For decades, Academic Writing for Graduate Students has introduced writers to the skills they need for successful academic writing. Now covering academic writing across an even broader range of disciplines, the new edition focuses on recurring rhetorical patterns found in academic texts and on the ways writers consider their audience, purpose, and disciplinary expectations as they make choices.

The book brings together short readings from published, student, and pedagogically-constructed texts with guided tasks to analyze how texts are organized and how claims are presented and supported. The first four units prepare students for academic writing while the following four units dive into genre-specific activities, such as the writing of summaries, critiques, and different research article sections. Throughout the book, readers will develop their rhetorical consciousness to see how strategic writing choices contribute to author positioning.

In Academic Writing for Graduate Students, 4th Edition, students will:

• Analyze real student writing for information flow, citation patterns, and authorial stance
• Learn to recognize different rhetorical patterns, such as cause and effect
• Engage with different types of writing, such as summaries, critiques, data commentary, book reviews, and research articles

Christine B. Feak is a Lecturer in the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan. She is also author or co-author of numerous books, articles, and book chapters focused on writing and speaking for academic purposes.

John M. Swales (1938–2025) was Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Michigan. He authored or co-authored 20 books and around 130 research articles and book chapters.

Table of Contents
Introduction to the Fourth Edition
Unit One: An Approach to Academic Writing 
Introduction to Academic Writing 
Writing Strategies 
Audience 
Language Focus: Definitions and Naming Statements 
Purpose and Strategy 
Organization 
Style 
Language Focus: The Vocabulary Shift—Verbs
Flow 
Language Focus: Common Stylistic Features 
Language Focus: This and Summary Phrases 
Language Focus: Transition Words and Linking Phrases 
Simple and Complex Noun Phrases (NPs) 
Presentation 
Positioning 
Unit Two: Moving from General to Specific and Other Approaches to Organizing Information
General-to-specific Organization