NAME CLASS SUBJECT

: YUDITRA FARMANA :D : ACADEMIC WRITING

SUMMARY

Academic Writing for Graduate Students is targeted at students whose first language is not English, and who need to write academic papers of various kinds in English as part of their postgraduate studies. In this, it is evidently directed first and foremost towards students such as those whom Swales and Feak themselves teach at the University of Michigan, but is also useful to those of us working on English-medium or bilingual postgraduate programs in the European context. The book is divided into eight units, the first three of which are essentially preparatory, focusing on basic academic style, general-specific and problem-process-solution texts. The next three units are more specific, dealing with data commentary, summaries and critiques. The last two units of the book demonstrate how these different text-types knit together into the full-length research paper, and as such are particularly useful. There are also four rather heterogeneous appendixes, which deal with use of the article, Latin phrases, E-mail and a sample mini-project.

Each chapter focuses on the various types of writing that one finds in some upper-level undergraduate classes and most graduate classes. The early chapters address issues of idiom and organization that are likely to be somewhat familiar to students: the formality of academic writing, patterns of general to specific and problem/solution writing, definitional structure and usage, and general process papers. The fourth chapter, which the authors describe as the crucial link between the earlier and later units, is a sophisticated exploration of how to manage and express interpretations of and commentaries on data. Especially important in the fourth chapter are the numerous activities that explore how to write about data, from accurately qualifying the strength of claims to cohesively referring to and integrating information about data in a commentary or paper. The final four chapters are dedicated to more advanced writing tasks: summaries (including comparative summaries, an invaluable resource for graduate students),

critiques, and fundamentals about research papers. The latter section addresses information about writing papers when using others research and when using the students own research. Finally, an additional strength is that the text approaches academic writing as needing to be effective, sophisticated, and clear rather than focusing on the right or wrong way to express ideas in writing. Though answers to the activities can be found in the Instructors Commentary (a separate but valuable text), the approach of the commentary is to stimulate student thinking about effective possibilities rather than provide answers that are right or wrong. Often the authors relate multiple student perspectives from their own teaching experiences in answer to a question rather than provide a black-and-white answer. This kind of answer may initially be maddening to students (although I find that the legal English learners love these debates/discussions), but it is a necessary step in helping students both elevate and free their writing from simpler, more basic expression to writing that is rhetorically effective, precise, nuanced, and at a level typically required of upper-level and graduate writing students.