Video Transcript: Introduction to "They Say, I Say"

Okay, so this is going to be a very quick introduction to your They Say, I Say  book. So again, this book is called They Say, I Say, The Moves That Matter in  Academic Writing. So what is this book about? It's divided into three parts, and  part one is figuring out what other people have to say about your topic. 

So this is They Say, I Say is all about how to argue and the best ways to form an argument. So before you even start arguing, you need to figure out why is there  an argument? What are people saying about whatever topic you've chosen?  

Once you figure that out, then you'll look at the information and you'll decide  what do you think about this topic? Which side are you on? Who do you agree  or disagree with? And then finally, you'll tie it all together. You'll show here's what other people have to say, here is my response to what those other people have  to say, and you'll put it all together in your final proposal essay. 

So the idea behind this book can really be summed up in this quote that comes  from the introduction. And so here's this quote, you come late to a party. When  you arrive, others have long preceded you and they're engaged in a heated  discussion. You listen for a while until you've caught the tenor of the argument,  then you put in your oar. Someone responds, you answer back. Someone  comes to your defense. 

Another aligns himself against you. The hour grows late and you must depart  with discussion still vigorously in progress. And so the idea behind this is you  are not going to be the first person to argue about whatever your topic is. There's going to have been hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of people  who've argued about it before. So you don't want to start your essay as if you  are the only person to ever talk about this topic. And so you need to know what's been said about the topic already. 

And then you need to add something to it. What do you have to say that might  be new and different and looking at it in a different way than all these people  who have come before? And understand that this is just a composition class and so you're not going to be able to talk about everything that's ever been said. But  you do want to make sure it's clear that you've done your research and you do  want to respond to things. And you do want to really show that you understand  that arguments are a compilation. That it's not one person standing on a street  corner shouting about something. It's much more like a conversation. 

So we're going to start with they say. Before you even start your argument, you  need to know what other people are saying. You also need to understand, like I  said before, arguing is a dialogue not a monologue.

So you've got to listen and understand what other people are saying, what the  conversation is about this topic, before you start saying what you think. So I like  to compare this to double dutch. I've got this picture over here. 

So you're standing there, you're watching the ropes move, you're kind of doing  that like swaying motion. You've got to get the motion. You can't just go flying in  there because then the ropes are going to hit you. 

It's going to be ruined. You have to kind of watch. You have to feel the rhythm. And then once you've got that, you run in and then you can start jumping up and down. And that's your contribution. Another image you can think of is if you like  diving. 

You have to understand when you dive how high you are, how deep the water  is, are there rocks below, how do you need to land. So all of these things are  before you even jump into something, you need to understand what you're  jumping into. So the step one and part one of this book has to do with they say. 

So this is listening to the conversation on your topic and this is what this paper,  the Pro and Con Editorials and the Annotated Bibliography is all about, is  understanding the conversation about your topic that already has been going  on. In the real world no one argues in a vacuum. Arguments are provoked. 

People argue because of something someone else has already said. So you  want to establish what has already been said before you start talking about what you think. And there's an example in one of the chapters that you're going to  read, I think it's the very first chapter actually, the Dr. X example. 

So the writers of They Say I Say went to this presentation and listened to this  guy go on and on and on about how great Dr. X was. And they were sitting in the audience going, well okay I get that he's great but why are you telling us this?  And it wasn't until later that the guy doing the presentation said, oh some people are criticizing Dr. X's work. So you want to start with that. 

You want to start with here's why I'm arguing about this particular topic. And in  order to do that you need to know why people are arguing. So that's what you'll  do with this first paper, the Editorials and the Bibliography. After that, the final  paper is going to be the Proposal. That's when you get to add your opinion.  You're actually entering the conversation. 

So at this point you will already have figured out what's being said and you'll be 

metaphorically putting in your or. You'll be then allowed to respond to what other  people are saying and talk about who you agree and disagree with. So the they  say, the argument that you're responding to can be a lot of things. 

