A book critique

A review of a book for students

Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students is a book that caters for students who struggle to write academically and, as a consequence, be part of a discourse community. It was published in 2006 by Bailey. Although it is rather complete and full of useful and well sequenced exercises, there is a lack of information about quoting and using references in academic papers.

This useful resource aimed at foreign writers? is divided in 4 sections, each of them dealing with different pitfalls somebody can encounter when writing academically. The first section refers to the writing process, that is, how to start, how to organize the writing and so on. The second section deals with the elements of writing that must be borne in mind. Accuracy is dealt with in the third section and some models and samples of different text types are found in the last section of the book. Furthermore, each section is full of activities for students to practice and become accurate.

All these positive points notwithstanding, the book does not have enough information for students to work on quoting and creating reference lists. This is seen as a drawback as students must learn how to avoid plagiarism if they want to become respected members of a discourse community. Swales and Feak (1994) refer to plagiarism as a term related to the concept of property. They compare ideas with inventions and they claim that both are property of their creators. The meaning and the importance of taking into account plagiarism are dealt with in the first section of the book.

Moreover, in the second section, there is also a part that refers to quoting and reference in depth. This part starts by explaining when to use in-text citations. There are also some activities for students to identify when references are needed and what is considered to be a good example of acknowledging ideas. This is totally acceptable since it is essential for students to realize the importance of supporting their ideas with reliable sources. Up to this point, there is no reference to the different styles to document sources. After some activities, the author states “Find out which system of referencing is used in your subject area. You can do this by studying current textbooks and journals and checking departmental guidelines” (Bailey, 2006, p.99). Then, he explains there are three main systems but he just makes reference to the most popular one and provides some instances of how to quote. After that, the reference list section starts. In this part, there is an example of a reference list and then a note that says that students should seek specialist help if they want to write references. On the other hand, a reference list can be found at the end of the book. Since the title is “Sources”, it can be concluded that the author is not using the American Psychological Association (APA) style at all. If one reads the list, you could immediately identify that APA is not used, as years are not between brackets and punctuation of volume number and page number are also different.

The lack of information in this part of the book is evident. The author tenet of the importance of how to acknowledge ideas is not reflected in this section. Since students find documenting source a grueling task, a deep analysis of how to avoid mistakes when quoting should have been made. The APA style, which is one of the well-known systems, should have been mentioned and some examples with a guide should have been provided. As in any other book for students, a sequence of activities with a smooth progression of difficulty should have been created so as students could practice and achieve their aim, which is to avoid plagiarism successfully.

To conclude, it can be stated that the book is quite complete as it has a large number of useful activities based on different aspects of writing. Nevertheless, this book would not be useful for students who are willing to become members of an academic discourse community as all the information they need is not available in this book. When students want to acknowledge their source or create a reference list, they will need to resort to another book or articles with a full explanation of how to do so.

Reference

Bailey, S. (2006). Academic writing: A handbook for international students. Oxon, OX: Routledge. Retrieved from http://npu.edu.ua/!e-book/book/djvu/A/ii_kgpm_27.pdf  

Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students:

Essential tasks and skills. Michigan, MI: The University of Michigan Press.