Daniel Richardson

4 October 2017

Journal Seven

 

In pages 19-29 of They Say, I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, the authors highlight the importance of bringing up the view of others in your thesis and where to place it. This is a matter that had haunted me throughout my high school years, as in A.P U.S History, my teacher Mr. Stanley pounded “THESIS. THESIS. THESIS” into our heads. Unless we were to develop our thesis in another way that Graff and Birkenstein mention, if we did not include an “Although” or “However” at the start of our thesis, we would be marked down. And man, oh man if we didn’t bring up the view of others in said thesis. God forbid if our thesis sentence was not the last sentence of our introduction. I guess one could say that I am quite practiced at the thesis, as well as the introduction in writing. The body paragraphs are generally where I struggle.

However, Graff and Birkenstein touch upon some important writing tips that I did not practice enough in high school. One such instance of this would be “returning” to what “they say” throughout your argument, as on page 27. Graff and Birkenstein state that if one does not keep returning to what others say, or opposing views, that the reader will lose sight of those arguments and forget about it all together. I feel like their book-wide comparison of writing a paper to a conversation is the most helpful and significant part of this chapter. On page 20, Graff and Birkenstein remind us that when you enter a conversation you need to always begin by recapping by “what others are saying”, then introduce your own views later, and use the opposing as a gateway or a comparison for what you are saying.

I also found the pages on “Introducing and Ongoing Debate” (pages 26-27) interesting because in doing so, you do not always need to take a firm position from the get go. In fact, as they state on page 26,

…opening with a summary of debate can help you explore the issue you are writing about before declaring your own view. In this way, you can use the writing process itself to help you discover where to stand instead of having to commit a position before you are ready to do so.

You can use the writing process to produce research, and finding out where you truly stand, instead of just researching, then writing. I do not think that I have ever done that before.