ESP Materials
 Essential Business Vocabulary Builder Having taken on a couple of new business groups, I was looking forward to the chance to road-test Essential Business Vocabulary Builder – and I wasn’t disappointed. Presentation-wise I wasn’t initially bowled over – its text-filled pages are not easy on the eye – and wondered how my students might react, but I was quickly put right. The strength of Emmerson’s text is not in pretty pictures or glossy pages, but in the depth of what it covers.
The main part of the book is split into three areas: Business Topics (companies and sectors, money and finance, management, etc), Effective Communication (Social English, Business Travel, Emails, etc) and a section looking at word families in a business context. As if that wasn’t enough, there are also speaking and writing practice sections linked to various lexical sets, and listening practice featuring both short phrases for practice of phonological aspects and longer listening comprehensions (the book comes with a CD). Somehow the author has managed to fit all this into less than 200 pages.
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 Communicative Activities for EAP I started teaching a new course this year at a private university, where I was asked to teach ‘speaking’ to first-year undergraduates in the first semester and ‘writing’ in the second semester. Apart from having a set of general aims and proposed outcomes for the course, which included EAP skills, I was pretty much left to my own devices in terms of planning the content. Coincidentally, I was also asked to review the present handbook of Communicative activities for EAP. So, I decided to plan the first semester using the activities from the speaking section of the book. This review is therefore based primarily on my experiences of using the tasks in the classroom and as such, should hopefully provide some practical information for teachers in similar situations.
The wide range of books in the same series as this title focus on providing practical activities, often using a particular task-type (e.g. dictation, discussion) or resource (e.g. dictionaries, literature). or focus on teaching a specific learner group (e.g. young learners). Step-by-step procedures with photocopiable materials mean teachers save time on planning and can adapt activities easily for their own teaching situations.
The present book has 6 chapters devoted to skills development: speaking, listening, reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar. Each chapter contains around 20 separate activities, and all focus on communicative activities for EAP – meaning topics are usually of an academic nature and the skills relate to those required at the tertiary level, e.g. research skills, presentations and writing essays. The level of the activities ranges from around intermediate level (one star in their three star system) and ending in quite advanced (three stars). For many exercises, the teacher needs to choose the actual text sources from websites etc, meaning the level can often be adjusted as necessary within these bounds.
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 EAP now! Preliminary EAP now! Preliminary is a textbook integrating a balance of skills and language and aimed at Intermediate students studying EAP (English for Academic Purposes) in a classroom context. This is possibly the first ‘textbook’ for EAP students that takes the successful formula for general language integrated-skills textbooks and applies it to EAP; but does it work?
EAP teaching is often defined by a focus on academic text-genres (e.g. research papers and critical essays) for developing awareness of language specific to academic discourse and learning skills for academic tasks (e.g. summarizing information and presenting findings). To do this, a reasonable level of ability with ‘general English’ is generally assumed necessary before starting to learn EAP.
However, many students want to get started as soon as possible on EAP, even when they are at the elementary stages of language learning. The question thus becomes how and when (if at all) do we combine the general with the academic? Take a typical grammar point at the intermediate level, modal verbs of possibility (may, might, could) – if students are aiming at studying English at the university level, do we teach these forms in contexts like ‘I might go to the cinema tonight, do you want to come, too?’ or ‘According to a recent article, Einstein’s theory of relativity may be incorrect’, or both? Should both contexts be taught in an EAP course, or be separated into general and EAP courses?
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 Raise the Issues Raise the Issues is subtitled ‘An Integrated Approach to Critical Thinking’. ‘Integrated’ means what it means in the TOEFL exam. Rather than being treated in isolation, the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing are brought together, with students responding to spoken and written texts by speaking and writing themselves. Reading matter is drawn from American publications such as ‘The New York Times’ and audio recordings from the American ‘National Public Radio’ (NPR) syndicate, edited into pieces lasting approximately 3 minutes each. It is generally oriented towards classroom use, with many exercises involving group or pair work. There are ten units, each with a distinct ‘issue’ and they all follow a similar pattern. Topics include law, sports, education, immigration and genetics. There is an introductory section giving suggestions for usage, and a teacher’s book (although a copy was not available at the time of writing this review: I managed without it).
The first thing to say about Raise the Issues is that to get to most out of it, you will need the audio CD. There are some exercises that work without recourse to it, but there is so much cross referencing between text, audio and written exercises that you would be left with half a book or less. But this CD is expensive and hard to get hold of- mine had to be imported from the USA. If I were intending to use this book in a course, I would order the CD in good time before it started. It is a shame it is not included with the book.
