The word essay derives from the title of a 1580 collection of writings by the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne. In his Essays, Montaigne set down his thoughts on whatever subject snared his ...

Will AI kill the five-paragraph essay? To find out, I asked my ninth grade English teacher. The five-paragraph essay is a mainstay of high school writing instruction, designed to teach students how to ...

Many students know the struggle of rephrasing paragraphs without sounding repetitive. Plagiarism risks and awkward flow often ...

Has the five-paragraph essay, long a staple in school writing curricula, outlived its usefulness? The venerable writing tool has largely fallen out of favor among influential English/language arts ...

Dennis Allen doesn’t think the five-paragraph essay is dead. In the years before his retirement in May from West Virginia University, the Professor Emeritus did not assign “strict” five-paragraph ...

The Hechinger Report covers one topic: education. Sign up for our newsletters to have stories delivered to your inbox. Consider becoming a member to support our nonprofit journalism. Grading papers is ...

Jia Tolentino, guest editor of “The Best American Essays 2025,” reflects on essays, community and life in Brooklyn.