Review of “They Say/ I Say” 2

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Firstly, I start with what this book focuses on from objective point of view.

Unlike the other general textbook, this book is only 18cm long, 13cm wide, and the number of pages is only 245.

In such few pages, it is impossible to cover all the fundamental skills of academic writing.

However, by focusing on the most rudiment step of academic writing, this book is worth to be called as an introductory book of academic writing.

Then, what is the most rudiment step of academic writing? Needless to say, it’s to present your idea clearly.

But how?

According to what the author of this book says at the beginning of this book, the goal of this book is “to demystify academic writing by returning it to its social and conventional roots.”

The answer is what we do often in a good conversation with friends and family.

That is defining your position, in other words, as the title of this book says, defining “They Say/ I say”.

In academic writing, your idea cannot indicate its position by itself.

Even if you give great idea with many of supportive details, readers will get puzzled if you don’t indicate the relative position of the idea.

It is because not all the reader has the same amount of knowledge as you.

To indicate the relative position of the idea, you must mention what larger conversation that your idea is responding, in other words, defining “They Say”.

This book illustrates the importance of indicating “what others are saying” at beginning of essay to take readers along with your writing.

This technique is effective for giving your idea not only in academic writing, but also in presentation or even in everyday conversation.

Furthermore, from objective point of view, this book contains many resources that help reader to learn academic writing skills.

One advantage of this book over others is the large amount of templates. Instead of giving only the fundamental principles of academic writing, this book offers model templates for each case or position of your idea.

Those templates are made of practical use; hence, you can put those principles directly into practice. Also, introducing the abundant examples of academic writings is advantage of this book.

Those examples include wide range of studies, from the pandemic obesity in United States to scientific view on nuclear waste.

Those diverse of examples satiate the reader’s interest and never bore the reader.

Furthermore, it will give you a deeper comprehension of academic writing.

Also those examples include both good writings and bad writings. So you can learn practical writing skills by comparison of those examples.

For those reasons, this book illustrates the most important principle in academic writing.

And with useful templates and abundant examples, this book is exceedingly suitable as an introductory for laymen in academic writing.