Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students - Critique

According to Bailey (2006), “those students who are not native speakers often find the written demands of their courses very challenging” (p. vii). In his book, the author aims to provide students with lots of practice that could help them to self-acquire competence in academic writing skills and also, to assist teachers who are concerned about their students’ writing progress. But, although the book would be suitable for secondary students or higher education beginners, it might not respond to teachers and students’ expectations in the last years of college.

As Bailey states in his blog “Academic Writing” in the post “What concerns teachers about students’ writing?”, teachers’ most common complaints about students writing in higher education are “students not using critical thinking, students answering questions that had not been asked, plagiarism, lack of logical development and organization in essays”. All these weaknesses are dealt with in “part 1: The Writing Process” (pp. 3-60). The author also claims that “there is a need to use an argument style of writing, to improve referencing, to revise the use of paragraphs, over-short answers and over-complex sentences”. In “part 2: elements of writing” (pp.65-114) the author approaches these problems. Finally, in “part 3: accuracy in writing” (pp. 119-182) the author gives practice on the most common complaint that is “inaccurate use of vocabulary”.

However, all the above mentioned topics are vaguely delved into in the book. There is a considerable amount of practice but there are few references. In the “Avoiding Plagiarism” section (p.7) for example, the author should have included a clear guide with strategies for plagiarism avoidance so as students can use it as a notes when writing their own productions. Pupils may find it difficult to correct mistaken exercises because, although answers are provided in the book (pp.204-258) there are no clear explanations. The same may happen when students are doing the tests in the “Writing Tests” section (pp.201-203).

Bailey’s book would have been more accurate if it had targeted a smaller range of audience. The author argues that the book “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. 6). However, different disciplines often have different writing requirements as Purdue OWL (2013) identifies: professional-technical writing, writing in literature, writing in the social sciences, writing in engineering, medical writing, etc.
The author should have stated in the introduction that the book spectrum is reduced to a beginner academic level. “part 4: Writing Models” (pp. 185-199) clearly depicts that this book is not complete enough to satisfy the demands of classes that are subject specific because it does not comprises a wide range of academic genres. 

So as to conclude, it can be stated that the book would be useful for international students who are about to start higher education. A student that is in the last years of university would not find this book useful because it vaguely delves into practical writing skills and common difficulties in writing.

References

Bailey, S. (2006) Academic Writing: A handbook for international students.  (2^nd edition). Retrieved November 2013 from   

http://npu.edu.ua/!e-book/book/djvu/A/iif_kgpm_t27.pdf 

Bailey, S. (2012) Academic Writing Blog. Retrieved November 2013 from

http://academicwrite.blogspot.com.ar/2012_05_01_archive.html

Purdue OWL (2013) Subject Specific Resources. Retrieved November 2013 from  

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/4/