PB2B

Understanding rhetorical moves is an important aspect of becoming a better reader and writer. In the appendix They Say, I Say, as well as other articles, we are able to analyse the effect of its included moves, to which we can observe how general moves can essentially benefit the readers’ understanding of the connection between reading and writing– simultaneously making them become better academic writers.

In the article, They Say, I Say written by Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst, it includes a variation of ‘moves’ supportive for writing and presented in a certain way to effectively assist their targeted audience of students. There are five main moves evident in this appendix– listed examples of writing, bullet points, incomplete sentences, subheadings, and the use of ‘X.’ The authors shows examples of language in academic writing that positively impacts students’ understanding. This is seen as a move because it enables students to easily incorporate these examples into their own writing paper. The authors’ intentional use of this move guides their readers to comprehend the appropriate context suited for their writing. Bullet points are also shown as a move as it displays simplicity for students to clearly understand each example statement. Due to students’ impatience in reading academic work, these authors’ use of move is effectively beneficial as it is short and straight to the point and therefore completely understood. Another move is the incompletion of sentences with gaps for students to fill in their own words. I believe this move is used to lead these students towards a certain direction, as well as to provide them with the flexibility to manipulate with their own topic. Subheadings also can be seen as an essential move. It plays a huge role in context, and these subheadings can represent the applicable templates for these students. The use of this move helps these students to identify what they are aiming to write. The authors’ use of using letters X and Y represents names of the students’ choice. It clearly is for guidance for the student to replace these with names for their academic writing. I believe this is an effective move, because if they were to use examples of specific names, a student may accidentally include that name in their paper. This article uses effective moves to support student readers in guiding and improving their academic writing.
            In Mike Bunn’s How to Read Like a Writer, he uses the move of referencing quotations of other authors or professors. He utilises this move as it provides evidence and support to imply credibility of his knowledge and proclaimed arguments about writing. The credibility has a major impact towards readers as it manipulates them into believing this source automatically. Mike also uses italics as a move, to represent a portion from an example essay. Not only does he use these italics to present linguistic examples, but it also adds a sense of creativeness throughout his article. This is an effective move as it makes these italicized words stand out of the paper, making it an interesting read. Shown in Navigating Genres, Kerry Dirk includes examples of scenarios for her readers to select their choice of best answer. This move aims to clarify why an answer is right or wrong. I believe Kerry uses this move because it forces these readers to read all situations and come up with their own reasons of the best answer, which then allows comparison of Kerry’s and their own answer. Richard Straus’s Responding– Really Responding– to Other Students’ Writing uses a move that asks questions to their readers to initiate each topic. This author uses this creative move as it can allow readers to internally come up with their own answer to the question as they read it. This move can also be a popular question a student may ask, which produces an exact relevant answer for them. Another interesting move is shown in Spaces for Writing illustrated by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. They use a move of comical presentation, which can have a way of luring entertainment for their readers, as well as show a different aspect of learning. I believe this is a very effective approach, as readers can get bored of reading words structured in paragraphs, therefore with a different display of academic writing, it can successfully interest these readers. It is also beneficial for those who learn better visually, as these illustrations can further explain an author’s statement.

Represented by these various articles, academic writers significantly use rhetorical moves for readers to further understand their information and the overall concept of writing. It is shown that each move has its own unique way of guiding and educating their audience.