As a Business English ESL teacher, I would highly recommend the use of Business Resultfor Upper-Intermediate students. The workbook is made up of sixteen units with focused themes that are needed in everyday business interactions. Each unit encourages the student to develop the four skills of learning a new language; it is divided into logical sections which cover listening, speaking, reading and writing activities.
Each unit is introduced clearly with a ‘Starting Point’ section that introduces the topic of the unit, creates discussion and explains the objectives. The ‘Working with words’ section introduces new vocabulary and encourages students to practice listening and speaking with new phrases. The ‘Practically speaking’ section allows the opportunity for students to have free practice with the new phrases in order to speak naturally and with more confidence. The ‘Language at work’ section covers the grammar details of the unit and focuses on the technicalities of the new language learnt. The unit ends with an authentic ‘Case Study’ section which relates to real-life business scenarios. This section requires the students to apply their newly learnt knowledge of the language in a practical sense.
"Business Result helps learners develop the skills they need for the English speaking workplace quickly and effectively."-Michael Duckworth and Rebecca Turner (Authors).
Throughout the workbook, there are activities for the students to complete accompanied by listening exercises which can be accessed from the audio. At the end of the workbook there is a section dedicated to extra activities for each unit where the students get a chance to practice the work covered in each section of every unit. At the back of the workbook there is also a section listing useful phrases and information files that create example scenarios for each unit.
The teacher’s book accompanies the student book very accurately and is easy to use. It informs the teacher exactly what the students should be able to do by the end of the unit and provides a great foundation for teachers to introduce the unit. It provides a memorandum for every activity of the workbook and offers helpful hints and focus areas to keep in mind as students work their way through the unit. The teacher’s book includes progress tests to asses the knowledge of the student at the end of each unit and the interactive workbook contains tests that can be given as a form of examining the student’s abilities.
The content of the workbook is extremely appropriate and interesting for business professionals; It covers all areas of learning a new language and provides a suitable amount of material for each section. Sometimes workbooks are laborious and can become monotonous resulting in students losing interest; this is not at all the case with Business Result.
The fact that this workbook is made up of dynamic units divided into sections with interesting content makes teaching Business English to Upper-Intermediate students an absolute pleasure. Business Result will most likely not appeal to independent learners since a teacher or tutor is absolutely necessary. However, I would definitely recommend this book to teachers and students planning to work with the book in a classroom setting.
