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Business Management Book Store > Business Management books beginning with B
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Barron's ESL Guide to American Business English |
Author: Andrea B. Geffner
Published: 1998-10-01 |
List price: $18.99
Our price: $12.91
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As of: July 31st, 2010 04:28:52 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Only for the most advanced ESL Business English students
"Barron's ESL Guide to American Business English" is an incomplete book, but still has some good information and activities to help you improve your skill with some very difficult English Grammar. It also introduces many (but not all!) common kinds of business documents. If you are preparing for the TOEIC, there are better books to get first--such as "Barron's Essential Words of the TOEIC".
STRUCTURE:
This book is divided into 2 Parts.
Part One has 12 chapters, and focuses on different types of Business Documents (Example: resumes, memos, letter envelopes, meeting minutes, etc.) you might see on the TOEIC, but does not cover very common types of documents (Example: advertisements, invoices). Each chapter has practice activities to help you build your familiarity with each kind of document.
Part Two has 6 chapters, and focuses on 6 different Business English Grammar issues common to the TOEIC. Each chapter has explanations of each grammar issue, and activities to test your understanding of that grammar.
At the end of the book, there is a brief section on very general American business customs, and a glossary of business English words.
POSITIVES:
Part Two is very good for building your skills with English Sentence Structure. It focuses on Parallelism, Subject-Verb agreement, combining Independent and Dependent Clauses, and Punctuation. There are many good skill-building exercises, where you have to add words/punctuation or where you have to correct a poorly-written sentence. This is the best part of the book!
On page vii (at the beginning of the book) is a list of all the sample business documents, so you can quickly find a particular kind of document--most of them have more than one example.
Each chapter in Part One has a short list of common Business English words that you will see in that chapter.
NEGATIVES:
This book uses very advanced English grammar & sentence structures--unless you are nearly fluent, DO NOT buy this book!
Part One has activities where you are asked to write business documents is the style discussed in that chapter--however, there are not sample answers! Thus, you have nothing to compare you answer to. This section would have been much better if there had been "correct this document" activities, where you had to find mistakes in documents. Part One works better as a reference section, not as a skill-building section.
The grammar explanations in Part Two are not very clear or easy to understand. I recommending building your English Grammar skills using the "Practice Makes Perfect" series, then do the practice exercises in this book to improve your skills.
The Glossary in the back of the book does not include sample sentences that use the words.
BOTTOM LINE:
Because it does not cover all kinds of business documents, and because it does not clearly explain English Grammar, this book should only be used once you have worked on building your skills to an advanced level.
If you are taking the TOEIC, this book will not be as effective a book to help you improve your skills as others. "Barron's Essential Words of the TOEIC" is a better deal.
 Barron's ESL Guide to American Business English
We have ordered this publication before and might be ordering some more in future. It was shipped timely and in good condition.
 Waste of paper
The ESL Guide to American Business English is filled with errors and is not geared to the sophisticated second language learners who are the expected consumers for a book of this nature. For example, the explanation of when an -s is needed as an ending for present tense verbs states that the -s should be added when the subject of the sentence is a noun. Yesterday I read this explanation to one of my ESL students, whose response was, "What about 'everyone' or 'no one'?" Exactly. There is no mention of pronouns. Students using this book to study on their own might find it confusing -- at best.
The examples provided to illustrate this poorly explained "rule" have the words "secretary" and "stenographer" as subjects -- hardly current. I could go on and provide a long list of what's wrong with this book, but I've given it enough time.
I regret having ordered this book and would not recommend it to anyone. It's worse than useless.
 Chp 19. Culture and Customs, Work
As an American citizen, I take strong exception to Ms. Geffner's statement which follows and apparently is meant to be interpreted as representative of the opinions of all Americans. Also, what is her authority for making the enclosed statement:
P.279 "Therefore, whether the idle rich or the welfare poor, the ill or the retired, those who do not work are considered of no use to society."
Literacy for the Workplace
Great book to use for English language learners that have been in the country for many years but lack the literacy skills needed for a business environment. The letter samples give great ideas for phrases and tone. The section on usage is an excellent overview to clear up any questions on grammar. I have recommended this book for my students at BusinesSpeak to keep on their desks as a reference guide.
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