What the book actually gives you
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's They Say / I Say makes an argument that is easy to miss under all the fill-in-the-blank templates: academic writing is a conversation. You do not simply state your view. You enter a discussion that is already happening, position yourself in it, and move it on.
The templates are just the moves of that conversation, written out. And the moves are real:
- Summarise the view you are answering. They say…
- Position yourself. Agree, disagree, or — the useful one — both.
- Concede honestly, then counter. X is right that… but…
- Answer the objection before it is made. Of course, some will say…
- Say why it matters. So what? Who cares?
None of that is a trick. That is how argument works, and a candidate who has never been taught it tends to write a list of opinions instead of a case.
And here is the risk
Memorised, formulaic language is penalised, across these tests, on more than one criterion. An examiner reads hundreds of scripts, and the phrases everyone has learned are extremely visible from the second line.
So the danger is not the idea of the template. It is that the template arrives as a fixed string of words, and a fixed string of words is precisely what a rubric marks down as mechanical or memorised.
The authors saw this objection coming — and their answer contains the catch
Graff and Birkenstein are not naive about any of this. They give a section of the book to the exact worry, under the heading "OK — but templates?", and they open it by quoting their own students: "They'll turn us into writing robots."
Their reply is one of the best defences of form anyone has written, and we agree with all of it:
That is right, and it settles the argument in the room the book was written for. But the sentence that comes next is the one a test-taker has to read very carefully:
A language exam inverts exactly that
Read the defence again with a rubric in your hand. It rests on a division of labour: the template supplies the how, and you supply the what — and since the what is what your professor is grading, nothing has been taken from you.
In a composition class that is true. In a language exam it is precisely inverted. IELTS and TOEFL do not mark the content of what you say. No examiner scores whether you are right about attendance policies; the descriptors do not contain a criterion for being correct. They mark the how — the language. So the one thing the template hands you for free is the only thing being measured.
And the book already tells you what to do about it
The resolution is not ours. It is theirs, in a sentence most readers skim past:
The templates were always designed to be discarded. What goes wrong is that candidates stop at stage one and carry the scaffolding into the exam, where it is the most visible thing on the page.
The safest form of a template is a question
The authors themselves state the moves as questions rather than sentences, and this is the version to take into the exam room:
- What do they say about my topic?
- How would a naysayer respond to my argument?
- What is my evidence?
- Do I need to qualify my point?
- Who cares?
Ask those five in your planning minute. A question cannot be marked as memorised language, because it never reaches the page — it only decides what has to be on it. You keep the entire benefit of the book and carry none of its risk.
The line: keep the move, change the words
This is the whole resolution, and it is easy to apply.
| The move (keep it) | The memorised wording (change it) | In your own words |
|---|---|---|
| Concede, then counter | It is true that… However, it must be said that… | Maria is right that attendance correlates with results — but correlation is doing a lot of work in that claim. |
| Answer the objection | Of course, some may argue that… | The obvious reply is that adults should manage their own time. I think that misses what the rule is for. |
| Say why it matters | In conclusion, this issue is very important for society. | If that is right, then the fix is not a rule about attendance — it is a change to the lecture. |
The right-hand column does exactly what the middle column claims to do — but it is written by a person, about this particular question. That is what raises the score, and it costs nothing extra to produce once you know the move you are making.
Where this matters most: the TOEFL discussion task
TOEFL's Write for an Academic Discussion is this book's argument turned into a task. The official scoring guide describes every score level — 5 down to 1 — as a contribution to the online discussion.
A response that states an opinion without engaging with the two students who already posted is, in the rubric's own words, a weak contribution, however well written. The book's central move — they say, therefore I say — is not a nice-to-have here. It is the task.
But the same rubric penalises language "mostly borrowed from the stimulus", and gives zero to a response copied from the prompt. So: make the move, in your own words. See the full guide to that task.
For the test, and for real academic writing
For the test: use the moves and vary the wording. Concede a point honestly — it is not weakness, it is what a strong argument does. Answer the obvious objection before the examiner thinks of it. And never let a sentence arrive that you have written the exact same way before.
For real academic writing: the moves are not exam technique at all. They are how scholarship argues, how a seminar works, how a good meeting works. Learning them properly is worth doing for its own sake, and the exam happens to reward it — which is the best kind of preparation there is.
Frequently asked questions
Are essay templates allowed in IELTS and TOEFL?
Nothing forbids them, but memorised, formulaic language is penalised on more than one criterion, and examiners recognise the common phrases instantly. The safe approach is to keep the argumentative move — concede then counter, answer the objection — and write it in your own words each time.
What's wrong with 'In today's modern society' or 'Firstly, Secondly, Moreover'?
They are template sentences with no template move inside them: they perform the appearance of structure while doing no argumentative work. Firstly/Moreover/In conclusion is one of the clearest band-6 markers in IELTS writing, and empty openers are marked down as memorised phrasing.
Should I concede a point to the other side?
Yes — a good argument concedes what is genuinely true and then explains why it does not settle the question. It is not weakness, and both IELTS Task Response and the TOEFL discussion rubric reward the engagement it demonstrates.
Is They Say / I Say useful for the TOEFL discussion task?
It is close to being the manual for it. The official scoring guide describes every level of that task as a contribution to the online discussion, so the book's central move — they say, therefore I say — is not optional there, it is the task. Just phrase it yourself: the same rubric gives a low score to language mostly borrowed from the prompt.