English 9-12 TSD Summer Reading - Just Good Books
Books are sorted and ranged to grow in lexile and difficulty as the list descends. Graphic novels are marked with "G".
While English 9, English 10, English 11, and English 12 do not have a required summer reading list, part of being a successful student (in all of your subjects) is reading, reading, and reading some more! We’d love for you to read over the summer. You might read something that catches your eye – at Barnes and Noble, at the library, on BookTok – or you might read some books from his list. Our goal is for you to keep your reading skills fresh over the summer by engaging with texts you are drawn to. You’ll see that this list is sorted by both genre and classic or contemporary to aid in your book selection. We can’t wait to see you in the fall. Happy reading!
Accessing Books for TSD Summer Reading
There are several ways students can access titles to on the TSD summer reading list. We will need to take advantage of what we already have available in print as well as what we can access electronically:
Print Books
Your school Media Center: Books will be available through your school Media Center until the end of the school year. You can check them out for the entire summer. Take a look at the Destiny catalogs at Troy High or Athens.
The Troy Public Library: Check availability at the Troy Public Library or on their website. Search the publication year on their catalog.
E-Books & Audiobooks
Use your TPL barcode number. If you do not have one, follow the directions below to get one. Applications such as Sora, Libby and Hoopla can be installed on your device that have e-books and audiobooks available.
- Sora: There are e-books and audiobooks available on Sora. You can add the app to your iPad through Mosyle and find Troy School District using your location. You can also add Troy Public Library as a library on SORA.
- Libby: Even with SORA, you may want to search TPL separately, which can be done using the LIBBY app and logging in with your TPL barcode or eCard number in order to access what is available from TPL.
- Hoopla: Troy Public Library also provides access to free Ebooks and Audio Books through the app Hoopla. To access these titles, first download the app, link it to TPL using either your regular TPL barcode or your TPL eCard number. All titles in Hoopla can be checked out (no waiting lists) for a 3 week check out period.
How to Get a TPL eCard Barcode
We are excited to announce that all students within the Troy School District will soon have access to digital resources at the Troy Public Library. We will be providing digital eCards for every student in the district, unless their Parent/Guardian/Caregiver chooses to opt them out of the program. School Media Specialists will work with students to help them use their eCards to access materials from the Troy Public Library, and TPL will provide a portal to help guide students to age-appropriate resources. Digital resources include eBooks, audiobooks, music, movies and databases.
Students will not receive physical cards, but they can gain access to digital resources using this login
information:
TPL eCard Barcode: 212739[student ID number] (no spaces or punctuation)
PIN: [student ID number]
To opt out of the eCard program
Parents/Guardians/Caregivers who wish to opt out of the program must do so by date listed in
Powerschool.
- Log into your PowerSchool Parent Portal.
- If you do not have a login for PowerSchool or need assistance logging in, please email PowerSchool Support and you will contacted within one business day.
- Select Forms from the left side menu in PowerSchool, then select TPL eCard Out-Out from the options.
Historical Fiction
Classic Books
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
- The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Contemporary & Young Adult
- Heroes by Alan Gratz
- Sophia’s War by Avi
- Refugee by Alan Gratz
- The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne
- Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
- Rebel Spy by Veronica Rossi
- Where the Heart Should Be by Sarah Crossan
- Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
Mystery & Thriller
Classic Books
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Contemporary & Young Adult
- Dry by Neal Shusterman
- Death Cloud by Andy Lane
- Winter Soldier by Mackenzi Lee
- Thieves’ Gambit by Kayvion Lewis
- Ballad of Songbirds of & Snakes by Suzanne Collins
- Drowning by T.J. Newman
- Inheritance Games by Jennifer Barnes
- This is Our Story by Ashley Elston
- Where Wolves Don’t Die by Anton Treuer
- The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson
Memoirs
Classic Books
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
- by Frederick Douglass
- Night by Elie Wiesel
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
Contemporary & Young Adult
- How Dare the Sun Rise by Sandra Uwiriniuimana
- Impossible Escape by Steve Sheinkin
- The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by Bryan Mealer
- No Summit Out of Sight by Jordan Romero
- Ahead of the Game by Kevin Ryan
- Lightless Sky by Gulwali Passerlay
- Educated by Tara Westover
Fantasy
Classic Books
- A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le GuinAll
- The Once and Future King by T.H. White
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
- The Princess Bride by William Goldman
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
Contemporary & Young Adult
- Novice by Taran Matharu
- Renegades by Marissa Meyer
- Infinity by Sherrilyn Kenyon
- Fireborn by Rosaria Munda
- Thirteenth Child by Erin Craig
- Bittersweet in the Hollow by Kate Pearsall
- Otherwhere Post by Emily Taylor
- Shadow Queen by C.J. Redwine
- Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
- This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron
- Ace of Shades by Amanda Foody
- Songlight by Moira Buffini
- Bonesmith by Pau Preto
- A Door in the Dark by Scott Reintgen
- Where the Dark Stands Still by A.B. Poranek
- Sisters of Sword and Song by Rebecca Ross
- Wild Huntress by Emily Lloyd-Jones
- Crown of Bones by A.K. Wilder
Science Fiction
Classic Books
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Contemporary & Young Adult
- The Dividing Sky by Jill Tew
- The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
- The Getaway by Lamar Giles
- Legend by Marie Lu
- Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman
- Loop by Ben Oliver
- Tabula Rasa by Lippert Martin
