Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills

by John M. Swales, Christine Feak

This text is specifically designed to help nonnative graduate students improve their academic writing in English. It consists of eight linked units plus three appendixes. The units start with writing at the paragraph level and conclude with the construction of a research paper. The genre-based approach allows detailed attention to the purposes, structures, and styles of particular kinds of texts. In addition, the approach is strategic; it assumes that graduate students need to write in ways that enhance their credibility in the eyes of their instructors. Academic Writing for Graduate Students does not neglect areas of academic grammar and vocabulary found to be troublesome for nonnative speakers of English. These are handled through "Language Focus" sections so placed in the text that they tie in with the wider rhetorical objectives. The Commentary includes explanations of and discussions about the activities in each unit of the textbook. Model or sample answers are provided when appropriate.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Language, Education, Academic, Academia, Grad School

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1994

About the author

John Malcolm Swales was an English linguist. He joined the University of Michigan as a faculty member in 1985. He retired in 2006 as professor emeritus of linguistics and co-director of the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English project.
Swales was best known for his work on genre analysis, particularly with regard to its application to the fields of rhetoric, discourse analysis, English for Academic Purposes and, more recently, information science. His writing has studied second language acquisition.

Reviews

[Francis]

Worked through this book over winter break with a PhD friend of mine at another university. The first few units were mostly review of familiar concepts in academic writing for myself as a native English speaker, but towards the middle and the end there were plenty of tiny bits of knowledge that I’d never thought of before. Also, speaking with my friend about the slight differences we had in our answers on some tasks really made the discussion more robust.

While yes, this book was helpful in terms of self-reflection at times, it is especially helpful to work through in a group or with others. Probably it would have been even more beneficial if that group consisted of people from more than one discipline (though it was good to have someone else in the same field to see if you agreed for your field). Overall, I recommend it to new graduate students or those who want to polish up some of their own writing.

[Sakly Myriam]

helped me get throught 790, now I know how to use ;

[Jessica]

A very general, but overall helpful, step by step guide to crafting a graduate level research paper. This was my first time teaching a graduate level academic writing course and the sections that were most relevant helpful to everyone (I had a variety of grad students from various disciplines) were the sections that focused less on the paper and more on specific academic language (e.g. common phrases found in "methods" sections).

[Riley K.]

This book is a lifesaver. Really great and informative read for those that need help with term papers

[Louis]

Solidly written with the purpose to improve your English. As I used the book as a teaching tool.

[Bogdan Balostin]

A reference for good English academic writing. It's structured more like a workbook so read this if you want to learn how to write engaging scientific articles.

[Jarda Kubalik]

I read this book as a part of my preparation for my post-grad studies. It gives a lot of in-depth ideas about academic writing, some of which have never occurred to me. For example, the strategic decisions on various sections of a research paper. It includes a great deal of activities and questions. But, unfortunately, I did not find the answer key to at least some of them.
I will not say that my writing has improved as a direct result of studying this book but I am quite sure that in the long run, I will benefit from it.
The problem with writing, especially in a foreign language, is that it is learned really slowly and the changes typically take effect with some delay. But if you diligently and honestly do at least 60% of the exercises in the book (unlike me) your writing is bound get better.

[Zhenia Vasiliev]

Not only a good textbook, but also a well-written piece of academic writing of its own, both in terms of instruction and examples. It is, however very specifically directed at training academic writing skills, so not a general book on writing, such as The Little Red Writing Book or similar.

[Joana Campos]

I appreciate the exercises! As a non-native speaker, this helped me with writing details that are important, but not usually taught in a general english course. I will save it as a tool to which I will come back later.

[Zarina]

This book is recommended by our professor for writing a scientific work. Really interested in its content.

[Skye]

I think this is a pretty great book to prepare myself for writing a graduate level paper.
There were some undergrad-level information, mistakes or irrelevant information for my field tho.

[Waris Ahmad Faizi]

Effective!

One of the great books on Academic Writing for all the people in Academia. Recommended!

[汪先生]

2019-01-09 19:03:47
台大英文学术论文写作课教材，基本上读下来了，老师的课讲得比教材好，偶尔会用到教材里面的练习题，不是很难，但是语法和词汇基础不够好还是很容易出错，这门课提高了几点：1、如何设计英文主题的PPT及在一定的时间内用英文公开展示，2、口语，3、选词、句子的方式及对用英语写文章的训练。恍惚以为明天才是最后一节课，忘记了最后一周是不上课的。

[Cale Sandicho]

Okay

[Pranav Gorwade]

.

[benedetta ✰]

my problem is that i'm filled with hubris and think i can pass my exam without really applying what was said in this book so only time will tell i guess

[Michelle L]

The 3/5 rating is due to its lack of relevance to my field of study.
Whilst the text itself was appropriate, many questions (which accompanied it to consolidate the reader's grasp of the text) were meaningless and superfluous, with poor or ambiguous instructions.
Often I would wonder why on earth I was doing such pointless questions.
Furthermore, there was various errors which were not picked up by the editing staff which gave my class a few laughs.
Otherwise, it is a decent, standard guide that is inoffensive.
I would recommend it for students with a non-English speaking background.

[Rachel Baker]

This is not discipline-specific, but it is contains some great information. However, most of the examples of writing are quite simplistic and obviously geared towards demonstrating a particular writing exercise. It's difficult to translate this simple example to challenging academic articles in specific fields.

[Thetmon]

Good

[Mills College Library]

808.04207 S9718 2012

[Elisabeth Sepulveda]

Good overview of Academic writing. Depending on the undergraduate institution attended, most of it is review, but it's always helpful to clean up the foundation now and then.

[Dora Rodriguez]

Very nice activities

[Roger Mexico]

An invaluable resource for teaching college-level EAP writing

[Kristy]

Great book for anyone doing academic writing...It is a helpful book for writing manuscripts.

[Jay]

A great book that was assigned during my first writing course for my doctoral studies. I'm not sure I would read it straight through, LOL, but it is a great reference book for general writing and has lots of small exercises to improve writing in all fields.