English for Telephoning/ Negotiating Review

Negotiating- Susan Lowe and Louise Pile- Delta

English for Telephoning- David Gordon Smith- Oxford

Review by Alex Case

I should perhaps start this review by saying that I picked both of these titles more in desperation than in hope. With telephoning I was seriously beginning to run out of ideas and materials to fill the needs of some Japanese students who do 90% of their speaking in English on the telephone and hardly have the level to be able to enjoy this most difficult of speaking tasks. With negotiations, conversely, I had always avoided this topic as something that comes up in 100% of Business English textbooks but is only needed by 10% of students, and so I came into the (often high business and English level and high pressure) classes where it was needed with less experience of teaching that than of teaching seemingly obscure topics like OA vocab and oil terminal functional language. These difficult situations combined with a couple of books that exclusively dealt in one less than interesting sounding topic that had been dealt with in less than enthralling ways in many books over the years meant I turned to these books more or less as a last resort.

Despite the very different topics of these two books, different situations I was in when I taught those topics and the different classes I used them in, there are some similarities that made me choose to review these two books together. The most important was that I was pleasantly surprised by both (so it was lucky I was driven to desperation and had to try them!) The other similarity is that they are both part of the new wave of single skill books that has been building up for maybe the last 5 years, a process that had until recently been left mainly to the smaller and newer ELT publishers since the big boys overdid it with entire series of listening books etc. in the late 80s and gave up on them. In the case of English for Telephoning, OUP has fast-forwarded their efforts to catch up with this trend by buying the rights to publish a revised version of an earlier book by a smaller publisher.

As it deals with a topic that comes up for most Business English students here in Japan, English for Telephoning was the title I used more often. It is divided into 6 units dealing with common topics such as getting through, making arrangements, leaving messages, and dealing with complaints. Less common topics for telephoning materials include reaching agreements, using mobile phones, and making excuses. These topics are tied nicely together so that a single unit can move smoothly between arrangements, times and date, prepositions and mobile phone calls without students really noticing the transitions. The topics are livened up with the use of quizzes and questionnaires (e.g. Unit 4), discussion questions (e.g. Unit 1), listening and reading texts on the topic of telephoning and the topics of the units (e.g. a reading on Dealing with Complaints in Unit 5), pairwork writing tasks (e.g. “Work with your partner to make a list of tips” Unit 1), crosswords (e.g. Test Yourself! at the end of the book), word searches, cultural pointers (e.g. on the use of first names in Unit 1) and links in each unit to the pairwork speaking task in the last 4 pages of the book. There is also the full range of typical language tasks such as mixed up sentences, gap filling, matching phrases, and sentence transformations.

The book does look a little cheap compared to a textbook from the big publishers or even the best of modern workbooks, with the kind of blocks of pastel colours that you could easily produce on Word yourself and all of the photos being stock photos of random people on the phone that don’t really set the scene for the accompanying texts nor provide fodder for discussion. The design is very easy to use, though, with consistent use of yellow bordered boxes for tips (e.g. Giving Bad News, Unit 1), bold green script just for task instructions, good use of blank space etc.

The book comes with a CD/ CD ROM, tapescripts and answer key included, but there is no accompanying teacher’s book available. The CD ROM provides some fairly basic but useful things such as extra listening exercises for homework or self-study and an A-Z word list.

I used this book with mixed level high Elementary to low Intermediate in-company group and one-to-one classes. Although there was quite a lot of language they didn’t know (especially in the sentence stems), the fact that the most important language was given in context and recycled well both in the same unit and in later units made it both manageable and easy to learn. All the students found their ability and confidence in telephoning much improved in both the long and short term (although many of them found their speaking speed decreasing in the short term as there was quite a lot of new language they were trying to use). The language also came up in other parts of their business (e.g. making complaints by email as well), and provided a useful base and reference point when we moved onto studying other skills in the following months.

The main problem with English for Telephoning in my classes was that for all the variety of skills and tasks mentioned above, as the students progressed from one well-graded but rather dry exercise to the next their energy and attention spans tended to reduce- and this became more and more the case as the weeks and the units progressed. The closest thing the book has to games is crosswords. There is also no use of humour or surprising or controvertial facts in the reading and listening texts, and the roleplays do not have any particular twists or mental challenges. I found myself having to introduce all those elements as the weeks went by, and in the end I had to skip through the book, abandon it before the end or set the rest for self-study before class motivation ran out. Giving major parts of the book for self-study (the back of the book suggests the whole book can be used in this way) was possible but did not work as well as using it in class because of the amount of speaking work that is included.