- Feed by M.T. Anderson
- Sky’s End by Mark J. Gregson
- Scythe by Neal Shusterman
- I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
- This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada
- Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid
- Knives of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
- Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi
- The Program by Suzanne Young
- Unearthed by Amie Kaufman
- 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
- Red Rising by Pierce Brown
- After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga
Love & Relationships
Classic Books
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Contemporary & Young Adult
- Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean
- I Am the Cage by Allison Sweet Grant
- You Should See Me in A Crown by Leah Johnson
- Far From the Tree by Robin Benway
- Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry by Joya Goffney
- In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner
- More Than Just A Pretty Face by Syed M. Masood
- Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang - G
- Monstrous by Sarah Myer - G
- All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir
Sports Fiction
Classic Books
- Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
- Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger
- The Boys in the Boat by Daniel Brown
- A Season on the Brink by John Feinstein
- Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
- The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
Contemporary & Young Adult
- Crossover by Kwame Alexander
- Rebound by Kwame Alexander
- Dairy Queen by Gilbert Murdock
- Shadowed by Carl Deuker
- Leverage by Joshua Cohen
- Sooley by John Grisham
- Rez Ball by Byron Graves
- Mexican Whiteboy by Matt de la Peña
- Ball Don’t Lie by Matt de la Peňa
Non-Fiction
Classic Books
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
- A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Contemporary & Young Adult
- True or False by Cindy L Otis
- From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement by Paula Yoo, Catherine Ho, et al.
AP 11th & 12th Grade Reading
High School Summer Reading
12th Grade AP (Athens)
12 Grade AP (Athens)
Students will read a total of three (3) books over the summer and complete a notebook page for each. See the back page for the note-taking guidelines.
Required Books
Choice Reading
Choice Read:
Students will choose two books from the list below to read:
- Austen—Sense and Sensibility
- Backman—A Man Called Ove
- Bronte—Jane Eyre
- Dickens—Great Expectations
- Eugenides—Middlesex
- Hannah—The Great Alone
- Heller—Catch-22
- Ishagiro—Never Let Me Go
- Knowles—A Separate Peace
- Lahiri—Namesake
- McCarthy—The Road
- Morrison—Beloved
- Ng—Little Fires Everywhere
- Ozeki—A Tale for the Time-Being
- Sathian—Gold Diggers
- Steinbeck—The Grapes of Wrath
- Tan—The Bonesetter’s Daughter
- Umrigar—Honor
- Vonnegut—Slaughter-House 5
- Wilde—The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Woolfe—Mrs. Dalloway
- Wright—Native Son
- Zevin—Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Capture Your Thinking
CAPTURE YOUR THINKING
To capture your thinking while you read over the summer, create a notebook page for each of the three books you read. (See the models below - this is your work so format or create a page that works to show your thinking). Within the first weeks of the school year, we will be utilizing your visual thinking pages to discuss and write about what you found most fascinating/important about your summer reading.
*NOTE: We do not expect you to create more than three notebook pages.
12th Grade AP (Troy High)
12 Grade AP (Troy High)
We are pleased you have chosen to enroll in 12AP English! Ours is a college-level World Literature class; it is both exciting and demanding. Your summer reading options match that description - peruse and select from the list of works of World Literature, classic and contemporary. Be aware some of these works contain mature themes. While the reading will add enjoyment to your summer, it will also strengthen your literary background. This, of course, will help you throughout both semesters and on the AP exam.
Required Books
Choice Reading
Choice Read:
Three Written Responses:
For the two choice novels that you read from List 1 and List 2, please create a “reduction” for each one using the template provided. Make sure all the categories are accounted for. These are due the first day of class. You will also have a series of assessments about your reading the first week of class. One of the assessments will be a poetry analysis about the Icarus poems. The podcast is a good example of how you might develop your own thinking about how poetry allusions are reimagined over time.
List 1:
- East of Eden - John Steinbeck
- Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
- The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
- The Trial - Franz Kafka
- Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
- Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
- Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
- Native Son - Richard Wright
- Crime & Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
List 2:
- Beloved - Toni Morrison
- Breath, Eyes, Memory - Edwidge Danticat
- Waiting - Ha Jin
- Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
- We Do Not Part - Han Kang
- Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
- Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
- All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Required Poems
11th Grade AP (Athens & Troy High)
11 Grade AP (Athens & Troy High)
The 11 AP list (the same for both schools) also includes an article in a separate file.
2025 Summer Reading Text Supplement - Grade 11 AP (AHS/THS) PDF
- 11 AP English Language and Composition - Summer Reading 2025
- Memoirs (Choose One)
- Informative Non-Fiction (Choose One)
- Text Supplement (Accessible)
11 AP English Language and Composition - Summer Reading 2025
11 AP English Language and Composition - Summer Reading 2025
Purpose: The purpose of your summer reading assignment is to begin working towards the main goals of this course - to develop critical literacy and to become a global citizen. The books you choose, and the resources presented in the assigned text, will give you exposure to new knowledge and ways of thinking, which are both essential for an AP Language and Composition student.
