Book Critique

Book Critique
Academic writing: A handbook for international students

The book 'Academic writing: A handbook for international students' by Bailey (2006) aims at guiding students along the path towards academic writing. In this book, the author intends to suit the needs, particularly, of those students whose native language is not English, since he considers that they "often find the written demands of their courses very challenging. In addition to learning academic English they need to adopt new conventions of style, referencing and layout" (p.vii). To cover these aspects, Bailey (2006) presents the reader with a four-step process book comprising, the writing process, elements of unity, accuracy in writing, and writing models; intended to aid the reader in learning the basic skills needed to produce texts that meet the standards and requirements of academic writing.

The author deals with the most important features of writing required in academic papers throughout the book. In the first section the author explains the basic writing principles from the very first stages to the final proof-reading stage, guiding the reader in evaluating texts, understanding register and purpose, avoiding plagiarism, taking notes, summarizing, planning, organizing paragraphs, combining sources, rewriting and proof-reading. In the second section the emphasis is placed on the elements of writing, such as cohesion, definitions, examples, generalization, references and quotations, style, synonyms and variation in sentence length, to mention some. The third part is concerned with accuracy in writing that involves topics that have to do with the language itself and grammatical points, such as academic vocabulary, confusing pairs, conjunctions, countable and uncountable noun, prefixes and suffixes, modal verbs, passive voice and verb tenses. The fourth section provides the reader with some examples of the type of writing they may be commonly asked to write, there are examples of CVs, formal letters, surveys, and comparison and discussion essays. In addition, Bailey attempts to structure information in a graded way and offers several tasks so that the reader can test his/her learning process. The book is also provided with an answer key so that the readers can easily check their progress.

The book covers a variety of topics essential for academic writing, it provides and introduction and theoretical explanation of each topic introduced, as well as a vast amount of exercises for the reader to practice the subject matter of each section. It must be noticed that not all the topics are covered in the same extension, though the author provides proper and understandable explanation about abbreviations, adverbs, articles, punctuation, paraphrasing and some other topics; there is not enough information provided as regards how to avoid plagiarism, outlining and selecting key points, as well as summarizing. For example, the author states, “at first students need to follow a series of steps to summarize successfully. With practice the number of steps may be reduced, as the process becomes more automatic.”(p.32) but those steps are never mentioned. It is also important to note that the author intends to provide a series of models of “the types of writing that students commonly need” (p.vii), however only four examples are provided, formal letters, CVs, surveys and essays. It would have been more enriching if Bailey (2006) had included more writing models such as reports, reviews, case studies, research proposals, abstracts, and critiques, so that the reader could have a more ample view and clear examples or some other texts types that they may be required to write.

To conclude, it can be said that the book 'Academic writing: A handbook for international students' by Stephen Bailey (2006) leads students towards becoming proficient academic writers. The author intends to grant the essential tools that international learners need in order to produce successful pieces of academic writing. On the one hand, almost all the topics suggested in the book seem to serve as a useful device and are thoroughly explained. All the tasks follow a specific order and gradually guide learners into the writing process. On the other hand, further examples could have been more advantageous in the light of providing students with more instances to learn and practice. All in all, the book by Bailey might be considered as a practical tool that learners, who wish to become involved in academic writing, should have. 

References

Bailey, S. (2006) Academic writing: A handbook for international students (Second edition). Great Britain. Routledge.