Teacher Discussion Forums

I've just been asked to put together a BE class for my school. My students will probably be at beginner and intermediate levels. I've started doing some research on books and am confused on which ones to choose. I know that everybody has different likes and dislikes, but any help would be appreciated. There are so many books to choose from. Three books have caught my attention so far; Let's Speak Business English, Barron's ESL Guide to American Buisness English, and Business Vocabulary in Use. Any thoughts on those books?

Thanks for your help.

KristiH wrote:I've just been asked to put together a BE class for my school. My students will probably be at beginner and intermediate levels. I've started doing some research on books and am confused on which ones to choose. I know that everybody has different likes and dislikes, but any help would be appreciated. There are so many books to choose from. Three books have caught my attention so far; Let's Speak Business English, Barron's ESL Guide to American Buisness English, and Business Vocabulary in Use. Any thoughts on those books?

Thanks for your help.

Guides and vocab books will give you content to feed into a course of your design. If you feel confused it may be better to look at a ready made course.

Have you seen the Market Leader series. The advantage is that they are a ready made course. Produced with the FT.
Elementary, pre int, int, and upper int levels are available.
Consist of
Course book
Course book audio CDs
Student work book + CD
Teacher book.


In my current school we use the course book and Course CDs only. The rest is imput from teacher.

I like to do case studies with business students, as many vocab words pop up, I use an old book from University, a newspaper would work too, read the article before and prep some questions for the students....

dvasas, my opinion is that lexicographers-selected vocab. will do better than a regular bunch of words that pop-up from a newspaper...
IMHO, the choice of a newspaper shouldn't be chaotic and, sure, it shouldn't chaotically lead your BE course...

A word of support for ML series! I like using their Practice Files as a part of a course in combination with other books.

My favourites:
Market Leader Practice Files for phonetics, listening, thematic vocabulary revision
In At the Deep End for speaking
Business Grammar Builder for grammar/listening
Business Communication Games (photocopiable OUP bestsellers) for business communication games (the very best!)
Company to Company for business correspondence (very up-to-date theory and practice)
Insight into IELTS for describing graphs, figures, reports ...

They go together well!