Your Tasks:
- Read the Introduction and Chapter 1 of They Say, I Say — you can find these chapters as a PDF on your school’s summer reading website (shared in your English classes and linked on your school’s website). Please read these two chapters and be prepared to discuss and work with the content in them. You do not have to complete the exercises at the end of the chapters, but you should take notes in a format that works for you as you read so that you’re prepared to thoughtfully engage with these chapters.
- Read two books — one from each of the lists on the next page. These are memoirs and informative non-fiction books that explore different components of our world. There is no assignment with this reading; please read with intention and be ready to work with both books when we return to school. You might choose to mark passages that stand out to you with sticky notes while you read. Please keep in mind that these books have all been published at various times; if you are seeking something current or something older, please check the publication date to help you select your book.
Controversial Text Content Note from the College Board: Issues that might, from particular social, historical, or cultural viewpoints, be considered controversial, including references to ethnicities, nationalities, religions, races, dialects, gender, or class, may be addressed in texts that are appropriate for the AP English Language and Composition course. Fair representation of issues and peoples may occasionally include controversial material. Since AP students have chosen a program that directly involves them in college-level work, participation in this course depends on a level of maturity consistent with the age of high school students who have engaged in thoughtful analyses of a variety of texts. The best response to controversial language or ideas in a text might well be a question about the larger meaning, purpose, or overall effect of the language or idea in context. AP students should have the maturity, skill, and will to seek the larger meaning of a text or issue through thoughtful research.
Memoirs (Choose One)
Memoirs (Choose One)
|
Informative Non-Fiction (Choose One)
Informative Non-Fiction (Choose One)
|
Text Supplement (Accessible)
Tabs
Preface
"Demystifies Academic Argumentation." - THEY SAY / I SAY
By Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
PREFACE
Demystifying Academic Conversation
Experienced writing instructors have long recognized that writing well means entering into conversation with others. Academic writing in particular calls upon writers not simply to
express their own ideas, but to do so as a response to what others have said. The first-year writing program at our own university, according to its mission statement, asks “students to participate in ongoing conversations about vitally important academic and public issues.” A similar statement by another program holds that “intellectual writing is almost always composed in response to others’ texts.” These statements echo the ideas of rhetorical theorists like Kenneth Burke, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Wayne Booth as well as recent composition scholars like
David Bartholomae, John Bean, Patricia Bizzell, Irene Clark, Greg Colomb, Lisa Ede, Peter Elbow, Joseph Harris, Andrea Lunsford, Elaine Maimon, Gary Olson, Mike Rose, John Swales and Christine Feak, Tilly Warnock, and others who argue that writing well means engaging the voices of others and letting them in turn engage us. Yet despite this growing consensus that writing is a social, conversational act, helping student writers actually participate in these conversations remains a formidable challenge. This book aims to meet that challenge. Its goal is to demystify academic writing by isolating its basic moves, explaining them clearly, and representing them in the form of templates.
express their own ideas, but to do so as a response to what others have said. The first-year writing program at our own university, according to its mission statement, asks “students to participate in ongoing conversations about vitally important academic and public issues.” A similar statement by another program holds that “intellectual writing is almost always composed in response to others’ texts.” These statements echo the ideas of rhetorical theorists like Kenneth Burke, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Wayne Booth as well as recent composition scholars like
David Bartholomae, John Bean, Patricia Bizzell, Irene Clark, Greg Colomb, Lisa Ede, Peter Elbow, Joseph Harris, Andrea Lunsford, Elaine Maimon, Gary Olson, Mike Rose, John Swales and Christine Feak, Tilly Warnock, and others who argue that writing well means engaging the voices of others and letting them in turn engage us. Yet despite this growing consensus that writing is a social, conversational act, helping student writers actually participate in these conversations remains a formidable challenge. This book aims to meet that challenge. Its goal is to demystify academic writing by isolating its basic moves, explaining them clearly, and representing them in the form of templates.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Shows that writing well means entering a conversation, summarizing others (“they say”) to set up one’s own argument (“I say”).
- Demystifies academic writing, showing students “the moves that matter” in language they can readily apply.
- Provides user-friendly templates to help writers make those moves in their own writing.
- Shows that reading is a way of entering a conversation —not just of passively absorbing information but of understanding and actively entering dialogues and debates.
HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE
The original idea for this book grew out of our shared interest in democratizing academic culture. First, it grew out of arguments that Gerald Graff has been making throughout his career that schools and colleges need to invite students into the conversations and debates that surround them. More spe¬cifically, it is a practical, hands-on companion to his recent book, Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind, in which he looks at academic conversations from the perspective of those who find them mysterious and proposes ways in which such mystification can be overcome. Second, this book grew out of writing templates that Cathy Birkenstein developed in the 1990s, for use in writing and literature courses she was teaching. Many students, she found, could readily grasp what it meant to support a thesis with evidence, to entertain a counterargument, to identify a textual contradiction, and ultimately to summarize and respond to challenging arguments, but they often had trouble putting these concepts into practice in their own writing. When Cathy sketched out templates on the board, however, giving her students some of the language and patterns that these sophisticated moves require, their writing—and even their quality of thought—significantly improved. This book began, then, when we put our ideas together and realized that these templates might have the potential to open up and clarify academic conversation. We proceeded from the premise that all writers rely on certain stock formulas that they themselves didn’t invent—and that many of these formulas are so commonly used that they can be represented in model templates that students can use to structure and even generate what they want to say. As we developed a working draft of this book, we began using it in first-year writing courses that we teach at UIC. In classroom exercises and writing assignments, we found that students who otherwise struggled to organize their thoughts, or even to think of something to say, did much better when we provided them with templates like the following.
