one example of how the college-level essay differs from the five-paragraph theme.

Figure 3.2: The “organic” college paper

Key Differences

Thesis Statement

The first key difference between the two levels of academic writing is the thesis. Rather than simply positing a number of reasons to think that something is true, a college-level thesis puts forward an arguable statement: one with which a reasonable person might disagree. An arguable thesis gives the paper purpose. It surprises readers and draws them in. You hope your reader thinks, “Huh. Why would they come to that conclusion?” and then feels compelled to read on.

Body Paragraphs

The body paragraphs are a second key difference. In a college-level essay, the body paragraphs must build on one another to carry out this ambitious argument. In the classic five-paragraph theme (Figure 3.1) it hardly matters which of the three reasons you explain first or second. In the more organic structure (Figure 3.2) each paragraph must specifically lead to the next. Writers must make conscious and careful choices about which evidence and information they will present and the order that information must appear.

Conclusion

The last key difference between the two levels of writing is seen in the conclusion. In the five-paragraph essay, the conclusion rarely does more than restate the previous points. The college-level conclusion is more complex and important. Because the organic essay is driven by an ambitious, non-obvious argument, the reader comes to the concluding section thinking “OK, I’m convinced by the argument. What do you, author, make of it? Why does it matter?” The conclusion of an organically structured paper has a real job to do. It doesn’t just reiterate the thesis; it explains why the thesis matters.

Learning the fie-paragraph essay form wasn’t a waste of time. It can serve as the foundation for successful college writing.

The substantial time you spent mastering the five-paragraph form in Figure 3.1 was time well spent. It’s hard to imagine anyone succeeding with the more complex, organic form of academic writing without the organizational skills and habits of mind inherent in the simpler form.

But how do you move from your understanding of the five-paragraph essay to the more organic and complex version of academic writing required in college courses? One way to make this move is to focus on your thesis.

Without the required three-point thesis of the five-paragraph essay, you will have greater flexibility and freedom in your writing. But flexibility comes with risks. Without the three points to guide your paragraphs, how can you ensure that the essay will still make sense or hold together?

Taking time to build a thesis and argument can help you structure, organize, and craft your college essays more easily and effectively.

Defining the Thesis for College Writing

In previous classes, you may have been taught about the need for a thesis statement and its proper location at the end of the introduction. You probably also know that all of the key points of the paper should clearly support the central driving thesis. Indeed, the whole model of the five-paragraph theme hinges on a clearly stated and consistent thesis. However, some students are surprised—and dismayed—when some of their early college papers are criticized for not having a good thesis. Their professor might even claim that the paper doesn’t have a thesis when, in the author’s view it clearly does.

So, what makes a good thesis in college?

A Good Thesis Is Not Obvious

High school teachers needed to make sure that you and all your classmates mastered the basic form of the academic essay. Thus, they were mostly concerned that you had a clear and consistent thesis, even if it was something obvious like “sustainability is important.” A thesis statement like that has a wide-enough scope to incorporate several supporting points and concurring evidence, enabling the writer to demonstrate his or her mastery of the five-paragraph form. Good enough! When they can, high school teachers nudge students to develop arguments that are less obvious and more engaging. College instructors, though, fully expect you to produce something more developed.

A Good Thesis Is Arguable

In everyday life, “arguable” is often used as a synonym for “doubtful.” For a thesis, though, “arguable” means that it’s worth arguing: it’s something with which a reasonable person might disagree. This criteria of being debatable is closely related to the need for a thesis to be non-obvious. An arguable thesis shows that the author has deeply explored a problem and arrived at an argument that legitimately needs 3, 5, 10, or 20 pages to explain and justify.

In that way, a good thesis sets an ambitious agenda for a paper. A thesis like “sustainability is important” isn’t at all difficult to argue for. There are few people who would argue against sustainability, and the reader would have little intrinsic motivation to read the rest of the paper. However, an arguable thesis like “sustainability policies will inevitably fail if they do not incorporate social justice,” brings up some healthy skepticism. Thus, the arguable thesis makes the reader want to keep reading.

