| Author: | Mark Tulip, Jon Naunton |
| Title: | "Head for Business Upper-intermediate" |
| Publisher: | OUP |
| Reviewer: | Ewa Rysińska |
| Reviewer's rating: |
(Cassettes - 4 points) |
| Readers' comments |
When you choose a manual for students of Business English you face a dilemma: what's your aim? to teach the language first or to explain the economic issues first? This handbook is written "for students with little or no work experience who are intending to work in a business environment ... but it is also suitable for professional business people who wish to follow a tightly-structured course".
However, after some experience with teaching Business English at secondary (special curriculum) and university levels, I realise that students need to be generally educated and familiar with some - not only basic - economic terms. Moreover, it's useless to provide courses in language for special purposes, such as Business English, to those learners who do not possess a sound general knowledge of the target language.
And 'Head for Business' justifies this statement. Let's take some examples from the book: the case study that illustrates the concept of the life cycle of a product. If your students are to discuss the 'Boston Matrix' way of classifying a company's product range (p. 14), they have to be acquainted with the relevant issues. It is even more difficult to follow the discussion of export documentation (p. 86), e.g. bill of lading, letter of credit. How is one to consider pricing goods for export in one's own currency or the currencies of foreign markets if one doesn't know the relationship between rates of exchange and export and import levels?
References to business theories and economic laws make the book attractive. Nevertheless they require a certain level of competence. The book is suitable for people who have some economic background or appropriate work experience and want to follow a formal course.
The materials used are authentic. They have been drawn not only from books, magazines, newspapers and websites, but also from real business practice. This makes the course up-to-date and interesting. Grammar references, which help students grasp their difficulties, such as some examples of traps in applying the gerund and infinitive, and adjectives and adverbs with atypical patterns (p. 106) are all rooted in reality. Examples of complicated questions of phrasal verbs, like those listed on page 99, as well as idioms, are put into context in varied texts and sometimes illustrated with funny pictures.
I find it well worth reading some of the brief stories inserted into the main body of the text. They don't require a high level of vocabulary, while offering information on popular topics. Such stories, like the one about the process of chocolate production, introduce special terms. They also provide for pleasant interludes in reading texts on business laws and principles. The history of chocolate consumption starting with the drink called 'xocolate' made from the beans of the cacao tree by Mayans and Aztecs is a good example.
Another story concerns sparkling wine manufactures from outside the champagne region, who are prevented from calling their products champagne. The question is "Can you think of any other products which have trademarked the name of the region where the product is originally produced?" (p.116). Alcohol beverages such as cognac or Tokai immediately come to mind. There have been problems with Soviet shampanskoye and with the local Ararat 'cognac' from Georgia. I have also heard about Slovak claims to the name of Tokai.
Another issue relates to products so common that their names serve as generic terms. Take hoover, initially the brand name of a vacuum cleaner, which has come to mean 'to clean with a vacuum cleaner'. In this case students are asked to think of any such terms in their own languages. In Polish adidas is used as a generic name for sneakers. Walkman is another example that comes to mind. In Poland and in England it has a generic meaning. But not in France: there is a French version, balladeur. By the way, the French care very much about the purity of their language. That's why they prefer fin de semaine to weekend or courriel to e-mail. So this kind of exercise encourages learners to discuss varied examples and compare the attitudes of their languages towards English.
Translation is an art. It is not easy to render into another language imaginatively and faithfully at the same time. Even if we know the meaning of an expression or word in English, the Polish term is not always obvious. The book requires high quality work both on the part of the teacher and the students. The texts are very demanding, but no Polish equivalents of the idioms or glossary are included. An appropriate list of vocabulary in the Polish edition would greatly enhance the value of the book to Business English students in Poland.
In many areas we have incorporated original English terms into our language such as: copy-writer, c.v., e-mail, hacker, image, joint-venture, make up, on-line, outsourcing, public relations, software etc. This is particularly clear in some areas of economics, such as finance. From time to time efforts are made not to find a Polish equivalent but to create one. 'Presidency' was introduced into Polish ('prezydencja') although it sounds awkward ('przewodnictwo' or 'przewodniczenie would have been more suitable). I am not convinced whether we should use such terms as 'implementacja' ...