► In discussions of_, a controversial issue is whether _. While some argue that_, others contend that_.
► This is not to say that_.
One virtue of such templates, we found, is that they focus writers’ attention not just on what is being said, but on the forms that structure what is being said. In other words, they make students more conscious of the rhetorical patterns that are key to academic success but often pass under the classroom radar.
THE CENTRALITY OF “THEY SAY / I SAY”
The central rhetorical move that we focus on in this book is the “they say/1 say” template that gives our book its title. In our view, this template represents the deep, underlying structure, the internal DNA as it were, of all effective argument. Effective persuasive writers do more than make well-supported claims (“I say”); they also map those claims relative to the claims of others (“they say”). Here, for example, the “they say/I say” pattern structures a passage from an essay by the media and technology critic Steven Johnson.
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 companies try to give the masses what they want. But . . . the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. Steven Johnson, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”
In generating his own argument from something “they say,” Johnson suggests why he needs to say what he is saying: to correct a popular misconception. Even when writers do not explicitly identify the views they are responding to, as Johnson does, an implicit “they say” can often be discerned, as in the following passage by Zora Neale Hurston. I remember the day I became colored. Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” In order to grasp Hurston’s point here, we need to be able to reconstruct the implicit view she is responding to and questioning: that racial identity is an innate quality we are simply born with. On the contrary, Hurston suggests, our race is imposed on us by society—something we “become” by virtue of how we are treated. As these examples suggest, the “they say/I say” model can improve not just student writing, but student reading comprehension as well. Since reading and writing are deeply reciprocal activities, students who learn to make the rhetorical moves represented by the templates in this book figure to become more adept at identifying these same moves in the texts they read. And if we are right that effective arguments are always in dialogue with other arguments, then it follows that in order to understand the types of challenging texts assigned in college, students need to identify the views to which those texts are responding. Working with the “they say/I say” model can also help with invention, finding something to say. In our experience, students best discover what they want to say not by thinking about a subject in an isolation booth, but by reading texts, listening closely to what other writers say, and looking for an opening through which they can enter the conversation. In other words, listening closely to others and summarizing what they have to say can help writers generate their own ideas.
THE USEFULNESS OF TEMPLATES
Our templates also have a generative quality, prompting students to make moves in their writing that they might not otherwise make or even know they should make. The templates in this book can be particularly helpful for students who are unsure about what to say, or who have trouble finding enough to say, often because they consider their own beliefs so self-evident that they need not be argued for. Students like this are often helped, we’ve found, when we give them a simple template like the following one for entertaining a counterargument (or planting a naysayer, as we call it in Chapter 6).
► Of course some might object that_. Although I concede that_, I still maintain that_.
What this particular template helps students do is make the seemingly counterintuitive move of questioning their own beliefs, of looking at them from the perspective of those who disagree. In so doing, templates can bring out aspects of students’ thoughts that, as they themselves sometimes remark, they didn’t even realize were there. Other templates in this book help students make a host of sophisticated moves that they might not otherwise make: summarizing what someone else says, framing a quotation in one’s own words, indicating the view that the writer is responding to, marking the shift from a source’s view to the writer’s own view, offering evidence for that view, entertaining and answering counterarguments, and explaining what is at stake in the first place. In showing students how to make such moves, templates do more than organize students’ ideas; they help bring those ideas into existence.
OKAY, BUT TEMPLATES?
We are aware, of course, that some instructors may have reservations about templates. Some, for instance, may object that such formulaic devices represent a return to prescriptive forms of instruction that encourage passive learning or lead students to put their writing on automatic pilot. This is an understandable reaction, we think, to kinds of rote instruction that have indeed encouraged passivity and drained writing of its creativity and dynamic relation to the social world. The trouble is that many students will never learn on their own to make the key intellectual moves that our templates represent. While seasoned writers pick up these moves unconsciously through their reading, many students do not. Consequently, we believe, students need to see these moves represented in the explicit ways that the templates provide. The aim of the templates, then, is not to stifle critical thinking but to be direct with students about the key rhetorical moves that it comprises. Since we encourage students to modify and adapt the templates to the particularities of the arguments they are making, using such prefabricated formulas as learning tools need not result in writing and thinking that are themselves formulaic. Admittedly, no teaching tool can guarantee that students will engage in hard, rigorous thought. Our templates do, however, provide concrete prompts that can stimulate and shape such thought: What do “they say” about my topic? What would a naysayer say about my argument? What is my evidence? Do I need to qualify my point? Who cares? In fact, templates have a long and rich history. Public orators from ancient Greece and Rome through the European Renaissance studied rhetorical topoi or “commonplaces,” model passages and fonnulas that represented the different strategies available to public speakers. In many respects, our templates echo this classical rhetorical tradition of imitating established models. The journal Nature requires aspiring contributors to follow a guideline that is like a template on the opening page of their manuscript: “Two or three sentences explaining what the main result [of their study] reveals in direct comparison with what was thought to be the case previously, or how the main result adds to previous knowledge.” In the field of education, a form designed by the education theorist Howard Gardner asks postdoctoral fellowship applicants to complete the following template: “Most scholars in the field believe_. As a result of my study, _.” That these two examples are geared toward post-doctoral fellows and veteran researchers shows that it is not only struggling undergraduates who can use help making these key rhetorical moves, but experienced academics as well.
