Teachers of writing are rather sharply divided over Graff and Birkenstein’s book They Say/I Say: the moves that matter in academic writing. While the book clearly strikes a chord with students (it’s in its 3rd edition, after all), many faculty members resist the template approach that G&B take here. For my part, though, while I can appreciate teachers’ desire to avoid any suggestion that writing is as simple as filling-in-the-blanks, I think that such criticisms miss the larger point: that these templates can provide students with linguistic training wheels, that is, as temporary learning tools, rather than as permanent stylistic crutches.
That said, I’m using the same basic they say/I say move right now in this blog, so maybe G&B are on to something–the moves really are endemic to the work we do, even if the exact phrasing shifts depending on situation. There’s no harm in letting students in on that secret….