THEY SAY/I SAY by Gerald Graff

THEY SAY/I SAY Reviews

• 
  Jeremy Garber

  Faculty often think students can’t learn to write better. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein think otherwise, and show us all a simple way to help them do so through the use of writing templates. These two opening sentences model the way that the authors have successfully coached students in the art of writing academic arguments – “they say,” and “I say.” They begin in their preface by correctly observing that “The trouble is that many students will never learn on their own to make the key intellectual moves that our templates represent. While seasoned writers pick up these moves unconsciously through their reading, most students do not.” The rest of the book provides specific templates that help students correctly and sympathetically summarize the arguments of the texts they’re reading, and then provide their own agreements and/or disagreements with clear and reasoned evidence. The authors also pay careful attention to maintaining students’ own voices in writing (yes, it’s OK to use “I”!) and the communal, dialogical nature of research and argument. The book closes by providing models of online discussion and writing for several specific fields, including humanities, science, and social science, and several readings for students to analyze using the tools in this text. Online resources also include online tutorials, quizzes, and resources for particular LMSes. As a graduate-level writing director, I plan to use Graff and Birkenstein’s template on a regular basis – students have found these templates not pedantic or babyish, but eminently useful.