Templates have even been used in the teaching of personal narrative. The literary and educational theorist Jane Tompkins devised the following template to help student writers make the often difficult move from telling a story to explaining what it means: “X tells a story about_to make the point that _. My own experience with_yields a point that is similar/different/both similar and different. What I take away from my own experience with_is_. As a result, I conclude_.” We especially like this template because it suggests that “they say/I say” argument need not be mechanical, impersonal, or dry, and that telling a story and making an argument are more compatible activities than many think.
WHY IT’S OKAY TO USE “l”
But wait—doesn’t the “I” part of “they say / I say” flagrantly encourage the use of the first-person pronoun? Aren’t we aware that some teachers prohibit students from using “I” or “we,” on the grounds that these pronouns encourage ill-considered, subjective opinions rather than objective and reasoned arguments? Yes, we are aware of this first-person prohibition, but we think it has serious flaws. First, expressing ill-considered, subjective opinions is not necessarily the worst sin beginning writers can commit; it might be a starting point from which they can move on to more reasoned, less self-indulgent perspectives. Second, prohibiting students from using “I” is simply not an effective way of curbing students’ subjectivity, since one can offer poorly argued, ill-supported opinions just as easily without it. Third and most important, prohibiting the first person tends to hamper students’ ability not only to take strong positions but to differentiate their own positions from those of others, as we point out in Chapter 5. To be sure, writers can resort to various circumlocutions—“it will here be argued,” “the evidence suggests,” “the truth is”—and these may be useful for avoiding a monotonous series of “I believe” sentences. But except for avoiding such monotony, we see no good reason why “I” should be set aside in persuasive writing. Rather than prohibit “I,” then, we think a better tactic is to give students practice at using it well and learning its use, both by supporting their claims with evidence and by attending closely to alternative perspectives—to what “they” are saying.
HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED
Because of its centrality, we have allowed the “they say/I say” format to dictate the structure of this book. So while Part 1 addresses the art of listening to others, Part 2 addresses how to offer one’s own response. Part 1 opens with a chapter on “Starting with What Others Are Saying” that explains why it is generally advisable to begin a text by citing others rather than plunging directly into one’s own views. Subsequent chapters take up the arts of summarizing and quoting what these others have to say. Part 2 begins with a chapter on different ways of responding, followed by chapters on marking the shift between what “they say” and what “I say,” on introducing and answering objections, and on answering the all-important questions: “so what?” and “who cares?” Part 3 offers strategies for “Tying It All Together,” beginning with a chapter on connection and coherence; followed by a chapter on formal and informal language, arguing that academic discourse is often perfectly compatible with the informal language that students use outside school; and concluding with a chapter on the art of metacommentary, showing students how to guide the way readers understand a text. Part 4 offers guidance for entering conversations in specific academic contexts, with chapters on entering class discussions, writing online, reading, and writing in literature courses, the sciences, and social sciences. Finally, we provide five readings and an index of templates.
WHAT THIS BOOK DOESN’T DO
There are some things that this book does not try to do. We do not, for instance, cover logical principles of argument such as syllogisms, warrants, logical fallacies, or the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning. Although such concepts can be useful, we believe most of us learn the ins and outs of argumentative writing not by studying logical principles in the abstract, but by plunging into actual discussions and debates, trying out different patterns of response, and in this way getting a sense of what works to persuade different audiences and what doesn’t. In our view, people learn more about arguing from hearing someone say, “You miss my point. What I’m saying is not _, but _,” or “I agree with you that _, and would even add that_,” than they do from studying the differences between inductive and deductivereasoning. Such formulas give students an immediate sense of what it feels like to enter a public conversation in a way that studying abstract warrants and logical fallacies does not.
ENGAGING WITH THE IDEAS OF OTHERS
One central goal of this book is to demystify academic writing by returning it to its social and conversational roots. Although writing may require some degree of quiet and solitude, the “they say / I say” model shows students that they can best develop their arguments not just by looking inward but by doing what they often do in a good conversation with friends and family— by listening carefully to what others are saying and engaging with other views. This approach to writing therefore has an ethical dimension, since it asks writers not simply to keep proving and reasserting what they already believe but to stretch what they believe by putting it up against beliefs that differ, sometimes radically, from their own. In an increasingly diverse, global society, this ability to engage with the ideas of others is especially crucial to democratic citizenship.
Gerald Graff
Cathy Birkenstein
Cathy Birkenstein
Introduction
INTRODUCTION
Entering the Conversation
Think about an activity that you do particularly well: cooking, playing the piano, shooting a basketball, even something as basic as driving a car. If you reflect on this activity, you’ll realize that once you mastered it you no longer had to give much conscious thought to the various moves that go into doing it. Performing this activity, in other words, depends on your having learned a series of complicated moves—moves that may seem mysterious or difficult to those who haven’t yet learned them.
