In the Introduction to “They Say/ I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein provide templates designed to help students become intellective academic paper writers in an easy way. Specifically, Graff and Birkenstein argue that the types of writing templates they offer can make your argument more creative and critical. As the authors themselves put it.
Though the immediate goal of this book is to help you become a better writer, at a deeper level it invites you to become a certain type of person: a critical, intellectual thinker who, instead of sitting passively on the sidelines, can participate in the debates and conversations of your world in an active and empowered way.引自 introduction
Graff and Birkenstein, “They say I say”, page 13
Although some people believe that templates stifle their creativity, Graff and Birkenstein insist that templates indeed have a positive impact on writing learners. Basic moves, like the established patterns and structures, are very common in writings. In sum, then, their view is that creativity and originality is based on your thinking. and templates are just like fundamental.
I agree. In my view, the types of templates that the authors recommend can help ESL learners to quickly familiar with academic writing. For instance, many ESL learners are always full of ideas but can not express their thinking in an academic paper, because they do not know what kind of sentences and words should be used. So, some of them write down their thinking by mother language firstly and translate it later. But this waste much time. thus, the templates can develop those learner’s thinking and help their express their ideas more frequently. In addition, learning templates can help academic writing learners have a better understanding of critical thinking. During art learning period, learners can know how to organize their arguments. Some might object, of course, on the grounds that templates look like models and all you need to do is to fill in the blank. So using templates can lead to plagiarism. Yet, I would argue that all templates provided are basic elements of an academic article. You can see those words in any academic paper. The core of your article is your original thinking. so it should not be classified in plagiarism. Overall, then, I believe basic writing premises can be learned by templates.- an important point to make given that basic structures and words can be seen in any academic article.
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