A Book Critique- Integrative Assignment Unit 4- Villegas-Garcia

A critique of Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students (2nd ed.) by Sthepen Bailey

Writing academic texts may be a major concern for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. Virtually all of them need training to improve their literacy skills at some point of their lives. Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students (2006) was written by Bailey to address these needs. In this handbook, Bailey states that “virtually all courses contain a large degree of written assessment and it is essential to ensure that your writing skills meet the necessary standard” (p. i). Basically, his work aims at guiding students throughout the writing process.

As regards format, this handbook is divided into four main chapters, each of which is, then, divided into four units. These units deal with different topics such as: grammatical structures, vocabulary, styles and register and are followed by exercises for students to practise. After the four units, there is a tests section for students to assess three different aspects of the writing process: accuracy, cohesion and comparison. At the end of the handbook, the author provides the readers with the key to the exercises previously proposed.

In Chapter One, the author explains the writing process; he examines its different stages and provides students with different tips to follow during this process. The second chapter deals with elements of writing, according to Bailey (2006) “the various skills that are needed for most types of academic writing” (p. 65). Some of them are: cohesion, generalizations, reference, quotations and synonyms. Again, Bailey provides students with theory and explanations and then exercises to put it into practice. Chapter three focuses on accuracy, an aspect students should aim at, to steadily improve to make their work as clear and readable as possible (Bailey, 2006 p.119). The last unit presents different writing models, including academic and non-academic texts, to be used as outlines.

From our point of view, Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students (Bailey, 2006) is a valuable education tool for ESL students. It helps them to improve their literacy skills and guides them through the writing process. To begin with, the layout and organization of the handbook is very clear and accessible. It allows readers to easily find each of the topics dealt with in the handbook. Furthermore, Bailey provides a significant and varied amount of exercises to practise each of the aspects presented in the handbook accompanied by its key. However, especially noteworthy is what he explains as regards the possibility of having different answers to the same activity, “Teachers need to use common sense, and accept any reasonable answer” (Bailey, 2006 p. 204). Based on this, we believe that Bailey’s (2006) book might not be useful for self-study as a teacher’s guidance is required.

 

 

References

Remember references take a page to themselves.

Bailey, S. (2006). Academic Writing: A handbook for international students (2nd ed.). Retrieved November 2013 from http://npu.edu.ua/!e-book/book/djvu/A/iif_kgpm_t27.pdf