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Stephen Bailey is a freelance writer of materials for English for Academic Purposes. He has taught students in Barcelona, Tokyo, Johor Bahru and Prague, and more recently at Derby University and the University of Nottingham. His other books include Academic Writing, A Handbook for International mostra'n més Students and Academic Writing for International Students of Business (Routledge). mostra'n menys

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Book Review on “Academic Writing – A Handbook for International Students”
(1214 words)
Prepared by Patrick LEE
Date: 26 August 2022

Author: Stephen Bailey
Fifth edition, 2017
Oxon: Routledge
Pages: 314 pages
ISBN 1138048747 / 9781138048744

This book titled “Academic Writing – A Handbook for International Students” consists of five parts and practice exercises with corresponding answer feedback. In part 1 “The Writing Process (from finding sources to proofreading)”, the author aims to guide students through the whole academic writing process. This part 1 starts with highlighting the basics of writing, ranging from the purposes of academic writing to components of academic writing. Following this topic is other relevant topics related to reading which we name it as “perceptive skills” (verse “writing as productive skills”). Traditionally, students are firstly trained to start learning more about reading skills prior to writing. Specifically, the author explains core notions related to reading such as “Finding Suitable Sources” and “Developing Critical Approach to Reading”. As we know, academic writing needs suitable supporting evidence which aims to convincingly back up a writer’s arguments, rather not merely is a writer’s personal opinion as it is in his or her diary. Using library catalogues or websites to search for published materials is therefore very core to write an academic essay.
In addition, the author also mentions how to assess internet sources critically, and this is clearly and highly important for students. Particularly, some students who can only decide if obtained material contents from outside are related to their essay writing, but they could overlook the “validity” of those materials. For instance, arguments from a source such as Wikipedia should not be quoted in almost all the cases in academic writing. The reason is that anyone can post a piece of information which may not be correct onto Wikipedia, and this is said to be without data validity. Another key topic about academic writing is “Avoiding Plagiarism”; this topic is always believed to be overlooked by many students; students always feedback that this topic is difficult when they write descriptions or definitions of some ideas or concepts. The author has also particularly added the topic of “Degrees of Plagiarism” in this book, and I strongly believe that this topic looks very helpful to students.
In this part 1, the author has included many other topics namely “Understanding Essay Titles to Planning”, “Finding Key Points and Note-making”, “Summarising and Paraphrasing”, “References and Quotations”, and “Combining Sources”. However, summarizing and paraphrasing skills, references and quotations are seemingly to be highly related to a topic of “Avoiding Paraphrasing”, and it could be much better when putting related topics together, and this clearly functions to show the connection among topics. Next is a series of aspects of writing, ranging from planning process, organizing ideas in paragraphs, introduction and conclusion to rewriting and proofreading. This should be arranged in this specific sequence of a writing process under this part 1. Simply put, the “Basics of Writing” is argued to be better presented into two sub-parts: “Basics of Writing” and “Writing Process”.
In part 2 “Elements of Writing (from argument to visual information)”, it covers related writing skills such as discussion vocabulary, the language of discussion, counter-arguments and providing evidences. Different topics related to essay-type classifications are included, covering Cause and Effect, Comparison, Definitions, Problems and Solutions. However, it should be noted that other topics beyond essay types are also interestingly covered here; they are “Using Examples”, “Building Generalisations” and “Types of Visual”. Again, this organization structure of the above topics under this part 2 seems not to be that clear to some students. Essay types should be obviously separated as a section whereas other related issues should be in another section. When it comes to teaching “Building Generalisations”, this is known to be useful to student writers of an academic essay. This topic is however not to be found in most of other books in academic writing. Specifically, some students are found to make a “big claim” based on what they argue for, but we realize that some arguments cannot be generalized to all cases. Some arguments are subject to constraints or limitations such as sample size, etc. Other useful topic “Visual Information” is good for students when writing an academic essay because writers are expected to present visual information (when necessary) such as tables, figures and charts which function to reveal that the writers’ arguments are well-supported and illustrated. The author of this book cleverly covers further and relevant topics namely “Types of Visual” and “Describing Visuals” in this part.
In part 3 “Language Issues”, numerous topics are covered and they are “Cohesion”, “Definite Articles”, “Numbers”, “Passive and Active Voices”, “Punctuation”. “Singular or Plural”, “Style” and “Time Markers”. Only taking a look at those topics under language issues, I would prefer that those topics can be categorized as “grammar”, “punctuation”, “style and cohesion”. In addition, those covered topics such as punctuation and passive and active voices could be argued to be simple for students at a college or university level. To be precise, students may not find this part 3 of this book very useful. Clearly, there is doubt that on what ground the author decided to include only those topics under “Language Issues” in this book, for example, why only the topic of “Time Markers” but not “Aspect Markers”. Some students including Chinese students, to my knowledge, may not fully understand the differences between time and aspect markers of an English sentence as it is in “The researcher “has reported” all his findings in this paper – the word ‘has’ reveals the tense whereas the word “report-ed” here reveals the aspect.”
In part 4 “Vocabulary of Writing’, the author includes some parts of speech namely nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions. Interestingly, the author has mentioned about “definite articles” in part 3 of “Language Issues”. As such, this may look as incoherent or unsystematic in presenting parts of speech vs vocabulary. Another issue is that the author has also covered “prefixes and suffixes work” and “synonyms” whereas I argue that they should fit into other parts of this book. “Synonyms” could be presented under the “Cohesion” or “Style” of the part 3 of this book. As a whole, students may not confidently and clearly follow the logical flow of information throughout the book.

The final part of this book is “Writing Models” including “Case Studies”, “Literature Reviews and Book Reviews”, “Writing Longer Papers”, “Reports”, “Writing Letters and Emails” and “Writing in Groups”. Basically, writing models are very practical for students as students can read “sample writing”. However, the topic “Writing in Groups” here appears to be very different from other topics under writing models. Contents involved with “Writing in Group” aim to highlight group work, not a writing genre. Also, “Writing Letters and Emails” may not be that traditionally categorized under academic writing; this appears to be about writing “format” which could be also for non-academic disciplines.
Overall, this book includes core components of academic writing namely basics of writing, writing process and sample texts. Some issues about this book should be noted: organization structure of some topics can be re-arranged in a better sequence, some aspects of grammar covered in this book are argued to be overly simple to college or university students. Finally, throughout this book, the author has also added practices, answers to practices and glossary. They are all clearly helpful for self-study purposes as the author has obviously drawn our attention to this aspect of book design.
… (més)
 
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PatrickLee | Aug 26, 2022 |

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