This book offers basic guidelines on writing effectively for academic purposes. It reminds students that writing is an integral part of the learning process, and shows them how to write clear sentences, coherent paragraphs, and well-organized papers. It explains in detail matters of style and format, including how to quote, cite, and list reference sources (using both APA and ASA styles), and how to present quantitative and qualitative research results. Students can also learn how to revise, edit, and proofread to produce a high-quality paper.

　　While this guide is prepared for the use of both undergraduate and postgraduate students in the social sciences, it contains a great deal of useful material that can help students studying other disciplines to write better academic papers. Upper secondary students, including those taking Liberal Studies, will also find the book useful to enhance their writing skills as they prepare for university studies.

　　To make the book more helpful, topics such as subject-verb agreement, the use of articles, verb tenses, and punctuation are included in the appendices. They also include detailed comments on revision of faulty sentences taken from student writing and an extensive appendix on the use of over 300 selected words and phrases with explanatory notes and example sentences.

作者簡介

　　Dr. Pedro Pak-tao Ng obtained his Doctor of Education (in sociology of education) from Harvard University in 1971. In 1977-78, he was a visiting scholar at Clare Hall of the University of Cambridge as a recipient of the Leverhulme Fellowship. For more than thirty years, he has been on the faculty of the Department of Sociology of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Keen to help students improve their English academic writing skills, he has been teaching ”Research Writing” to sociology students since 1995.

　　While his academic pursuits include the sociological study of Chinese society, education, leisure, and mass communication, Dr. Ng has always been interested in linguistic matters. In the 1970s and 1980s, he contributed to the compilation of the first and revised editions of A Glossary of Sociological Terms, also published by the Chinese University Press.