Graff-Whole/Parts

Graff and Birkenstein's overall text discusses the ways in which a writer must enter into a conversation with a "they" when they write in order to convey their own argument. It is their belief that an argument is more believable and credible if it is in response to the assertions or findings of some "other" person or group. To be engaged with another persons views while stating your own gives an academic paper a much better grounding than one in which the writer just states his or her own views.

The idea of writing in response to another persons argument that is different from your own, while not a new idea, is a good one to remember and hear more about. I like the example that Graff and Birkenstein give of the speaker they heard that went on and on about a topic that others agreed with but they had no idea why he went on and on as he did. It was not until the question and answer time that they found out who he was responding to. I believe this is an important aspect of writing an academic paper and one that I need to remember. I need to remember that it will be important for me to make sure that I do not just state my views and findings without first discussing the views of others that I disagree with.

Graff and Birkenstein offer suggestions as well on how to go about introducing my argument in response to another. When summarizing remember to make sure that the summary is fair and equitable to the person whom I am summarizing. While also remembering not to make it all about the summary of the other persons views. In other words I need to learn how to summarize another person's work while interjecting my voice and not losing my voice through summarizing. They also discuss the interweaving of the summary of the other viewpoint while also speaking to your own views. This seems obvious but how many times have I personally written a paper in which I have summarized too much and then stuck my views on at the bottom and not intertwined them in a coherent manner.

Now to the templates. I at first had the responses that Graff addressed in his introduction. Why do we need templates isn't this graduate school? Yet as I read about the templates and the way that Graff and Birkenstein discussed using them as guides and building on them to make them fit into what you are writing I could then see the merit to using them.

This little book seems to be big on information and I am willing to try some of the things that it suggests to improve my writing. I think that I have to try things that are suggested to see what works for me and take what I like out of it and use it.