A Critique on Stephen Bailey’s (2006) Book on Academic Writing

A Critique on Stephen Bailey’s (2006) Book on Academic Writing

The following is a book critique for Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students, second edition, by Stephen Bailey (2006). This book is aimed at developing writing skills for non-native English speaking students doing a course at university or college. It deals with providing students with necessary tools to write in academic style. According to its author, “Any international student wishing to maximise his or her academic potential will find this practical and easy-to-use guide to writing in English a truly indispensable resource” (Bailey, 2006, p. I). Even though it can be agreed that the book may result useful for students immersing in the world of academic English, it can also be argued that it contains certain weaknesses.

To start with, the smooth internal organization of the book allows readers to easily find and explore the topics. The book is divided into four main sections, with sixty one units and a fifth extra section containing tests, answers to the activities suggested, and source. The first section includes information and practice on, for instance, avoiding plagiarism, planning an essay, the kinds of paragraphs that form the piece of writing, editing it, and so on. The second section copes with skills required to fulfill assignments. For instance, students are presented with activities aimed at developing skills such as comparing and contrasting, providing definitions and examples, explaining cause and effect, among others. The third section deals with helping students to be accurate writers by means of affording remedial activities on common mistakes. Finally, the fourth section exposes students to sample pieces of writing.

Concerning the dynamics of the book, certain advantages and disadvantages can be listed. On the one side, in all the sections, the activities included in them may be characterized as practical, actively engaging the learners. That is, students are provided with sentences and paragraphs to add, analyse, synthesise, select, or discriminate information, as well as tools necessary in academic English for students to manipulate. As Bailey (2006) explains, “The book is organised to provide maximum hands-on practice for students” (p.VII). However, on the other side, it can be maintained that those activities only involve students in short productions, usually no longer than a paragraph. In addition, the author could have included a greater variety regarding the kinds of activities, controlled and free ones. Moreover, some units do not provide necessary details novice learners would find crucial for writing academic English. For instance, when dealing with avoiding plagiarism, different styles for in-text citation and reference lists could have been included.

To conclude, Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students is a useful tool for students to learn how to write in academic style. Nevertheless, it would not be effective enough if learners adopted it as the only source of information to develop academic writing skills. Therefore, readers should bear in mind the possibility of complementing topics dealt with in the book with extra materials which focus on giving more specific information on such topics.

References

Bailey, S. (2006). Academic writing: A handbook for international students. Oxfordshire: Routledge.