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MY STORY
My name is Johnnie W. Lewis and I'm the author and illustrator of The Five Finger Paragraph© series of books and learning aids. This series exists today because of my own personal tale of woe. I couldn't write an effective essay until I was 24 years old!! WHY, you ask? Because I was making it too hard! Now, students don't have to suffer as I did because there is something that will help anyone (and I repeat ANYONE!) write a good paragraph, essay, or even a term paper without the battles! About thirty years ago, after marriage and a baby, I began college…, again. At that time, a student had to make an average of a “C” in both Freshman English classes. If you made less than a “C” in English 101, you had to take it again, since there was no guarantee that an “A” or “B” could be made in English 102 to achieve the required average of “C” for the pair of courses. I had to take English 101 twice because I couldn’t write an essay (the beast required in class every Friday) that would please the teacher. Here’s my tale. The Friday that I figured out how to write an essay is indelibly burned into my brain. We had just received our term papers back for the quarter. The professor kept mine at his desk to be claimed in person, by me. He held it up for the rest of the class to see. The grade, written in bright red, was smeared across the top of the front page. It read:
“Dr. Fox, what does this mean? There’s no such grade!" “Johnnie, I wanted to tell you about this myself. This is the best information that I’ve ever received from a student on Wuthering Heights. In fact, it’s SO much more than I wanted. That’s what the A+++ was for. I asked for 10 pages, double-spaced, and you gave me 25 pages, single-spaced. But, I should have flunked you on format alone! That’s what the F--- was for. You needed to pare it down, to focus on what I asked. And, Johnnie, can’t have a ten-page paragraph!!!" “Sure you can, it’s right here,” I countered, "and here, and here," pointing to several different pages. The howling laughter from the unwilling audience still rang in my ears as I returned to my seat. I didn’t really remember his quick directions for a good essay until I was half way through the assigned essay for that day. Suddenly, the light bulb came on in my head, at a thousand watts! "Topic sentence, three body sentences, summation sentence. Say what you’re going to say, say it in three sentences, say what you said." That was simple, I thought. Too simple. It couldn’t be that easy! I laughed out loud, to the look of consternation from the front of the room, wadded up my paper, then started again. I straightened out the wadded up paper, quickly wrote down the pertinent points from what I had written, and wrote as rapidly as I could, handing the paper in as the bell rang. The next Monday, I received my graded paper. I had made an “A” on an essay for the first time in my life! At the age of 24, I had finally figured it out. The next quarter, I decided to try an extended version of that format on another term paper. Another “A.” From then on, 18 more times, I never made less than an “A” on any term paper, on any topic, ever. I even used the technique a few times, when I’d ask the professors at the beginning of the quarters, if I could write a term paper in lieu of a final exam. "If you’re dumb enough to write one, I’m dumb enough to read it," they invariably said. Or words to that effect.... I KNEW I had a guaranteed “A,” at least for the final! Worked every time! |
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Contact: Johnnie W. Lewis 1860 Sandy Plains Rd., Suite 204 - 150, Marietta, GA, USA 30066 770-977-4185 (ofc.) 770-973-4128 (fax) Send email to support@thefivefingerparagraph.com with questions or comments about this web site.
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