The same applies to writing. Often without consciously realizing it, accomplished writers routinely rely on a stock of established moves that are crucial for communicating sophisticated ideas. What makes writers masters of their trade is not only their ability to express interesting thoughts but their mastery of an inventory of basic moves that they probably picked up by reading a wide range of other accomplished writers. Less experienced writers, by contrast, are often unfamiliar with these basic moves and unsure how to make them in their own writing. This book is intended as a short, user-friendly guide to the basic moves of academic writing.
One of our key premises is that these basic moves are so common that they can be represented in templates that you can use right away to structure and even generate your own writing. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this book is its presentation of many such templates, designed to help you successfully enter not only the world of academic thinking and writing, but also the wider worlds of civic discourse and work.
Instead of focusing solely on abstract principles of writing, then, this book offers model templates that help you put those principles directly into practice. Working with these templates can give you an immediate sense of how to engage in the kinds of critical thinking you are required to do at the college level and in the vocational and public spheres beyond.
Some of these templates represent simple but crucial moves like those used to summarize some widely held belief.
► Many Americans assume that_.
Others are more complicated.
► On the one hand,_. On the other hand,_.
► Author X contradicts herself. At the same time that she argues _, she also implies_.
► I agree that_.
► This is not to say that_.
It is true, of course, that critical thinking and writing go deeper than any set of linguistic formulas, requiring that you question assumptions, develop strong claims, offer supporting reasons and evidence, consider opposing arguments, and so on. But these deeper habits of thought cannot be put into practice unless you have a language for expressing them in clear, organized ways.
STATE YOUR OWN IDEAS AS A RESPONSE TO OTHERS
The single most important template that we focus on in this book is the “they say_; I say_” formula that gives our book its title. If there is any one point that we hope you will take away from this book, it is the importance not only
of expressing your ideas (“I say”) but of presenting those ideas as a response to some other person or group (“they say”). For us, the underlying structure of effective academic writing—and of responsible public discourse—resides not just in stating our own ideas but in listening closely to others around us, summarizing their views in a way that they will recognize, and responding with our own ideas in kind. Broadly speaking, academic writing is argumentative writing, and we believe that to argue well you need to do more than assert your own position. You need to enter a conversation, using what others say (or might say) as a launching pad or sounding board for your own views. For this reason, one of the main pieces of advice in this book is to write the voices of others into your text.
of expressing your ideas (“I say”) but of presenting those ideas as a response to some other person or group (“they say”). For us, the underlying structure of effective academic writing—and of responsible public discourse—resides not just in stating our own ideas but in listening closely to others around us, summarizing their views in a way that they will recognize, and responding with our own ideas in kind. Broadly speaking, academic writing is argumentative writing, and we believe that to argue well you need to do more than assert your own position. You need to enter a conversation, using what others say (or might say) as a launching pad or sounding board for your own views. For this reason, one of the main pieces of advice in this book is to write the voices of others into your text.
In our view, then, the best academic writing has one underlying feature: it is deeply engaged in some way with other people’s views. Too often, however, academic writing is taught as a process of saying “true” or “smart” things in a vacuum, as if it were possible to argue effectively without being in conversation with someone else. If you have been taught to write a traditional five-paragraph essay, for example, you have learned how to develop a thesis and support it with evidence. This is good advice as far as it goes, but it leaves out the important fact that in the real world we don’t make arguments without being provoked. Instead, we make arguments because some¬ one has said or done something (or perhaps not said or done something) and we need to respond: “I can’t see why you like the Lakers so much”; “I agree: it was a great film”; “That argument is contradictory.” If it weren’t for other people and our need to challenge, agree with, or otherwise respond to them, there would be no reason to argue at all.
To make an impact as a writer, you need to do more than make statements that are logical, well supported, and consistent. You must also find a way of entering a conversation with others’ views—with something “they say.” If your own argument doesn’t identify the “they say” that you’re responding to, it probably won’t make sense. As the figure above suggests, what you are saying may be clear to your audience, but why you are saying it won’t be. For it is what others are saying and thinking that motivates our writing and gives it a reason for being. It follows, then, as the figure on the next page suggests, that your own argument—the thesis or “I say” moment of your text should always be a response to the arguments of others.
Many writers make explicit “they say / I say” moves in their writing. One famous example is Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which consists almost entirely of King’s eloquent responses to a public statement by eight clergy-men deploring the civil rights protests he was leading. The letter— which was written in 1963, while King was in prison for leading a demonstration against racial injustice in Birmingham—is structured almost entirely around a framework of summary and response, in which King summarizes and then answers their criticisms. In one typical passage, King writes as follows.
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. Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail” King goes on to agree with his critics that “It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham,” yet he hastens to add that “it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.” King’s letter is so thoroughly conversational, in fact, that it
ould be rewritten in the form of a dialogue or play.
ould be rewritten in the form of a dialogue or play.
King’s critics:
King’s response:
Critics:
Response:
Clearly, King would not have written his famous letter were it not for his critics, whose views he treats not as objections to his already-formed arguments but as the motivating source of those arguments, their central reason for being. He quotes not only what his critics have said (“Some have asked: ‘Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?’ ”), but also things they might have said (“One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ ”)—all to set the stage for what he himself wants to say.
A similar “they say / I say” exchange opens an essay about American patriotism by the social critic Katha Pollitt, who uses her own daughter’s comment to represent the national fervor of post-9/11 patriotism.
