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[sisyphus]

Hello everyone. I am preparing an 'Academic Writing' course for University students, can anyone recommend a good book to use for teachers? Thanks for your feedback..

The Sisyphus

[veiledsentiments]

What level? The reality is that there are few good texts that are useful in the Gulf. I basically gleaned each course from many texts and tried to match bits of each to the course outline.

VS

[sisyphus]

They are first year University students, tbh thats all the info ive been given...

[Dedicated]

Sisyphus,

Of course, a lot would depend on their level, but if they are at university, one could presume they are of a reasonable standard.

A good series of writing books, which have full teachers' books, are the Longman Academic Writing series of 4 books:

Level One Fundamentals of Academic Writing by Linda Butler (2007)
Level Two: First Steps in Academic Writing
Level Three : Introduction to Academic Writing
Level Four: Writing Academic English.

These are very structured, bottom-up approach, dealing with the " nuts and bolts" and paragraph organisation, up to upper-intermediate/advanced. Level Four is a standard UK pre-sessional text.

If they are good students (ie. IELTS Band 5.5 +) you could also use:

Academic Writing by Stephen Bailey (Routledge)
Academic Writing Course by Jordan
Study Writing by Hamp-Lyons.

Hope these help!

[sisyphus]

Many thanks, thats very kind of you...

The Sisyphus

[Tom Le Seelleur]

If they are first year University students in the UAE thenm you are not looking at first year University students rather two pegs below as the entry requirements for most freshmen/undergraduates courses are way below what is expected elsewhere (500 TOEFL/5.0 IELTS) Therefore I would suggest along with the others mentioned here
Effective Academic Writing 1 The Paragraph (OUP)
Effective Academic Writing 2 The Short Essay (OUP)
Effective Academic Writing 3 The Essay (OUP)
Not perfect by any means

If you are looking for an Academic Skills book then the new one published by Sage and local writer and lecturer Caroline Brant is highly recommended. Written based UAE Universities.

Title: Read, Research and Write (Academic Skills for ESL Students in Higher Education) by Caroline Brandt.

[Spin duck]

Jordan (British-oriented) is a bit jaded now.

Hamp-Lyons (British-oriented), though it hits the nail on the head in many ways in terms of academic writing, can be rather dense in parts - the author narrative/rubric is wordy; not that student or 'inexperienced' EAP-teacher accessible. It's also a good few years old.

Garnet's books (Reading - the UK town/University) have made a recent valiant stab at the IELTS 5.5-7.0 band range, and I feel are more user-friendly. The TASK series is a 'basics' one, introducing EAP skills - aimed at both native and non-native students pre-university. Try Manning for a short course intro. Garnet's EAS series is aimed at pre-sessional/foundation non-natives. Try Pallant and/or McCormack and Slaght. These are all UK publications.

The US-originating Oshima and Hogue book is aimed at the US-immigrant/international student market. It's very comprehensive, but not very attractive, and weak on university-level academic text. It is also rather jaded now and very much, I feel, an academic writing course for High School students. Parts of it are superb for the real nitty gritty stuff (for inexperienced EAP teachers), nonetheless, but it's not a very modern-student-friendly book.

Gillett et al. (Palgrave - UK) looks very promising in its first edition - but can be rather advanced in places. Not that attractive, but it hits the nail on the head for students probably already in university.

Phillips' Study Skills in English series I'm not that familiar with, but I believe it takes into account more the Arab academic-literacy problem dimension and comes in several levels.

Headway (oh no, not them again! has a fairly recent EAP series (all skills).

An Australian-originating alternative is 'EAP Now', which covers all skills.

[Neil McBeath]

I don't know which edition, or which copy of Oshima and Hogue Spin Duck is talking about.

If it is the first edition of the Introduction to Acamemic Writing, then I would agree with every word.

The Second Edition, however, is FAR better and works well with foundation level students. It works better when it is supplemented with culturally relevant materials, but that is true of almost any course that has not been purpose written for Gulf Nationals.

[Spin duck]

Neil. Oshima & Hogue 4th Edition. In my university context, we dip into it, so I may be over-generalising.

A major issue with practically all EAP books, thus far, with the now honourable exception of the 2009 Gillett et al. book, is that the model and source texts given are lacking on the in-text support references. For this reason, I often adapt published article extracts for my purposes. An issue with Gillett et al. for me is that it is really a kind of handbook rather than a coursebook. I await the A4 version.

I suspect a major reason for this lack is the copyright issue that publishers may face, but in-text support is the lynchpin of good academic writing practice. Another problem with finding published models, though, is that, on close scrutiny, so much that is published in journals is very poorly written, lacking in the meta-awareness that EAP attempts to address with non-native speakers. Writing one's own models is obviously a laborious process, not least since subject-knowledge is required, and many EAP people are not subject-experts other than in language/linguistics.

[sisyphus]

Thanking you all. I have just been to the local University library and they dont have any of these books?! They have a very poor collection which makes me very nervous about trying to do my MA here(its a blended course) hopefully ill be able to access the uk unis books...