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 Professional English in Use: Engineering Part of the major Cambridge “in use” series, this addition is one title from the Professional English in Use sub-series that includes vocabulary for Marketing, Finance, Medicine, Law. Thanks to the burgeoning popularity of ESP, you name it, Cambridge are writing a vocabulary book for it.
There are 45 units, with 9 themes, such as Design, Measurement and Energy. There are two pages per unit, with the right and left fulfilling different roles: The left page has words in context and the right page has exercises for the target items.
The texts in which the words are given in context are from textbooks, magazines or other sources. The target audience includes both engineering students and professional engineers. The level is Intermediate and above (B1-B2 CEF), so although the texts may be largely authentic they’re probably edited to keep the incidental lexis level down. The texts by and large read like an explanatory text from a textbook. For example,
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EAP Essentials is a comprehensive and pragmatic resource book for all teachers of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The content is delivered in line with current learning methodologies – that is, it includes input sections followed by case study examples and tasks, many of which are reflective in nature, to involve the reader in a process of self-paced learning.
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EAP Essentials provides an excellent introduction to EAP, and is particularly useful for any teacher new to English for Academic Purposes. This book aims to provide a guide to principles and practice, and is designed to bridge the gap between theory and practice. It achieves these aims through a measured blend of rationale, practical tasks and a selection of interesting case studies.
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 Introduction to International Legal English Introduction to International Legal English is targeted toward intermediate-level learners who are either studying or currently practicing law. It focuses on commercial law vocabulary, since this is the most widely used in the International Legal Community.
While this text and CDs are not a preparation for the ILEC exams, they should provide a good lead in for those headed that direction, as Krois-Lindner and TransLegal are also responsible for the exam prep text, International Legal English.
Each of the book’s 10 units focuses on a different area of commercial law and the book provides 3 actual
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 Part of the "Cambridge English for..." series Teachers flipping through the pages of any one of the books in this attractive new series from Cambridge – Cambridge English for Nursing, Cambridge English for the Media, Cambridge English for Engineering, and Cambridge English for Job-hunting – will likely be transported to memories of in-company classes in their past: Classes in which they struggled to find material that was truly appropriate for their students, whether for lack of time or lack of knowledge of a particular field. In my case, the most noteworthy of these was a class of six beautiful young women working in a PR firm who yawned uncontrollably with the general Business English photocopy material I mawkishly cobbled together each week. Oh, Cambridge English for the Media, where
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 Cambridge English for Job-hunting
Cambridge English for Job-hunting takes students step by step through the process of applying for a job in English. The first chapter looks at preparing to apply and understanding job adverts then chapters two and three aim at producing a CV and cover letter. The remaining three chapters look at interview skills, including telephone interviews and how to follow up on either success or rejection. It is aimed at upper intermediate and advanced (CEFR B2-C1) learners and comes with two audio CDs. A teacher book and extra activity sheets are available as PDF downloads from the publisher’s website.
Students with clear goals will find this course very useful, and when it is finished they will have a usable CV, a polished cover letter and a good idea of what to expect in an interview. I was especially impressed by the outcome of the chapter on
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Apart from boasting one of the longest, most acronym-heavy bibliographic references in the history of TEFL.net reviews, this collection of 22 articles is brimming with ideas and experiences of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) practitioners from across the globe.
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Having spent many hours looking for the elusive perfect book to help students prepare to undertake English-medium university studies, I was excited to receive the a copy of one of Garnet Education’s series of subject specific English for academic purposes (EAP) texts, English for Management Studies. This short text offers a coherent framework of materials for a very specific target market: English-language learners planning to enter a university level English-medium program in management studies on a short (50-80 hour) pre-sessional course. The publisher specifies that the book is appropriate for students who have a minimum of a high intermediate (CEF B2, IELTS 5+) level of English and who have previously
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I will admit I was nervous about reviewing this book as I didn’t know much about Aviation English and was expecting a lot of difficult terminology but I was pleasantly surprised. The text is so well set out and developed it was actually interesting and fun to look at. The first few pages contain an easy to read introduction
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 Are you an overworked teacher who’s tired of teaching (for example) your beginner-level structural engineer students lessons from a general Business English textbook with little to no relevance to their jobs? Have you ever torn your hair out trying to create communicative grammar practice activities for your class with the forklift operators down at the port? Or perhaps you just need a book that will help you teach not only the words for “chisel” or “U-joint” but will also provide a technical focus for the typical functions of BE (making arrangements, meetings, etc.) Well then, the Technical English series from Pearson Longman may
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