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Oxford Handbook of Commercial Correspondence (3rd Edition) | |
OUP
Author: A. Ashley
304 pages.
£ 17.00
ISBN: 0-19-457213-7
The world of commerce has a special language and vocabulary, and even native English speakers who do not write commercial letters often find this language difficult. For such people, as well as for EFL students, Aasheim Ashley has written this book. Mr Ashley has been teaching business courses for decades, and also teaches Business Studies. This is the third edition of this particular book, which has been updated in several ways, but particularly to cover email correspondence. (Though they have not fixed one thing that annoys us here at English for Everybody - shouldn't it be 'THE Oxford Handbook of Commercial Correspondence'?)
The book has fifteen chapters, as well as thirty pages at the back for answer key, glossary and index. The chapters are all function-based, with the first chapter setting out the key ideas. Other chapters have titles such as banking, credit and appointments. There is also a useful section on CVs and applying for jobs. Each unit starts with the vocabulary and institutions related to the topic of the chapter. So on shipping, for example, you get a description of a container crate and shipping agents, and with credit, a description of the types of credit, and the people who handle it. The second part explains who the reciepent of the letter is to be, and what action is required of that person. Useful expressions (sometimes whole paragraphs) are given, which you can use in your own letters. The main part of the chapter is example letters, with comprehension questions on the bottom, and comments on the side.
Our main complaint is that if you use this literally as a handbook, you will need hands like King Kong. The pages are bigger than A4. Every page has an border covering about 25% of the page, and most of this holds nothing but a pale green background. If the space were used more efficiently, the book could be quite a lot smaller. OUP describe the book on their website (go to www.oup.com/efl and search for A.Ashley) as Intermediate to Advanced. In fact it would be a brave Intermediate student who attempted this book, and even Advanced students will struggle sometimes, especially if they are unfamiliar with business English.
Who is this book for? The book's design means that it can be used equally well as a reference on which to base your own emails, faxes and CV, or as a textbook for solo or class study. If you ever need to write to a bank asking for an appointment to arrange credit so that your shipping company can pay customs duty on its containers, then this book will pay for itself there and then! More generally, anyone who teaches, studies or writes commercial correspondence should consider this book.
Verdict: The writing is good, the layout less so
Assessment 7/10