Navigating Academia - Book Critique

(1) Getting into Graduate School may present some challenges with regard to communication. The academic context has its own particularities, especially when it comes to the genres that people use to communicate with others. Graduate students usually present some difficulties involving the production of Supporting Genres. That is the aim of Navigating Academia: Writing Supporting Genres. Written by Swales and Feak, the book is a helpful guide to graduate students who have doubts related to appropriate communication in the academic context.

(2)The book’s content is divided into sections which convey a lot of examples and tasks that are used to cover each supporting genre. The first pages present “An opening orientation” to address the subject, and comprise general information about supporting genres and academic correspondence style. Starting with the sections, the first one, named “Getting into graduate school discusses statements of purpose, personal statements and their use. The second section, “Finding Your Voice in the Academic Community” provides orientations upon proper communication with advisors, the committee members and co-authors. It also discusses ways of being polite and professional while making requests and reminders or writing apologies. The third section, “Establishing Yourself in Graduate School” addresses four supporting genres that are used by students to join certain activities and projects in the academia: small grant applications, letters for teaching/research assistant/student assistant positions, fellowship applications and letters of recommendation. The fourth section is named “Supporting the Publication Process” and it is about the communication in the process of submitting your papers to publication. The fifth section, “Writing acknowledgements” drives attention to the part of the articles that contain the acknowledgements to people and networks that participated in the research process. The final section, “Moving on to an Academic or Research Career” presents the supporting genres that students may have to deal with when proceeding on their academic career.

(3)Swales and Feak’s book analyses the supporting genres using real textual productions. That is, the authors do not create texts just to illustrate their points and observations. Thus, the reader has the opportunity to examine real occurrences and use of structure in the addressed genres. In addition to it, the book also provides forty tasks that are extremely helpful and allows the reader to learn and practice with examples. The only criticism is that there is probably more tasks/activities than explanatory content. For readers who prefer the theoretic exposition of the content, it may be a little inconvenient, but the tasks explain clearly the content. Also, the authors make clarifying comments on each section and its tasks.

(4)Navigating Academia: Writing Supporting Genres in an excellent material and extremely recommended to students who joined graduate school. The Academia may be a completely new world to some students, and it is followed by different standards related to appropriate use of language that not everyone may master. It is great to know that there is available material to help graduate students to communicate properly in this context. The conveyed tasks allow students to practice and develop their knowledge upon writing supporting genres.