Telephone English

Author: John Hughes
Publisher: Macmillan
Components: Self-study book, classroom skills practice book with CD
Summary: Simple but not repetitive, thorough but concise, and creative within the very narrow confines of its remit, and although similar to other books about telephoning my favourite book on the subject.

As most of my Japanese Business English students use English much more on the phone than face to face, I’ve been writing, using and reviewing a lot of materials for telephoning practice over the last few years. Although all the telephoning books are rather similar, this one goes down as my favourite

so far- if in ways which I can’t easily put my finger on. Below is my attempt to analyse what made this book my favourite, what things could still be improved, and which kinds of teachers and students this book is most useful for.

Telephone English is divided into 32 Units in 5 sections. The 5 sections are Essentials, Everyday Phone Calls, Telephone Skills, Phone Calls with Customers/ Colleagues, and Commercial Phone Calls. All the units are given on two page spreads, and every section ends with a unit of Language Review.

“Essentials” starts with a unit on Answering the Phone and finishes with “Ending the Call”, with the 6 units in between dealing with things like messages, clarifying and asking people to wait. Most of these are quite standard, but having a whole unit on “Reasons for Calling” and “Asking the Caller to Wait” are more unusual and very useful. As with the rest of the book, there are a few pictures and reading texts (“How many ways to say hello?” and “Can you say ‘No’? Not on the phone it seems…”), but most of the space is taken up with presentation and practice of functional language. The presentation always starts with a simple listening exercise, but as with all the other units the variety of exercises used should keep students interested. In the case of initial listening tasks in the eight units of the first section, this variety of exercise types includes ticking what people do when they answer the phone, writing Yes or No in boxes depending on whether they know the caller or not, writing the numbers of the calls on the department doors, matching calls to the messages, correcting mistakes and counting how many people one person speaks to.

The second section, “Everyday Phone Calls”, includes booking transport, hotels and restaurants, dealing with problems, and leaving voicemail messages. Again, there is a more unusual but very useful section in “Recorded Information and Phone Menus”, something I could have done with in the language of every country I have lived in. After the listening and language presentation sections (which include even more variety of exercise type), the units deal with listening for detailed comprehension (e.g. dates in U10), pronunciation (e.g. pausing in U13), British and American English, grammar (e.g. modifiers in U12), and lots more functional language. Again, there is an astoundingly wide range of exercise types, including flow charts, missing vowels, error correction, and taking part in roleplays using picture prompts.

The third section, “Telephone skills”, continues in much the same manner but with all the units being more unusual topics for a telephoning book this time, being whole units on “Sounding Friendly and Polite”, “Planning a Call”, “Telephone Manner”, “Small Talk” and “Formal and Informal”. As with the other sections, it ends with a two page Language Review, which slips in the functional language in exercises revising the grammar (imperatives, modal verbs), vocabulary (verb plus preposition) and pronunciation (intonation).

After the last two sections (including more unusual topics like “Inviting people”, “A conference call” and “Selling on the phone”), there are the Student A and B roleplay cards, listening scripts, a 6 page phrase bank with 250 key phrases and an Answer Key. At the front of the book is a one page introduction for the student (including useful general tips for telephoning such as “As you make calls, write down any new expressions you hear and add them to the phrase bank” and “At the end of the call, summarize what you have agreed so that you can confirm that you both understand”) and a one page introduction for the teacher.

As you have probably guessed from the fact that two types of introduction are included, in common with most of these kinds of skills books the book claims to be suitable both for self-study and classroom use. As you can judge from the fact that there are roleplays which are obviously not usable by students on their own, the author has not been the first to find a way of doing both of those things perfectly. For self-study students the range of exercise types could actually be a negative thing, as despite the clear instructions they might get confused with what they have to do and so have to turn to the answer key after a couple of questions to check if they are on the right track. The slightly excessive amount of grammar jargon in the book also does not help for this. Otherwise, the level of language both presented and used in instructions is suitable for the Pre-Intermediate to Intermediate range that the book claims.

For use in class, the lack of a teacher’s book means that the teacher will need quite a bit of creativity and planning time in order to come up with discussion questions and other warmers at the beginning of the lesson and oral controlled speaking practice before the roleplays for when the “Listen and Respond” tasks are absent or could get boring.

Perhaps the best use for the book is to do a few exercises in class with lots of oral practice, and then set the rest of the unit or another one for homework with clear instructions from the teacher. This can also help solve the problem, common in skills books like this, that no one individual student is likely to need to cover all the units.

Most of the criticisms above are also true of the competing books from other publishers. As such, although the difference is slight and difficult to explain I would still most recommend this book. Perhaps despite all my efforts over the years to be logical and analytical about teaching materials I still have the same instinctive reaction to textbooks etc that I criticized my CTEFLA trainees for, because the design of this book certainly is plain but easy on the eye as I usually like, and with none of the unnecessary glossiness and use of meaningless stock photos that is becoming the trend in such books nowadays. In a few words, it is simple but not repetitive, thorough but concise, and creative within the very narrow confines of its remit.