Something that you've heard someone say, a family member or a friend, an  argument you read in a book or an essay or online, a claim made by a public  figure or organization, a philosophy that people follow in politics or just in life in  general. There are a lot of different arguments out there that you can form your  argument as a response to. So here are just some, just to show you some  examples of they say, again which is the what is the argument that's going on,  the conversation that's going on, and then your I say which will be you joining  the conversation. 

So here's a they say, baseball is the best sport in America. So this is something  that someone might say and your I say can be anything, can be whatever you  actually believe about this topic. Actually I'll go ahead and do this. 

So your I say could be even though baseball doesn't have the action football  has, it is still America's greatest pastime. So you might agree with what they say. This is an example of agreement. 

Let's look at this next example of they say. The acting in that movie was terrible  and made the film painful to watch. And so that could just be something  someone says on a blog, that is the they say and now you respond to it. You  might say something like the actors failed to capture the essence of the  characters but the director also failed to guide their performance. So you're both  agreeing and disagreeing in this case. You're saying yes the acting was bad but  not all the blame lies with the actors. 

And then here's our last sample they say. I can't believe we can't smoke on  campus. If I'm paying to go here I should be able to do what I want. So that  might be something that you hear a friend say or a fellow student and then you  could have whatever response that you feel to this and here's a sample. I pay to  go here too and I don't want to smell other people's cigarette smoke. Banning  smoking on campus was the right thing to do. 

So this is an example of complete disagreement with what they say. So this is  how they say I say works. You figure out here's something people are saying  about this topic, here's my response. 

And again for right now for our purpose we are just focusing on what they say.  So here's some other examples of what they say with the added I say response.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham but your statement  I'm sorry to say fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought  about the demonstrations. So this is an example from Martin Luther King Jr.  letter from a Birmingham jail where he's using the critics objections as the they  say and he's building his own argument the I say on top of those objections and  this sounds so much better than him just saying here's what I think let me tell  you about it. 

No you got to start with here's where the problem is is happening and then  you're going to build what you have to say on top of that. Here's another  example. My daughter who goes to Stuvesant high school only blocks from the  former world trade center thinks we should fly the American flag out our window. I don't know why that just happened. All right let's go back to where we were.  Definitely not I say the flag stands for vengeance and war. 

So again here is this author she's starting with here's what her daughter here's  what her daughter has said and she is responding to her daughter's opinion and  then you know this is an entire essay so here's just the start of her I say that  she's disagreeing with her daughter and then the rest of the essay she's going  to explain why she disagrees. And here's one last example. If ever there was a  newspaper headline custom made for Jay Leno's monologue this was it. 

Kids taking on McDonald's this week suing the company for making them fat.  Isn't that like middle-aged men suing Porsche for making them get speeding  tickets? Whatever happened to personal responsibility? So this is the  summarizing of the they say. It's talking about these kids suing McDonald's and  it's kind of creatively showing the side of the argument where people are saying  this is stupid for people to sue McDonald's. 

So he's summarizing that and then he's adding his own I say. So he says I tend  to sympathize with these portly fast food patrons though maybe that's because I  used to be one of them. So again notice how he started in all of our examples  they're starting with saying here's the argument here's the conversation here is  what they say about this topic and then they use that to build their I say. 

They're building on what other people have had to say so we know what they're  arguing about and why. So they say I say this book is meant to help you with  academic writing and it's doing what I've already kind of done in the sample  papers which is giving you templates and these templates are going to help you  take what you would say out loud during a discussion and put it into a written  academic formula. And here's an example in discussion of blank a controversial  issue is whether blank while some argue that blank others contend that blank.

So what do these templates do they help you take those ideas that are clear in  your head but often hard to get out on paper in a way that sounds the way that a college paper should sound and it's going to help you kind of format that  argument. So that's what this whole book is about that's what it's trying to help  you do and we're going to do practice with these templates and this is the most  important part of the book is looking at the templates understanding how you  can use them in your own paper and doing some practice with them.  