My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the former World Trade Center, thinks we should fly the American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. She tells me I’m wrong—the flag means standing together and honoring the dead and saying no to terrorism. In a way we’re both right. . . . Katha Pollitt, “Put Out No Flags”
As Pollitt’s example shows, the “they” you respond to in crafting an argument need not be a famous author or someone known to your audience. It can be a family member like Pollitt’s daughter, or a friend or classmate who has made a provocative claim. It can even be something an individual or a group might say—or a side of yourself, something you once believed but no longer do, or something you partly believe but also doubt. The important thing is that the “they” (or “you” or “she”) represent some wider group with which readers might identify—in Pollitt’s case, those who patriotically believe in flying the flag. Pollitt’s example also shows that responding to the views of others need not always involve unqualified opposition. By agreeing and disagreeing see chapter with her daughter, Pollitt enacts what we call the “yes on agreelng, and no” response, reconciling apparently incompatible ^utwuha^ views.
While King and Pollitt both identify the views they are responding to, some authors do not explicitly state their views but instead allow the reader to infer them. See, for instance, if you can identify the implied or unnamed “they say” that the following claim is responding to. I like to think I have a certain advantage as a teacher of literature because when I was growing up I disliked and feared books. Gerald Graff, “Disliking Books at an Early Age”
In case you haven’t figured it out already, the phantom “they say” here is the common belief that in order to be a good teacher of literature, one must have grown up liking and enjoying books.
As you can see from these examples, many writers use the “they say / I say” format to agree or disagree with others, to challenge standard ways of thinking, and thus to stir up controversy. This point may come as a shock to you if you have always had the impression that in order to succeed academically you need to play it safe and avoid controversy in your writing, making statements that nobody can possibly disagree with. Though this view of writing may appear logical, it is actually a recipe for flat, lifeless writing and for writing that fails to answer what we call the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions. “William Shakespeare wrote many famous plays and sonnets” may be a perfectly true statement, but precisely because nobody is likely to disagree with it, it goes without saying and thus would seem pointless if said.
WAYS OF RESPONDING
Just because much argumentative writing is driven by disagreement, it does not follow that agreement is ruled out. Although argumentation is often associated with conflict and opposition, the type of conversational “they say / I say” argument that we focus on in this book can be just as useful when you agree as when you disagree.
► She argues_, and I agree because_.
► Her argument that_is supported by new research showing that_.
Nor do you always have to choose between either simply agreeing or disagreeing, since the “they say / I say” format also works to both agree and disagree at the same time, as Pollitt illustrates above.
► He claims that_, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I agree that_. On the other hand,
I still insist that_.
This last option—agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously—is one we especially recommend, since it allows you to avoid a simple yes or no response and present a more complicated argument, while containing that complication within a clear “on the one hand / on the other hand” framework.
While the templates we offer in this book can be used to structure your writing at the sentence level, they can also be expanded as needed to almost any length, as the following elaborated “they say / I say” template demonstrates.
► in recent discussions of_, a controversial issue has been whether_. On the one hand, some argue that_. From this perspective,_. On the other hand, however, others argue that_. In the words of _, one of this view’s main proponents, “_.” According to this view,_. In sum, then, the issue is whether_or_. My own view is that_. Though I concede that _ , i still maintain that_. For example, _. Although some might object that_, I would reply that_. The issue is important because_.
If you go back over this template, you will see that it helps you make a host of challenging moves (each of which is taken up in forthcoming chapters in this book). First, the template helps you open your text by identifying an issue in some ongoing conversation or debate (“In recent discussions of_, a controversial issue has been_”), and then to map some of the voices in this controversy (by using the “on the one hand / on the other hand” structure). The template also helps you introduce a quotation (“In the words of”), to explain the quotation in your own words (“According to this view”), and—in a new paragraph—to state your own argument (“My own view is that”), to qualify your argument (“Though I concede that”), and then to support your argument with evidence (“For example”). In addition, the template helps you make one of the most crucial moves in argumentative writing, what we call “planting a naysayer in your text,” in which you summarize and then answer a likely objection to your own central claim (“Although it might be objected that_, I reply_”).
Finally, this template helps you shift between general, over-arching claims (“In sum, then”) and smaller-scale, supporting claims (“For example”). Again, none of us is bom knowing these moves, especially when it comes to academic writing. Flence the need for this book.
DO TEMPLATES STIFLE CREATIVITY?
If you are like some of our students, your initial response to templates may be skepticism. At first, many of our students complain that using templates will take away their originality and creativity and make them all sound the same. “They’ll turn us into writing robots,” one of our students insisted. Another agreed, adding, “Fley, I’m a jazz musician. And we don’t play by set forms. We create our own.” “I’m in college now,” another student asserted; “this is third-grade-level stuff.”
In our view, however, the templates in this book, far from being “third-grade-level stuff,” represent the stock in trade of sophisticated thinking and writing, and they often require a great deal of practice and instruction to use successfully. As for the belief that pre-established forms undemine creativity, we think it rests on a very limited vision of what creativity is all about. In our view, the above template and the others in this book will actually help your writing become more original and creative, not less. After all, even the most creative forms of expression depend on established patterns and structures. Most songwriters, for instance, rely on a time-honored verse-chorus-verse pattern, and few people would call Shakespeare uncreative because he didn’t invent the sonnet or the dramatic forms that he used to such dazzling effect. Even the most avant-garde, cutting-edge artists (like improvisational jazz musicians) need to master the basic fomis that their work improvises on, departs from, and goes beyond, or else their work will come across as uneducated child’s play. Ultimately, then, creativity
and originality lie not in the avoidance of established forms but in the imaginative use of them.