A Good Thesis Specifically Introduces the Argument and Reasons

Some student writers fear that they’re giving away the game if they specify their thesis up front; they think that a purposefully vague thesis might be more intriguing to the reader. However, consider movie trailers: they always include the most exciting and poignant moments from the film to attract an audience.

In academic papers, too, a well specified thesis indicates that the author has thought rigorously about an issue and done thorough research, which makes the reader want to keep reading. Don’t just say that a particular policy is effective or fair; say what makes it is so. If you want to argue that a particular claim is dubious or incomplete, say why in your thesis.

A Good Thesis Includes Implications of the Argument’s Significance

Suppose your assignment is to write a paper about some aspect of the history of linen production and trade, a topic that may seem exceedingly arcane and unrelated to contemporary life. And suppose you have constructed a well supported and creative argument that linen was so widely traded in the ancient Mediterranean that it actually served as a kind of currency. That’s a strong, insightful, arguable, well specified thesis. But which of these thesis statements do you find more engaging?

Version A:

Linen served as a form of currency in the ancient Mediterranean world, connecting rival empires through circuits of trade.

Version B:

Linen served as a form of currency in the ancient Mediterranean world, connecting rival empires through circuits of trade. The economic role of linen raises important questions about how shifting environmental conditions can influence economic relationships and, by extension, political conflicts.

Putting your claims in their broader context makes them more interesting to your reader and more impressive to your professors who, after all, assign topics that they think have enduring significance. Finding that significance for yourself makes the most of both your paper and your learning.

Creating a Strong Thesis: The Three Story Approach

How do you produce a good, strong thesis for college-level essays? And how do you know when you’ve gotten there? Many instructors and writers find useful a metaphor based on this passage by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.^[1]:

There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors who have no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason, generalize using the labor of fact collectors as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict—their best illumination comes from above the skylight.

In this passage, Holmes argues that there are three levels of thinking.

• The first level states inarguable facts.
• The second level includes an arguable (interpretive or or analytical) point.
• The third level situates that point within its larger, compelling implications.

The three-story metaphor is useful for describing the process of building a strong, college-level thesis.

To build the first story, you first have to get familiar with the complex, relevant facts surrounding the problem or question. You have to be able to describe the situation thoroughly and accurately. Then, with that first story built, you can layer on the second story by formulating the insightful, arguable point that animates the analysis. That’s often the most difficult part and the one that requires the most effort: brainstorming, elaborating and comparing alternative ideas, finalizing your point.

Only once you’ve established factual knowledge and undertaken insightful analysis can you reach the final level and articulate why the point you are making matters beyond its particular topic or case.

Leaving behind the rigid formula of the five-paragraph essay doesn’t mean that you have to write without tools and guidance. Using the three-story concept of a thesis, you can create flexible, complex arguments to meet the needs and expectations of your college courses.

How to Write a Three-Story Thesis

Using the three-story concept of a thesis is a different process than creating the three-point thesis required for high school essays. Rather than writing from your own opinion, college-level academic writing requires that you write from deep knowledge. A key part of creating a college-level thesis is to read and learn about the assigned or selected topic before settling on an argument.

Here’s an example:

Imagine you have been assigned a paper about the impact of online learning in higher education. First, you would need to learn about the established facts about online learning.

Here is an example of the process a writer might take to come to a thesis about this topic:

1. You would first need to learn about what online learning is. You might research and read about the origins of online courses and learn about the multiple forms of online learning.
2. Because the prompt asks you to look at the impact, you would want to figure out if there are any established, agreed-upon facts about the use or effectiveness of online learning.
3. If you’ve done that well, you’ll probably come up with a well considered opinion that wouldn’t be obvious to readers who haven’t looked at the issue in depth.
   • Maybe you’ll want to argue that online learning is a threat to the academic community.
   • Or perhaps you’ll want to make the case that online learning opens up pathways to college degrees that traditional campus-based learning does not.
4. In the course of developing your central, argumentative point, you’ll come to recognize its larger context; in this example, you may claim that online learning can serve to better integrate higher education with the rest of society, as online learners bring their educational and career experiences together.