Negotiating by Susan Lowe and Louise Pile has much in common with English for Telephoning. It is exactly the same length (64 pages), has the same number of units (six), is designed for pre-intermediate to intermediate learners, is designed for class and self-study use, has a CD (although not a CD ROM in this case) always included, has a full answer key and tapescripts at the back, has the same kind of stock photos and occasional cartoons, has several boxed tips in each unit. has reading and listening texts on the general topic as well as ones that give the target language, has the same Eurocentric bias, has the same variety of tasks, and has the same lack of humour and other surprises in the reading and listening texts and speaking tasks.

Negotiating’s six units cover Preparing to Negotiate, Opening the Negotiation, Making Proposals, Reaching Agreement, Involving Others, and Concluding the Deal. There are several classes of functional language in each unit, for example Taking Turns, Making Decisions, Asking and Answering Questions, and Keeping People Informed in Unit 5. Most units also cover a grammar point, e.g. present simple and present continuous in Unit 2.

Things in Negotiating that are different from English for Telephoning include shorter tips (yellow boxes in the blank spaces to the left of the main text, often just a sentence long, e.g. “Tip: When speaking, native speakers often run sounds together.”), a Needs Analysis and Learning Journal at the front of the book, Reference and Review sections at the end of each unit, study suggestions, quite a lot of pronunciation work, a more obvious tie in to a grammatical syllabus, a greater number of functions in each unit, an easily photocopiable A4 size, and photocopiable materials at the back.

As with English for Telephoning, the fact that Negotiating mainly covers functional language and that the tasks for the reading and listening texts are possible without understanding every word means that the book is genuinely suitable for Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate learners, including mixed level classes, and can be fairly easily adapted for high Elementary students who already use this kind of language in their work. The level does make a bit less sense in this case, though, as people in the company who are involved in negotiations are more likely to have a high language level and/ or have a translator than people who have to answer the phone. The book has neither enough language nor enough intellectual stimulation to be useable with high Intermediate learners who already use this kind of language at work. It could be more suitable for pre-experience higher level learners, but as is common in Business English materials the discussion questions (“Think of the last negotiation you took part in…”) become difficult to adapt.

Although this did not occur to me when using them (partly because I supplemented myself automatically), there were elements of each book that could have fitted in very well with the other and improved its ease of use. “Negotiating” could have benefited from several things in English for Telephoning, such as the (non-photocopiable) pairwork tasks at the back of the book, packing the text more efficiently into the page and avoiding blank space, the use of questionnaires, and a CD ROM. English for Telephoning would have been improved by borrowing the ideas of needs analysis, regular review sections (although it does have one “Useful phrases and vocabulary” section at the back), and pronunciation work. Photocopiable materials is also a good idea, but the activities in Negotiating didn’t really add much of a spark to the lesson and anyway do not fit in with the professed aim of being suitable for use as self-study materials.

Having a clearer focus on whether they are meant for classroom use or self-study is one of the things that could have improved both books. Other things both titles could have gained from include: more ideas for teachers (perhaps for free on the internet as a whole teacher’s book isn’t really necessary); extra practice and/ or a final test at the back of the book; a bit more time and money spent of presentation; more stimulating photos, discussion questions, roleplays and texts; and in general more of an emphasis on providing something fun, original and intellectually stimulating.

Having said all of the above, these are two carefully and thoroughly written guides to their area of language that are, as they claim, totally suitable for both pre-intermediate and intermediate learners and both for class and self-study. Although they are better for class use than self-study and students working on their own will miss out on some practice and have to skip some parts, I am not aware on any other books especially for self-study that do these particular topics more thoroughly.

With highly motivated classes and/ or with lots of your own ideas on warmers etc it is perfectly possible to work your way through the whole of either book, and the students will find that this will improve not only their negotiating or telephoning skills but will also improve their confidence and give them language they can use in all kinds of other situations. As these two books are not directly competing with each other, which one you choose would depend on how often your students at these levels will be doing these things in English. For my purposes, Business English textbooks more than adequately deal with negotiating in fairly interesting ways but don’t have enough telephoning work and do little to liven it up, so English for Telephoning will stay on my desk whilst Negotiating will stay at the back of my mind for the next scarily high powered executive one to one student I am given.

Originally published in Modern English Teacher magazine