Arguably the most important skill I have learned in the first quarter of English came from the unit on writing a five-part-paragraph analyzing To Kill A Mockingbird, which involved writing, editing, and listening to the paragraphs. This unit came and went in October but the techniques learned have not. Not only is knowing the format itself important, but the editing techniques and writing styles are equally so.
By simple merit of being the standard short-paragraph form, knowing how to write a five-part-paragraph is a necessary. However, in all expository writing, some variation on concrete details and commentary will pop up. Therefore, understanding how to utilize these, how to intersperse your concrete details from the entire text, how to comment without summarizing, and how to make both build upon the theme, is crucial in order to write about literature.
Another hugely important aspect of learning how to write a five part paragraph was learning how to critique and edit the paragraphs of others as well as one's own. Although it initially appears short and simple, because of its size, a five-part-paragraph must be streamlined, with every idiom, device, and word contributing to its overall theme. One must first understand in detail all of the elements in the writing in order to critique it, and even then, to forge a better paragraph, one must be able to look critically at their creation and say, "A little more to the left."
One side effect of being surrounded by all of the interpretations of To Kill a Mockingbird within the five-part-paragraphs is that I now view each book I read as a story with an innate meaning to life as well as a tale. When I read The Count of Monte Cristo, for example, and began wondering how on earth the reader was intended to sympathize with the seemingly deranged Count, I realized that, rather than the Count, it was the message about revenge that was important in the novel. In short, through my study of five-part-paragraphs, I have grown as a writer and a reader.
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