A Book Critique

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

In his book, Academic writing: A handbook for international students (2ed.) published by Routledge, Bailey (2006) provides a successful, thorough account of what writing at academic levels implies together with useful moments of practice. However, it might need exploratory explanations in two crucial aspects that these types of writings require: pre-writing techniques and documenting sources.

The author states that the book aims at “those students who are not native speakers of English (who) often find the written demands of their courses very challenging. In addition to learning academic English, they need to adopt new conventions of style, referencing and layout.” (Bailey, 2006, p. 8). Throughout its 272 pages, these topics are developed in four parts covering the different aspects of this demanding process. Besides, it allows students to have extra practice with supplementary tests as well as offering a source reference and the answers to the exercises presented.

According to the author, part 1 of his book copes with the first steps that writing as a process demands. Although the while and post stages are clearly described, there is a remarkable flaw as none of the pre-writing techniques is presented. As the book can be used for self-study, it would have been more clarifying and assertive if different strategies had been mentioned in order not only to make learners aware of the existence of those techniques, but also to permit students to find out the one that suits their learning styles best.

Particularly important is the emphasis given to the avoidance of plagiarism by the writer. There is a significant reference to this vital aspect in part 1 as regards title and plagiarism; in part 2 regarding citations, and in part 3 concerning abbreviations and punctuation. Even though the necessity of a documenting system is commented, it would have been more satisfactory if Bailey (2006) had provided more information about it. In no case does the author offer a careful explanation about the different systems and their complexity.

In short, the author makes an impressive attempt at describing the process of writing for academic purposes. What the reader must be aware of is the lack of information as regards the pre-stage of the process as well as the existence of documenting systems meant to avoid plagiarism and to set writing conventions.

 

 

References

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