Writing a Critique

Critique to a Book of Academic Writing

The book Academic Writing: A Handbook for international students written by Bailey (2006) aims at overseas students to develop academic writing skills when studying at colleges or universities of all subjects and levels (Bailey, 2006, p. vii). It is a practical writing course which fosters students’ academic writing styles either for the classroom or for self-study. Each topic consists of simple explanations, some examples and elementary practice. This book might be worthy for some students but it may have some inconsistencies from what the author expects and what it really portrays.

Bailey´s book (2006) is organized in different parts, all connected by cross-sectional references. In Part 1 “Writing Process”, the book guides students into the process of writing from sentences to general organization. In Part 2 “Elements of Writing” the topics lead students to acquiring writing skills; in Part 3 “Accuracy in Writing” students practice grammatical issues while in Part 4 “Writing models” the book shows different samples of the most common types of academic writing. There is also a “Writing Test” section for checking progress and “Answers” on the exercises can be found as the last segment of the book.

Bailey (2006) challenges college or university students from foundation to PhD to adopt the book, but many of the topics dealt might be already well known for students who have introduce themselves in the grounds of academic writing such as “Nouns- Countable and Uncountable” (part 3.10 p. 147) or “Confusing Pairs” (part 3. 6 p. 136). In addition, some topics and skills that academic students need to improve are not described or, they are not deeply enough developed in Bailey (2006) such as Reference and Quotations (part 2.11 p. 99) as well as Cohesion (part 2.3 p. 73) .The book mostly aims at essay writing; therefore some widely used academic genres are not included in part 4. Only formal letter, a CV (curriculum vitae) and two examples of essays does the book contain, so, students are not exposed to academic summaries, reviews, reports, critiques, articles, among others.

As regards the book´s presentation and format, students might face some difficulties in finding and relating topics. Bailey (2006) states that students “can work either with the teacher or by themselves” (p. vii), but this would have been possible for students who had known their academic needs beforehand and who had a teacher for guiding their improvements. Students working alone would find no suitable answer for some writing exercises (Paraphrasing 1.16; Combining sources 1.10; Argument  2.1) moreover, no guiding or further explanation for some topics, for instance “Academic Vocabulary” (part 3.2 p. 124) and the use of “other text features” (part 1.1 p. 4). It would have also been better if Bailey (2006) had shown the table of contents and topics relating according to students needs and not “alphabetically for easy access” as he assumes.

This book might be really useful for those language competent students who are introduced in academic writing. Some topics are simple shown and preliminary developed, so further practice and examples would be needed for those who attempt proficient levels. If it would have been easy-to-follow as it had been proposed by the author a teacher might not be necessary, but guiding must be essential. I would not recommend this book as a self-study course for either very weak or highly proficient students. And, as Brown and Yule (1983, cited in Ansary and Babaii, 2013) “materials should be chosen, not so much on the basis of their own interest, but for what they can be used to do”(p. 9). Therefore, materials become good materials when students and teachers make them profitable enough for their goals.

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

Ansary, H., & Esmat, B. (2013).  Universal Characteristics of EFL/ESL Textbooks: A step towards systematic textbook evaluation. Shiraz University. Retrieved November 2013 from

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