So just to show you a few examples for the I say part here are some example  templates when you agree with a conversation she argues blank and I agree  because blank and that's pretty simple but more interesting complex ways to  

format agreements in your paper are things like this his argument that blank is  supported by new research showing that blank. 

So this is another way for you to build your I say in a more sophisticated way  where it's not just you saying I believe this because I believe it but where you're  looking at the conversation and saying well I found this research that's  supporting these arguments.  

When you disagree my own view is that blank though I concede blank I still  maintain that blank and so this is an example where conceding is a good idea  where you're saying okay I recognize that this viewpoint has some problems  however it's still the best viewpoint and then you're talking about why.  

Although some might object that blank I reply that blank the issue is important  because blank and then doing both this is the most sophisticated way to do it he claims that blank and I have mixed feelings about it on the one hand I agree that blank on the other hand I still insist that blank.  

So notice that with all of these templates the organization is done for you but  you still have to do the critical thinking you cannot just plug a random sentence  in here the sentence still has to make sense so you have to carefully think about okay what are the claims that this particular author is making? What are the  different ways that I feel about this particular argument? So you're you still have  to do the thinking but again the organization which sometimes is the hardest  thing you know I have a lot of students who will come to my office and I'll look at  their paper and they'll have written a really awkward garbled kind of sentence  and I say okay tell me what you meant by this and out loud they can tell me  perfectly but something gets lost between your brain and the paper and so that's what this book is all about is helping you take what's in your brain and put it in  the paper in a way that makes sense and sounds college level.

So we're going to start that right now with your exercise and this is pretty simple  I want you to start by looking at the paragraph about vegetarianism that's under  exercise one at the end of the introduction chapter so I didn't make you read the  introduction chapter because I just gave you the basics in this slideshow but this is around page 14 and 15 that's those are the pages it's on in the second edition it might be a little different in the first edition but it should be about the same  

page number somewhere around there but there's a paragraph that talks about  vegetarianism and the different viewpoints that people have about it and why.  

So I want you to look at that first as an example and then I want you to think  about possible topics that you might want to write about for these last two  papers so remember you have to keep the same topic for your editorials and  annotated bibliography and then for your proposal so the topic that you pick now you're going to be using for the rest of the semester so make sure that you you  are interested in this topic and that you found some research about it.  

For right now just think about possible topics that you might want to write about  and pick one and use it to fill in these blanks and use that vegetarian example  as a guide because it's pretty similar to what I want you to do here so here's  your sample templates where I want you to fill in the blanks and you can  handwrite or type this and just write down one two three four and five on your  paper and then all you have to give me is what you put in that blank you don't  have to rewrite this whole sentence but fill in those blanks and here's what  you're doing with this. 

I am interested in writing about the topic blank so that's number one because  blank and so for number two I want you to tell me why why are you interested in  this topic and that's why I want you to do some thinking about this don't just pick  a random topic you really need to have an interest in it and you need to be able  to tell me what your interest in it is. This topic bothers some people because  they think blank so now you want to think a little bit about why are some people  against whatever this topic is or or what kind of issues do they have it and so  again that's going to take maybe a little research or maybe just a little bit of  critical thinking about what you've heard people say this is the they say part  what what are people saying about this topic.  

However these people might be surprised to learn blank so this is where I want  you to think about what's something with that topic that people might not have  thought about or or maybe not have been aware of at all and then finally if I  choose to write about this topic I will be sure to discuss blank so again I want  you to have a topic in mind and I want you to be thinking about what are people 

already saying about it and what are ways that people are maybe  misinterpreting it or not being aware of all the facts or you know not looking at it  from certain points of view and so this is going to again this is going to require  you to do some thinking about this topic and to be able to look at it from several  different angles and explain to me what you have to say about this topic what  other people are saying about it and what you have to say about it. So this is  your writing exercise you'll complete this you'll give this to me the next time I see you in class and we can talk about it a little bit all right so that's it for your  introduction to they say I say.