The Student's book is supplemented by a workbook that helps learners to upgrade their learning skills. The workbook starts with vocabulary-learning tips. I found instructive tips on organising vocabulary by creating an alphabetical list for quick and easy reference, or a list of new vocabulary in memorable groups (e.g. on the same topic, or around a particular concept), or by drawing a spidergram. There are exercises that assist in practising grammar structures, idioms, and collocations. We can find a number of attractive stories. Some of them are not only impressive, but also imbued with a moral sense. I liked the one about an expert on time management who gave a talk to "veterans of decades of front-line management", who "looked at her with a seen-it-all, heard-it-before scepticism" ... Despite their attitude they could draw a lesson from the amazing experiment which she conducted there (p.17). And the practical conclusion? "We have to develop a true sense of priorities and decide what our most important duties are." And of course this section corresponds well with the chapter on the sense of priorities in the student's book.
An instructive depiction might be found in the "managing your boss" section. The boss labels are funny and caricatured but that's why they give extra scope for discussion (p.39). So the boss can be dictatorial, bureaucratic, charismatic, consultative, laissez-faire (N.B. a direct French influence in English), abdicatorial. This sounds interesting, doesn't it? It goes well with the chapter in the student's book: "Games people play", where you can find pictures of two layouts of parliamentary chambers: the British Parliament and the European Parliament. They are completely different. And the question is: "Which is more likely to encourage confrontation or agreement?". Then we have negotiating styles: red stylists and blue stylists are presented.
When you study 'Comparing profiles' in the framework of language study (Workbook, p. 59) you feel involved in the situation. You need to evaluate your personality, relationships, abilities and business skills, then dedication to the company. So you assess personal features which you can observe in common situations, and you can analyse your own profile ... especially if you are expected to consider the issue: "where you personally prefer to work, in a multinational company, in a large national company, in a state-run industry or service, in a small company, in a family firm, as an entrepreneur running your own business" (in the student's book p. 106). Here, as in other chapters, all the information in both books, Student's and Workbook, is perfectly complementary. And while discussing these problems we once again take into account our specific Polish circumstances: in answering the question we cannot neglect the extremely high rate of unemployment in our own country.
The third book in the set - the teacher's book - supplements the previous two volumes. Another author, Mark Tulip, wrote it. It's a real step-by-step guide that helps you to prepare your lessons. The book begins with a short digest of its content: methodology and tips on using the student's book and workbook. Even warm-up activities are suggested, e.g. an introduction to the 'Target markets' chapter (p. 6) is taken from everyday experience. "Ask students if they have ever bought anything they later regretted buying. Why did they buy these things? You can give an example of your own." In Poland many of us have personal experience of the command market. We can still remember when we were forced to 'arrange' deliveries of basic goods. Even now, some elderly people continue to hoard goods. However, market economies might also inspire irrational behaviour - by conditioning us to apply the idea "the more you buy, the more you save".
At the very end of this book, there are pages ready for photocopying with stimulating tasks, suitable for tests. Let's take page 92, where the student has to choose the most appropriate expressions to compare a dialogue.
Analysing all the books from a statistical point of view, we note that each chapter of the student's book is 10 pages long on average, the workbook adds another 5 pages and the teacher's section is covered in 6-8 pages. This is sufficient for a cycle of lessons. The main value of this set of manuals is its authenticity: real materials, real situations and facts. The course is excellent not only for Business English students but even for active teachers that need to refresh their knowledge: this course could improve their skills and abilities.
And last of all: two cassettes are included. They are not bad, although there is a difference in approach between the written part and the listening material. For the most part the cassettes contain dialogues, which are a good basis for pronunciation exercises. However, they present a limited variety of accents, which does not reflect the diversity of English accents, for example colonial English, Caribbean English and of course international English.
Moreover, the texts sound too clear and accurate. This is so because they have been recorded in a studio. Actually, however, when we talk to one another we are not able to hear every word. The background is full of noises: from the street, from our neighbour, from within our own house. We should therefore get used to uncomfortable circumstances to be able to react and communicate properly. Less perfection would suit us better.
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