They Say, I Say, what do you say?
I'm a big fan of a little book called They Say / I Say : the Moves that Matter in Academic Writing by Graff and Birkenstein (it's in the UH library here). The idea of the book is that academic writing is like a conversation that involves summarising and responding to what other author have written. I speak about it around five minutes into this video (only accessible with a University of Hertfordshire login and password) and it's probably not hard to see how it influences the suggestions I make to any students looking to develop their writing skills.
Now, one way that typically respond to something we have read is by using it to aid our understanding of something else we have read, or something that we have experience. We can consider this to be an act of APPLYING the ideas of an author to the focus of our own study or analysis. Not easy to do, perhaps, with short general-interest texts and a blog, but I think this article published one week ago in the Conversation is something that we can quite easily apply to our own experience, or vice versa. The writer is a University of Hertfordshire academic, Lindsay Botttoms, and the text relates to the positive mental impact of exercise. I invite you to read the text and write one paragraph to apply it to your own experience. Have you ever felt or observed the mental health benefits of exercise in a way that connects to the article? I'm not asking you to summarise the article, but you will need to summarise points from it in order to explain how they relate to what you have experienced / observed in your own life.
As an extra or alternative task: I'm using this article to produce some materials that aim to demonstrate how to develop and refine your vocabulary through reading. I'd be interested to know if "developing your vocabulary" is something that is important to you, and what, if any, vocabulary or terminology you see in this article that you would like to use in your own writing.
As always, I look forward to reading your responses.
In reading "Hiking workouts.." article by Linsay Bottoms, in 2021, she outlines that execise creates physical and mental benefits. The energy burnt relates directly to the amount of exertion and time spent during exercise. I prefer walking more than running; as it puts less pressure on the knees, less sweating, and a further distance can be achieved. The walking approach is repeatable, unlike running at a fast pace, which results in aching for the next days. This aching discourages oneself from attempting running again.
ReplyDeleteIt is the consistancy that creates the health benefits. However, fighting against consistancy is the minds need for variety. The mind gets bored of the same experience, to combat this bordom, a new experience requires additional thinking to design variety. The barriers to creation of this new experience is lazyness of the mind. Creating a new experience for oneself is to give a new mental experience to the brain, but, still give the body the same things to do.
Thanks for posting Phil. When you read back your opening sentence, you might feel that it's a little awkward, and that's largely because of the amount of information you are trying to include. This is where referencing is actually a blessing. Compare that opening sentence with:
DeleteBottoms (2021) argues that exercise creates physical and mental benefits.
Note that I've used "argues that..."; "outlines" is typically followed by a noun phrase, so it requires a more complex structure, which doesn't actually help. It would look like this:
Bottoms (2021) outlines the main findings of her research, which are that exercise creates physical and mental benefits.
Also, if you think about the main point of the article, it has a theme / rheme (or known / unknown, given / new) element to it, which you'll have seen in the workshop around the Hemingway text. The physical benefits are given; it's the mental benefits that are the 'new' information in Bottoms' article. I'd suggest, then, that we can capture the meaning of the text more fully with a simple amendment:
Bottoms (2021) argues that exercise creates mental as well as phyiscall benefits.
or:
Bottoms (2021) argues that exercise creates not only physical but also mental benefits.
Hopefully you'll see how we're just looking for ways to make a smaller number of words to more work for us.
The rest of what you've written is fine, but I'd be careful with "oneself"; I think people use "one" when attempting to achieve "formal" style, though academic writing is a different kind of formality. It's not the formality of trying to appear polite while meeting a member of the royal family; it's more about showing respect to your reader by writing to them in the concise and precise way that they are expecting. If you're writing about yourself and your own experience, it's fine to use "I" and "me". If you want to write about people more generally, refer to them as people, or whatever term is more precise / specific in the context. Here it might be "runner" or "walker".
I hope that makes sense.
As you're the only person who has posted a response this week (and as you are writing well in this format), can I suggest that you find another short article that interests you and just create a new post (i.e. not comment) to summarise it and give your perspective on what you've read. If you'd like any suggestions for *how* to do this, let me know, but from your writing so far, I think you already know how! :)