They Say, I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
Genre: Academic Nonfiction
Blurb (on back of book): The little book that demystifies academic writing, reading, and research.
Used and loved by millions of students for its lively and practical advice, this is the book that demystifies academic writing and shows how to engage with the views of others. Extensively revised in response to feedback from our community of adopters, this edition of “They Say / I Say” is an even more practical companion for students, featuring a new chapter on research, new exercises, expanded support for reading, and an expanded chapter on Revising.
MY OPINION: ***
I read this for my summer college class (my first class at college!) on reading and composition. My GSI wanted us to have a "guide" for writing proper essays and research papers in an academic setting. As someone who loves writing and has been fairly prolific in that field, I found this book to be quite an interesting perspective on the "proper" way to write.
Obviously, there is no real one way to write. Everyone has their own styles and abilities and rightfully so (otherwise, writing would be very boring). This book definitely doesn't act like it's the end-all, be-all way to write an essay. Instead, it offers several templates and examples of "good" writing that will generally fall within expected guidelines from professors and other academics in the field. I found the templates a little off-putting, since I don't like to have such cut-and-dry writing in my essays but in the end, they were at least a little helpful in terms of organization and helping me to voice my thoughts properly. Obviously, since my GSI had required us to read this book, we were pretty much expected to at least try to incorporate what we learned from this book into our own writing, so I learned how to write in this style fairly well.
While actually having to read an entire book about how to write is clearly not the most entertaining piece of literature, I found it generally helpful or at least attempting to be helpful to any of its readers. The writers didn't come off as pretentious know-it-alls and seemed to acknowledge that many of their readers may not end up using the exact templates and guides that they suggest. Instead, this book is more of a resource for those who are stuck writing argumentative essays and trying to incorporate other viewpoints besides their own.
I actually am horrible at including other perspectives in my writing to back up my own points. I find it challenging (and rightfully so). This book helped me come up with different, unique ways to include other quotes, examples, and arguments to back up my overall thesis in a way I hadn't really practiced before in high school.
The overall writing style of this book itself is very easy to follow and went by very quickly. I would definitely recommend trying this one out if you are taking any sort of college English class!
Main Character: N/A
Sidekick(s): N/A
Villain(s): N/A
Academic Nonfiction Elements: This book is a guide to academic writing.
Comments
Post a Comment