Critique to a Handbook for International Students

The book Academic Writing, a Handbook for International Students (2006, Bailey), presents simple activities which are recommended to students of different levels in order to practice their academic writing skills. In Bailey’s (2006) words,“It is a flexible course that allows students of all subjects and levels, from foundation to PhD, to practise those aspects of writing which are most important for their studies” (p.vii). The main purpose of Bailey’s (2006) work is probably to provide a guide with exercises in order to help students to learn academic writing. Although the book contains different exercises and papers, they may not be useful for advanced students due to its level.

Bailey (2006) presents a second edition where he separates it in four different sections. In “Part 1: The Writing Process” (pp.3-60) the exercises are meant to deal with sentences and with general rules of writing. In “Part 2: Elements of writing” (pp. 65- 114) students are offered exercises to practice essential parts of writing such as adverbs, nouns, punctuation, and so forth. “Part 3: Accuracy in writing” (pp. 119-182), there are exercises to practice grammar. “Part 4: Writing models” (pp. 185-199) samples of academic works can be found. After all the sections, there is a part with suggested answers for the exercises.

The book is presented in order to learn elements for academic writing. However the section which should deal deeply with it, part one, “avoiding plagiarism” (p.2), does not include sufficient activities neither examples. The author should have included the basic rules, such as in- text citations or reference list, of the Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) (2010). Additionally, the handbook does not present a variety of  academic sampler texts as it is mentioned in the introduction: “Writing Models offers examples of the types of  writing that students commonly need, including letters and survey reports as well as essays” (Bailey, 2006, p. vii). It would have been better if the author had included more samples of academic writings in order to give students a wide variety of texts; those mentioned seem to be directed to students who start writing academically.

As regards the level of the book, it presents elementary exercises and examples. The book would have been more useful if the author had recommended it to a specified level of language competence. “The range goes from international students to PhD” (Bailey, 2006, p. vii). The author meant to provide a wide range of practice in different levels but instead it can be noticed in the book that the exercises are really useful for a beginner of academic writing instead of an advanced level. The book in this case may not achieve the expectations that the author presented.

So as to conclude, the book may not be appropriate to practice academic writing for all levels. It could be recommended this book for the students who are starting to produce their academic pieces of writings. Students with an advanced level may find the book quite incomplete and it could only serve in order to review elementary items of he academic writing.

References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC.  

Bailey, S. (2006). Academic Writing: A handbook for international students.  Retrieved November 2013 from   http://npu.edu.ua/!e-book/book/djvu/A/iif_kgpm_t27.pdf