by Rachel Carey
I will never forget the day during eighth grade when my English teacher brought a grill to class. She was going to cook us burgers, she said, but not just any kind of burgers. We’d just begun to learn the process of writing research papers that year, and she’d cemented the construct of the five-paragraph essay into our brains by likening them to burgers (triple-stacked, huge burgers).
Here’s how that worked: the two buns were the introduction (including the thesis) and conclusion paragraphs, then there were three burgers between the two buns which served as the topic sentences (or the three components of the thesis), and the condiments (lettuce, tomato and cheese between each of the patties) served as the respective three supporting sentences for each of the topic sentences —together the patties and the condiments created the greatest of body paragraphs. That was the way to perfectly craft the burger — that was the way to perfectly craft a five-paragraph essay — but she didn’t stop at the perfectly crafted.