Making the most of your time

Writing successful essays is about more than style or vocabulary. One of the keys to academic success is good time management. Decide if the following ideas are true or false:

• Essay deadlines are often set several months after the course starts
• Reading and note-making often take longer than writing
• A wall chart can help you plan an assignment
• The best time to study is during the night
• All students should spend some time every day relaxing with friends

Actually these are all true except for the fourth: it's better to work during the day and then get plenty of sleep. The main thing is to schedule your work week by week, so that you give enough time for each stage: note-making, drafting, re-writing and proof-reading. By following this plan you will avoid the last-minute panic that leads to careless work, bad marks and having to re-take courses.

One final point: every semester students lose written work because of broken or stolen laptops. BACK UP your files onto a memory stick or similar every day!

Specially for students of Business

Academic Writing for International Students of Business was first published in 2011. It is the first book specially written for students studying Business or Economics in English-medium colleges and universities. It is similar in approach to Academic Writing - A Handbook for International Students, but the reading texts, examples and vocabulary all relate to the world of Business and Economics.

It is divided into four parts:

• The writing process, from assessing sources to proof-reading
• Elements of writing, skills such as writing definitions
• Accuracy in writing, with 15 units on common problem areas
• Writing models, which illustrate formats such as reports and essays

This is an up-to-date course which reflects the interests and issues of contemporary Business studies. It is  an easy-to-use guide which will help students planning to progress to a career with international companies or organisations, where proficiency in English is an important asset.

What concerns teachers about students' writing?

To answer this question I carried out an informal survey of 45 lecturers at a variety of Business schools in Britain.

The most common complaint was about inaccurate use of vocabulary: about 30% of respondents mentioned this. The next most serious concern (20%) was students not using critical thinking; e.g.subjecting sources to careful scrutiny. The third item was students' failure to answer the specific question in an essay, and instead answering a different question that hadn't been asked (17%).

This was followed by problems around plagiarism, and fifthly a lack of logical development in student essays (each 15%). Two other areas highlighted were need to use an argument style of writing (i.e. hypothesis-evidence-conclusion) - 11% - and a lack of clear essay organisation (introduction - main body - conclusion) (9%). Other points discussed were:

• Poor referencing
• Failure to give evidence of reading academic articles
• Use of paragraphs
• Over-short answers
• Over-complex sentences
• Mis-understanding of key terms e.g. explain, discuss
• Lack of proof reading

Although a different sample might give different results, I think these results are relevant to most student writing in higher education.

What's the best way to learn academic writing?

Many colleges offer classes in academic writing, either pre-sessional or in-sessional. These usually teach topics such as the stages of essay-writing (note-making, planning etc) and may practise skills such as paraphrasing. Depending on how much writing in English you have done before, these should be useful, but students should remember two points:

1) Different disciplines often have different writing requirements. Students of Business may need to learn different formats to students of Sociology. Differences may include the  reference system. So the most useful classes are subject specific e.g. just for lawyers or engineers.

2) Even if your speaking and listening skills are good (i.e. IELTS 6.0 or above) learning to write effectively can take a long time. Your writing teacher can give you useful feedback, but you should also expect to work by yourself and learn to criticise your own writing.

Meet the author

Hi, I’m Stephen Bailey, the author of Academic Writing. I started writing the book about ten years ago, when I was teaching English to international students at the University of Derby in the UK.

I wanted to make a book that was easy for both teachers and students to use, so it could be suitable for self-study as well as in the classroom. It follows the writing process from start to finish, but it’s also a reference book that deals with common student problems, like conjunctions. Because of this it had to be clearly organised and include an answer key. The book  doesn’t just tell you how to write academically, it provides plenty of practice exercises, as well as models of different types of writing such as a case study.

Over the last ten years it’s been developed through three editions, and I think the latest is the best. But I still hope to improve the contents, so I’d be grateful for any comments you may have.