# What's our five-paragraph essay?

**URL:** <https://forum.podcaster.community/t/whats-our-five-paragraph-essay/4339>\
**Category:** Workbench\
**Created:** [September 18, 2024, 2:01pm UTC](https://forum.podcaster.community/t/whats-our-five-paragraph-essay/4339 "2024-09-18T14:01:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![craigconstantine](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/forum.podcaster.community/craigconstantine/32/2322_2.png) [@craigconstantine](https://forum.podcaster.community/u/craigconstantine)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2024, 2:01pm UTC](https://forum.podcaster.community/t/whats-our-five-paragraph-essay/4339/1 "2024-09-18T14:01:01Z")

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The article I’m linking to below is about AI — wait don’t run away. It made me actually think about: What is the purpose of the five-paragraph essay? How does one write such a thing—what _exactly_ am I doing when I go through the soul-sucking process of doing it?

So you don’t have to read the short, linked article… but I recommend it.

> The five-paragraph essay is a mainstay of high school writing instruction, designed to teach students how to compose a simple thesis and defend it in a methodical, easily graded package. It’s literature analysis at its most basic, and most rigid, level. ~ Emma Camp, from [_Rethinking the 5-Paragraph Essay in the Age of AI_](https://reason.com/2024/05/30/long-live-the-five-paragraph-essay/)

Back to the question in my title:

**In podcasting, what is our five-paragraph essay?**

The five-paragraph essay is a blunt tool, sure. But it is _clearly_ one, important but small, piece of a large puzzle called “learning to write well.” You do it very early in “learning to write well” and then you leave it behind.

What is our five-paragraph essay?

**Any one of the following could be our five-paragraph essay…**

- Write a terrific, single, “hook sentence” from a podcast episode.
- Write a paragraph of 3-5 sentences from a podcast episode.
- Find at least one quotable portion from a podcast episode.
- Write a list of takeaways in a specific style and with specific formatting.

Why do I say those things? Because once I understood how to do them by hand, turning to tools like AI is not cheating. The AI does a solid B+ (ref article above) job, which I can then finish to _my_ A-level.

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