"They Say / I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, with Readings (Third Edition)

The best-selling text/reader on academic writing.

“They Say / I Say” with Readings shows that writing well means mastering some key rhetorical moves, the most important of which is to summarize what others have said ("they say") in order to set up one's own argument ("I say"). Templates help students make these moves in their own writing, and 50 readings demonstrate the moves and prompt students to think―and write.

Gerald Graff, a professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and 2008 president of the Modern Language Association of America, has had a major impact on teachers through such books as Professing Literature: An Institutional History, Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education, and Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind.

Cathy Birkenstein is a lecturer in English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has published essays on writing in College English, and, with Gerald Graff in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academe, and College Composition and Communication.

Russel Durst, who edited the readings in "They Say / I Say" with Readings, is head of the English Department at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches courses in composition, writing pedagogy and research, English linguistics, and the Hebrew bible as literature. A past president of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy, he is the author of several books, including Collision Course: Conflict, Negotiation, and Learning in College Composition.