Furthermore, these templates do not dictate the content of what you say, which can be as original as you can make it, but only suggest a way of formatting how you say it. In addition, once you begin to feel comfortable with the templates in this book, you will be able to improvise creatively on them to fit new situations and purposes and find others in your reading. In other words, the templates offered here are learning tools to get you started, not structures set in stone. Once you get used to using them, you can even dispense with them altogether, for the rhetorical moves they model will be at your fingertips in an unconscious, instinctive way.
But if you still need proof that writing templates do not stifle creativity, consider the following opening to an essay on the fast-food industry that we’ve included at the back of this book.
If ever there were 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 mensuing Porsche for making them get speeding tickets? Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
I tend to sympathize with these portly fast-food patrons, though. Maybe that’s because I used to be one of them.
David Zinczenko, “Don’t Blame the Eater”
Although Zinczenko relies on a version of the “they say / I say” formula, his writing is anything but dry, robotic, or uncreative. While Zinczenko does not explicitly use the words “they say” and “I say,” the template still gives the passage its underlying structure: “They say that kids suing fast-food companies for making them fat is a joke; but I say such lawsuits are justified.”
BUT ISN’T THIS PLAGIARISM?
“But isn’t this plagiarism?” at least one student each year will usually ask. “Well, is it?” we respond, turning the question around into one the entire class can profit from. “We are, after all, asking you to use language in your writing that isn’t your own—language that you ‘borrow’ or, to put it less delicately, steal from other writers.”
Often, a lively discussion ensues that raises important questions about authorial ownership and helps everyone better understand the frequently confusing line between plagiarism and the legitimate use of what others say and how they say it. Students are quick to see that no one person owns a conventional formula like “on the one hand ... on the other hand ...” Phrases like “a controversial issue” are so commonly used and recycled that they are generic—community property that can be freely used without fear of committing plagiarism. It is plagiarism, however, if the words used to fill in the blanks of such formulas are borrowed from others without proper acknowledgment. In sum, then, while it is not plagiarism to recycle conventionally used formulas, it is a serious academic offense to take the substantive content from others’ texts without citing the author and giving him or her proper credit.
PUTTING IN YOUR OAR
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. Ultimately, this book invites you to become a critical thinker who can enter the types of conversations described eloquently by the philosopher Kenneth Burke in the following widely cited\ passage. Likening the world of intellectual exchange to a never-ending conversation at a party, Burke writes: You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. ... You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you. . . . The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form.
What we like about this passage is its suggestion that stating an argument and “putting in your oar” can only be done in conversation with others; that we all enter the dynamic world of ideas not as isolated individuals but as social beings deeply connected to others who have a stake in what we say. This ability to enter complex, many-sided conversations has taken on a special urgency in today’s diverse, post-9/11 world, where the future for all of us may depend on our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of those who think very differently from us. The central piece of advice in this book—that we listen carefully to others, including those who disagree with us, and then engage with them thoughtfully and respectfully—can help us see beyond our own pet beliefs, which may not be shared by everyone. The mere act of crafting a sentence that begins “Of course, someone might object that_” may not seem like a way to change the world; but it does have the potential to jog us out of our comfort zones, to get us thinking critically about our own beliefs, and perhaps even to change our minds.
Exercises
- Read the following paragraph from an essay by Emily Poe, a student at Furman University. Disregarding for the moment what Poe says, focus your attention on the phrases she uses to structure what she says (italicized here). Then write a new paragraph using Poe’s as a model but replacing her topic, vegetarianism, with one of your own. The term “vegetarian” tends to be synonymous with “tree-hugger” in many people’s minds. They see vegetarianism as a cult that brainwashes its followers into eliminating an essential part of their daily diets for an abstract goal of “animal welfare.” However, few vegetarians choose their lifestyle just to follow the crowd. On the contrary, many of these supposedly brainwashed people are actually independent thinkers, concerned citizens, and compassionate human beings. For the truth is that there are many very good reasons for giving up meat. Perhaps the best reasons are to improve the environment, to encourage humane treatment of livestock, or to enhance one’s own health. In this essay, then, closely examining a vegetarian diet as compared to a meat-eater’s diet will show that vegetarianism is clearly the better option for sustaining the Earth and all its inhabitants.
- Write a short essay in which you first summarize our rationale for the templates in this book and then articulate your own position in response. If you want, you can use the template below to organize your paragraphs, expanding and modifying it as necessary to fit what you want to say.
In the Introduction to “They Say /1 Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein provide templates designed to_. Specifically, Graff and Birkenstein argue that the types of writing templates they offer_. As the authors themselves put it, “_.” Although some people believe_, Graff and Birkenstein insist that_.
In sum, then, their view is that_. I [agree/disagree/have mixed feelings]. In my view, the types of templates that the authors recommend _. For instance,_. In addition,_. Some might object, of course, on the grounds that_. Yet I would argue that_. Overall, then, I believe_—an important point to make given_.