TSIS Exercise 2

In the introduction to "They Say/ I say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein provide templates that are designed to provide a framework or guideline which allows students to improve on their academic writing abilities. Specifically, Graff and BIrkenstein argue that the types of writing templates they offer help writers to be more creative. This is because any great work of art or piece of arcitecture starts out with a pattern or structure. As the authors themselves put it, the goal of this book is to help the reader become a critical, intellegent thinker. Although some people may think that forming a sentence won't change anything, Graff and Birkenstein instist that it could have the potential to break us out of our comfort zones and possibly even change someone's mind.

I would have to agree with Graff and Birkenstein. The types of templates that the authors recommend are helpful and help to clearly form your idea with the reason of why you are arguing it. For instance, we have followed the 5 paragraph essay format our entire lives, these templates are almost the same. The provide the groundwork to stand on, the support, before the entire bridge is formed. As the above paragraph states, some may think that its stifling creativity, however with a clear purpose to our writing, we are more able to explore other arguments or supportive ideas, rather than trying to decide what to write about and how to write it. Overall I believe that templates can be a very useful tool in anyone's writing.