Journal - 4

In the Introduction to They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein provide templates designed for student's use right away to structure his/her writing; to generate writing; to help the writer successfully enter the world of academic thinking and writing, of civic discourse and work; to help put abstract models principles of writing into practice; to give the writer an immediate sense of how to engage in these kinds of critical thinking required at a college-level and beyond; and to represent simple, but crucial, writing moves.

Specifically, Graff and Birkenstein argue that the types of writing templates they offer help present the writer's ideas as a response to some other person or group. As the authors themselves put it, “Broadly speaking, academic writing is argumentative writing, and we believe that to argue well you need to do more than assert your own ideas. You need to enter a conversation, using what others say (or might say) as a launching pad or sounding board for your own ideas.” Although some people believe "...in order to succeed academically you need to play it safe and avoid controversy in your writing, making statements that nobody can possibly disagree with", Graff and Birkenstein insist that this type of writing "... is actually a recipe for flat, lifeless writing, and for writing that fails to answer what we call the 'so what?' and 'who cares?' questions." In sum, hen, their view is that a writer needs to mix a little bit of argument in with their writing, something that not everyone can agree with, to make their writing interesting. As well, they feel that the writer needs to speak not only their own viewpoints, but use points from other's arguments and works as a base for the writer's own work.

I agree with the authors. In my view, the types of templates that the authors recommend would work well for for almost all pieces, though I have already used numerous templates they suggested for my writing. For instance, "I've always believed that..." is a template that I know I have used in different essays throughout my educational career thus far. The authors give these templates, though some of them seem to be common sense. Perhaps I just had the luck of going to a public school with an excellent Literature and English Department. In addition, some of the templates in their "Templates for Introducing 'Standard Views'" section seem to be common sense as well. Some might object, of course, on the grounds that templates are very straightforward and they have problems recognizing that the templates can be formed to be used in almost any writing situation necessary. Yet I would argue that, with a little bit of though put into the process, a student can store these templates in their memory as a guideline for whenever they need to be used. Overall, then, I believe Graff and Birkenstein have created a book that will make it easier for students to write well-presented arguments and more interesting papers—an important point to make, given that our Composition 2000 class is based on writing argumentative and interesting pieces.