To outline this example:

• First story: Online learning is becoming more prevalent and takes many different forms.
• Second story: While most observers see it as a transformation of higher education, online learning is better thought of an extension of higher education in that it reaches learners who aren’t disposed to participate in traditional campus-based education.
• Third story: Online learning appears to be a promising way to better integrate higher education with other institutions in society, as online learners integrate their educational experiences with the other realms of their life, promoting the freer flow of ideas between the academy and the rest of society.

Here’s another example:

• First story: Scientists disagree about the likely impact in the U.S. of the light brown apple moth (LBAM), an agricultural pest native to Australia.
• Second story: Research findings to date suggest that the decision to spray pheromones over the skies of several southern Californian counties to combat the LBAM was poorly thought out.
• Third story: Together, the scientific ambiguities and the controversial response strengthen the claim that industrial-style approaches to pest management are inherently unsustainable.

A thesis statement that stops at the first story isn’t usually considered a thesis. The fact that scientists disagree isn’t an argument.

A two-story thesis is usually considered competent, though some two-story theses are more intriguing and ambitious than others.

A thoughtfully crafted and well informed three-story thesis puts the author on a smooth path toward an excellent paper.

Building on the Thesis: The Writing Process

The three-story thesis is a beautiful thing. For one, it gives a paper authentic momentum. The first paragraph doesn’t just start with some broad, vague statement. Instead, every sentence is crucial for setting up the thesis. The body paragraphs build on one another, moving through each step of the logical chain. Each paragraph leads inevitably to the next, making the transitions from paragraph to paragraph feel wholly natural. The conclusion, instead of being a mirror-image paraphrase of the introduction, builds out the third story by explaining the broader implications of the argument. It offers new insight without departing from the flow of the analysis.

An essay or project with this kind of momentum often reads like it was knocked out in one inspired sitting. But in reality, just like accomplished athletes and artists, masterful writers make the difficult thing look easy.

Experienced writers develop their thesis in dialog with the body of the essay because they understand that writing is always a recursive process. Strong writers know that strong writing isn’t natural. No one sits down and writes the perfect text the first time. Instead, strong arguments are developed through a process of invention, drafting, and revision that often needs to be repeated again and again, as the writer comes closer and closer to the clearest version of their argument.

The writing process may begin with an initial understanding of the topic or problem leads to a tentative thesis. Then drafting the body of the paper reveals  contradictions or critical areas of ambiguity, which should prompt the writer to revisit or expand the body of evidence and then refine the thesis based on that fresh look. The revised thesis may require that body paragraphs be reordered and reshaped to fit the newly-revised thesis.

Throughout the process, the thesis serves as an anchor point while the author wades through the facts and ideas found in their research. The dialogue between thesis and body continues until the author is satisfied or the due date arrives, whatever comes first. It’s an effortful and sometimes tedious process.

Novice writers, in contrast, usually oversimplify the writing process. They formulate some first-impression thesis, produce a reasonably organized outline, and then flesh it out with text, but they never thake the time to reflect or truly revise their work. They assume that revision is a step backward when, in reality, it is a major step forward.

Three-Story Thesis: Redefining Strong Arguments

Another benefit of the three-story thesis framework is that it demystifies what a “strong” argument is in academic culture. In an era of political polarization, many students may think that a strong argument is based on a simple, bold, combative statement that is promoted it in the most forceful way possible. “Gun control is a travesty!” “Shakespeare is the best writer who ever lived!” When students are encouraged to consider contrasting perspectives in their papers, they fear that doing so will make their own thesis seem mushy and weak.

The purpose of the argument is to explain to readers why the author—through the course of his or her in-depth study—has arrived at a somewhat surprising point. Strong academic writing has to consider plausible counter arguments and contradictory information.

The model of the organically structured paper and the three-story thesis framework explained here is the very foundation of the paper itself and the process that produces it. The use of the three-story thesis stems from the assumption that you are writing to think and writing to learn as much as you are writing to communicate. Your professors assume that you have the self-motivation and organizational skills to pursue your analysis with both rigor and flexibility; that is, they envision you developing, testing, refining and sometimes discarding your own ideas based on a clear-eyed and open-minded assessment of the evidence before you.

 

 

Adapted from: Constructing the Thesis and Argument from the Ground Up by Amy Guptill. This essay originally appeared in Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence, an Open SUNY textbook.

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