Download Academic Writing: Entering Conversations and Analyzing Arguments - Prof. Henry Veggian and more Study notes English Language in PDF only on Docsity! Adapted from “They Say”/”I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. 1st ed. New York: Norton, 2006. Introductions: Ways to enter an on-going conversation Compare these 2 statements. What is the difference between them? “The characters on The Sopranos are very complex.” “Some critics charge that The Sopranos presents caricatures of Italian-Americans. In fact, however, the characters in the series are very complex.” Examples from Experts: “For decades we’ve worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the “masses” want dumb, simple, pleasures, and big media try to give the masses what they want. But … the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting cognitively more demanding, not less.” Steve Johnson, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” “You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.” Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail” “Theories of how the mind/brain works have been dominated for centuries by two opposing views. One, rationalism, sees the human mind as coming into this world more or less fully formed—preprogrammed in modern terms. The other, empiricism, sees the mind of a newborn as a largely unstructured, blank slate.” Mark Arnoff, “Washington Sleeped Here” “That we are a nation divided is an almost universal lament of this bitter election year. However, the exact property that divides us—elemental though it may be—remains a matter of some controversy.” Thomas Frank, “American Psyche” “In his article, “Don’t Blame the Eater,” David Zinczenko argues that today’s fast-food chain restaurants fill the nutritional void in children’s lives left by their overtaxed working parents. With many parents working long hours and unable to supervise what their children eat, Zinczenko claims, children today regularly turn to low- cost, calorie-laden foods that fast-food chains are all too eager to supply. [….] Zinczenko’s hope is that with the new spate of law suites against the food industry, other children…will have healthier choices available to them, and that they will not, like him, become obese. In my view, however, it is parents, and not the food chains, who are responsible for their children’s obesity. While it is true that many of today’s parents work long hours, there are still several things that parents can do to guarantee that their children eat healthy foods.” Gerald Graff and Cathy Bernstein, “They Say”/ “I Say” The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing
