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A faculty-specific series for students in higher education.

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9781859645321

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After reading this book I think I may have found the Rosetta stone for my ESP teaching in the field of public relations. The quality of the book is unquestionable (the series to which it belongs won the English Speaking Union's English Language book award in 2009). The book is aimed at both in-service and pre-service professionals. In fact, due to the basic contents and problem-solving approach of certain sections, this book will prove much more than a language textbook by serving as an ideal tool for CLIL courses. In this sense, it differentiates itself from books of the same type and scope which generally aim at either content or language. The practicality of its exercises and the emphasis on specific language leads to a balance between content and language practice. As I said at the beginning, the book fills a gap that was necessary to cover in current ESP teaching in a globalized world. I am sure that prospective users will find English for Public Relations as valuable a title as I did and will enjoy teaching with it. -Jesus Garcia Laborda for TEFL net, September 2012 -- Jes

After reading this book I think I may have found the Rosetta stone for my ESP teaching in the field of public relations. The quality of the book is unquestionable (the series to which it belongs won the English Speaking Union's English Language book award in 2009). The book is aimed at both in-service and pre-service professionals. In fact, due to the basic contents and problem-solving approach of certain sections, this book will prove much more than a language textbook by serving as an ideal tool for CLIL courses. In this sense, it differentiates itself from books of the same type and scope which generally aim at either content or language. The practicality of its exercises and the emphasis on specific language leads to a balance between content and language practice. As I said at the beginning, the book fills a gap that was necessary to cover in current ESP teaching in a globalized world. I am sure that prospective users will find English for Public Relations as valuable a title as I did and will enjoy teaching with it. -Jesus Garcia Laborda for TEFL net, September 2012 -- Jes English for Public Relations is part of Garnet Education's ESAP (English for Specific Academic Purposes) series, which is designed to prepare B2 to C2-level students tostudy a particular subject at tertiary level in English. I would advocate its use as ageneric academic skills course for all Business students, not only students of PublicRelations, for reasons I will explain below. The course comprises the Student Coursebook, the Teacher's Book, and two Audio CDs. Each of the 12 units provides 4-6 hours of classroom study plus 2-4 hours of extra study. It is suggested that it could be suitable as a foundation course of between 50 and 80 hours, which would fit the requirements for a Swiss Bachelor's level 2-3 credit point course. The course focuses mainly on vocabulary skills (in every unit), listening skills (in the odd-numbered units), and reading skills (in the even-numbered units). Speaking and writing skills are offered in alternate units as extension activities of the receptive skills. Vocabulary skills: each of the 12 units begins with vocabulary skills related to Public Relations and Academic English. Vocabulary topic areas introduced are broader than PR terms and include the global economy, the non-profit sector, marketing, finance, investor relations, legal matters, and communication and technological change. Examples of skills taught are word building, use of affixes, guessing words in context, and learning fixed phrases from the field. A lot of thought has gone into the approach and I find it well done. I particularly like the way students are given practice in applying the learning strategies, for example, in finding synonyms for terms and then practising paraphrasing. I see this as a key skill to help students rephrase text excerpts in their academic writing, and thereby avoid plagiarism. General English courses offered parallel to their studies in English may not help them sufficiently with this paraphrasing challenge. Listening skills: the backbone of the listening component of the course is a set of introductory lectures on PR history, definitions, programmes, research, and practice, with some clever integrated skills activities built around these. As an example, students listen to a lecture and make notes on it. To extend their skills, they examine seven different note-taking methods, such as tree diagrams, columns, tables, and a timeline. Next, they listen to five lectures and practise note-taking. They then compare their notes with model notes provided and reconstruct one of the five lectures in pairs,based on the model notes. Reading and writing skills: many of the reading texts are of the genre you might find in a Public Relations coursebook. These complement the listening texts in providing a general introduction to PR. Others are academic texts, e.g. excerpts from published case studies and journal articles. Again, an integrated skills approach is taken, to good effect, with reading leading to academic writing skills. For example, students examine topic sentences in a text and identify their function in indicating what is coming in the rest of the paragraph. They then practise writing their own topic sentences to help them to structure their writing. Other useful skills include comparing essay types and learning to recognize a writer's stance, leading to building an argument. Writing introductions and conclusions, presenting findings, quoting, and writing a bibliography are also practised briefly. Extension work may be needed. Vocabulary and skills banks: these are provided at the end of each unit. They are intended to provide a summary of the unit content, but I found they often introduced additional material. I was pleased to note the skills bank touched on linguistic pragmatics related to lecturer/student relations, e.g. how to ask the lecturer questions in a polite or tentative way: I wonder if you could repeat x, y, z. How delightful. Student/student relations are also addressed with expressions provided to help smooth communication in groupwork, e.g. agreeing and disagreeing. Introduction to research: the topic of conducting research is threaded through the course, touching on quantitative and qualitative methods and data collection techniques. Students are also given a little practice in reporting on research findings, evaluating internet search results, and reporting findings from other sources. If required, further extension activities could be offered to provide additional practice in these skills. Recommendation: I find this course very well designed, and would recommend it to help Business students develop good study skills as well as vocabulary building skills. With regard to the Public Relations topic itself, few Business students in Switzerland study this subject alone at university. However, I find they are very interested in PR, not least as they constantly negotiate and renegotiate their private and professional public images via social media. I predict that the subject matter would draw them in and make the relatively dry subject of academic skills more attractive to them. Margaret Oertig, for ETAS Journal, Summer 2013

Author Information

Marie McLisky is the author of English for Banking in Higher Education Studies and English for Public Relations in Higher Education Studies in the ESAP series. She holds an MA (Sociology) and M.Ed (educational Technology and TESOL). Marie tutored Sociology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, then at the University of Maryland (Asian Division) in Korea. While in Korea, Marie gained her RSA Certificate in TEFLA, and worked as an ESOL instructor to Korean university students and adults. In 1992, Marie moved to Indonesia to work as an English language instructor and trainer for the British Council, and as a certified examiner for the IELTS exam. Her work in Indonesia included ESP and ESAP materials development. While working in Indonesia, she completed the RSA Diploma in TEFLA, and her MEd. at the University of Manchester. Since her return to New Zealand, Marie has worked in a variety of roles, including teacher trainer on the Trinity College Certificate in TESOL Course. Terry Phillips has worked in ELT for more than 35 years as a teacher, teaching supervisor, manager and language school owner. As a consultant, he has worked in more than 20 countries in all parts of the world, advising state and private language institutions on all aspects of school management. For the last ten years, he has been a full time freelance writer with his wife Anna, producing more than 160 published books in ELT. Although he and Anna have worked for all the major publishers, all recent works have been for Garnet Education. Terry is the series editor of the English for Specific Academic Purposes series for Garnet Education, which aims to prepare students to entry into a particular faculty for English-medium tertiary education. The series won the ESU award in 2009.

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