Job Discussion Forums

[fpshangzhou]

Hello,

I'll be teaching business English to an American software company here in China. The HR department asked me to locate some textbooks that they would approve.
The students are of intermediate level and will be concentrating on business writing internal/external email correspondence to their American counterparts. Anyone know of any business writing and communication books (texts with an American business emphasis) for this particular group of students, I would love to hear your suggestions.


Cheers,

Aaron

[Bud Powell]

Look into some of the Cambridge Business English books. They're pretty good, and adults enjoy working with them. I don't have one with me, so I can't give you a specific title.

[jimpellow]

Bud, I think the Cambridge series if memory serves me right has more of a British English bend to them though? I think it can be rather hard to find ones with an American emphasis. The limeys seem intent to dominate the ESL publishing field to ensure unsuspecting ESL students are not subjected to our bastardized Yankee English. But the Cambridge are solid, though oddly I always found material missing on the included cd's.

This guy has a pretty solid list.

http://www.eslgold.com/business/textbooks.html

[Non Sequitur]

Oxford Press also has a range which are listed on this blog:
http://www.eslteachersresources.com/esl-blog/english-for-special-purposes/
I only have Tourism Book 1 but agree with the sentiment in the blog post that English for a specific purpose can only be learned on top of reasonable ability in general English.
Haven't seen anything in Oxford or Cambridge specific to software industry.
I did teach Saturday afternoons at HP Dalian for a while, but as it was a mixture of developers and admin/sales people I just did general conversation.
It was an elective so students wouldn't turn up (and goodbye job) if they were not engaged.

[Bud Powell]

The book that I worked with used articles and advertisements from American magazines such as Forbes.

But you're right. The Cambridge books have a distinctive British flavor, though I didn't notice it much with that book. It's so common, I guess I'm used to it.

[buravirgil]

[ymmv]

American teacher/trainer here who has also worked with the Cambridge Business English series numerous times. An American power company, a Canadian comm systems company, an American foodstuffs company, a European telecom company, a Chinese bank, a Chinese software company focused on the American market, a Chinese oil company, and a Singaporan management consulting company DBI in China. All were focused on their international business, but the North American companies and the Chinese software company wanted communication skills covered for "back home" situations.

The Cambridge BE series was solid overall, especially the Intermediate (level 2) one. (It's a series of 3.)

The first level is a bit too easy and the third level is definitely upper-intermediate level with lots of articles from various world-wide sources. The middle level is a good i+1 level.

I didn't really notice any "too British" slant to it at all. More "international English". And, if an American software company is doing business in China, their target market probably isn't limited to the U.S. And the communicative activities in the book (e.g.. email, memos, etc.) aren't too culturally specific and easily tweaked (e.g. change "mobile" to "cellphone", etc.)

The teacher's manual makes it even easier to use if you have little experience doing such lessons, providing both background on the subject content as well as guidance on the aims and delivery of the textbook lesson.

A strong recommendation for CBE from this Yank.

[MuscatGary]

'The Business' by Macmillan. Starts at pre-int and goes up to advanced. Can't be beat.

[Banner41]

Market Leader series is solid. Easy to use.

I am using it with the Pharma company I am working with here and they seem to like it.