Journal #3

The first chapter of They Say, I Say describes a way that the reader can enhance their writing using templates. With time honored, simple phrases and transitions, not only will your writing sound more put together, it will help to convey a more important purpose to the piece. The most important template the chapter defined is the ‘they say, I say’ template, where you present a different opinion to you own or a contradicting idea before explaining your own point of view. This way, the piece has a definite function: to defend your idea, and to refute the idea that disagrees. If you write about an idea that everybody agrees with, it is a pointless exercise because there is nobody to inform and the writing loses its purpose. According to the chapter, the goal of the writer is to ‘challenge ways of thinking and to stir up controversy.’ (Graff and Birkenstein 8). If everyone already agrees with the topic, it is inconsequential to bring it up again. An effective piece of writing will create discussions from certain disagreements. However, questions were raised about the use of templates in academic writing, such as the fact that it might not be very creative to use the same words again and again, like an elementary student learning to write an essay, or that using these specific words might verge on plagiarism. The dispute of these claims were very informative and compelling. As for the apparent lack of creativity, they claimed that a writer could change up the actual content of the essay to make it new and innovative. It is not unheard of for a person in the arts to use templates, like poets using specific rhyming schemes. Once you get used to writing this way, you can also change the formats a bit, to switch up the writing while still maintaining the effect. As for the plagiarizing, the writers explain that taking phrases and translations that everybody uses is not stealing. It is only unethical when a writer steals another’s content from their piece, which is their original thoughts. Altogether, the chapter presented their argument in the way they taught it: by showing a critic of the style, then explaining their point of view in a clear and concise manner.