Response to Graff and Birkenstein

By Friday, April 6, blog a paragraph responding to Graff and Birkenstein's lecture. If you didn't attend (ahem), then you'll have to interview a class member and get his or her reaction. To show my good faith on this blog assignment, I am blogging my own paragraph below:

I agree fundamentally with their general thesis. Effective writing is all about "argument" and "joining the conversation." Their book gives writers the "moves" they need to do so. However, what the lecture made me realize was that their general thesis is nothing new. Argument had been the fundament of academic writing since Aristotle. What is effective in their book is their identification of the templates and phrasings that typical academic writers use to engage in such writing activities. Also, to some degree, they were not talking to their audience. Referring to "your students" in the third person was unintentionally demeaning to both the students, who made up the vast majority of the audience, and the few writing instructors who were present. Good writers don't refer to their main audience in the third person. Also, writing teachers at Ohio Wesleyan haven't used the "five-paragraph essay" for a decade or more. Implying that we use outmoded techniques suggests that Graff and Birkenstein didn't evaluate that part of their audience very well. After all, we invited them to OWU because many of us are using their book. We must agree with their basic principles or we wouldn't have done so.