A Book Critique of Academic Writing:
A
Handbook for International Students
In
the book Academic Writing: A Handbook for
International Students, Bailey (2006) presents a complete description of
the necessary steps for a successful academic writing and an impressive amount
of exercises to develop the writing skills which overseas students need to meet
in order to accomplish the standard level of proficiency required by English
medium Colleges and Universities. The aim of this paper is to give basic
information about this ambitious book such as its structure, style and topics
as well as to evaluate its specific aspects which make it readable for the
audience, giving an overall recommendation for the reader.
As regards the
structure of the book, it is divided into four significant parts which are: The
writing process, Elements of writing, Accuracy in writing and Writing models,
respectively. As the author points out “Academic Writing is divided
into four parts. In Parts 1 and 2 the focus is on key writing skills, while
Parts 3 and 4 offer revision and reference. Parts 2 and 3 are organized
alphabetically for easy access” (Bailey, 2006, p. vii). These parts are also
subdivided into different stages which guide the students from initial steps such
as note-making and paraphrasing to more complex ones such as organizing
paragraphs, rewriting and proof-reading.
Concerning
the topics of this book, the author also provides the students with
interesting, useful information such as: how to write arguments,
generalizations and references, some skills which they may need when writing
academically. As the author explains “The Elements of Writing are the various skills that are
needed for most types of academic writing, whether it is a short report, a long
essay or a dissertation” (Bailey, 2006, p. 65).
With reference to the style
of the book it is semi-formal, objective, impersonal and precise. The book
presents the information clearly and accurately. For example, “Non-native users
of English tend to have problems that relate to their mother tongue. Japanese
speakers, for example, find it difficult to use articles in English because
these are not found in Japanese” and “The components in Accuracy in Writing have been chosen on the basis
that they regularly cause difficulty and confusion in students’ writing”
(Bailey, 2006, p. 118).
However,
Bailey’s (2006) book would have been more efficient, useful if he had included
explanations within the key section, similar to a test-builder book, for the
students to enrich their understanding of the error correction process.
Particularly remarkable was the limited amount of models that this author
included. It would have been better if he had added samples for each format.
Summing
up, it can be affirmed that the author achieves to present academic writing
strategies and practice for students who are learning how to write academically
in a foreign language in an easy reading and accurate manner. The structure,
the style and the relevance of the topics together with the different
activities, make this book very readable for the audience and extremely useful
for a learner during the first steps in academic writing. From our point of
view, this book would be really recommendable to take into account when dealing
with academic writing in English if it were supplemented with specific
explanations within the error correction process and additional samples of
writings.
References
Bailey,
S. (2006). Academic Writing: A handbook for international students (2nd ed.). Taylor & Francis e-library.
http://npu.edu.ua/!ebook/book/djvu/A/iif_kgpm_t27.pdf.
