Company to Company Student's Book

Good news! The limitations in the prior edition have been fixed. The previous edition of this book has one glaring weakness: It does not provide training in e-mails and sending electronic files. How far we have come since 1994! Business travelers the world over tell me that everyone they do business with prefers the Internet, if possible. If that edition of the book covered e-mails and Web sites as well as it does letters and faxes, I would give it five stars. This lack of electronic correspondence information would not be a limitation except that electronic correspondence offers special opportunities and problems -- especially if the person you are dealing with can interact with a Web site to get what is needed. That weakness has been thankfully resolved in this new edition, which covers e-mails, Web sites, and electronic files. The book has also been upgraded from black-and-white to color. I am delighted to upgrade my rating to five stars, as a result! Be sure you buy this edition, and not the previous one!! The book also focuses on faxes and letters of the simplest sort, that match the intermediate level of English. The exercises are relevant, because they deal with the sort of common situations that each person must deal with: setting up appointments, arranging for a booth at a trade fair, handling complaints, raising complaints, and quoting prices. Each one is well designed to challenge a business person to extend their limited use of a foreign language (English in this case). I read the teacher's guide, and thought that it was well-organized to help the instsructor add value for each student. There is a fair amount of role playing, which is a good way for people to improve their use of language and understand the perspectives of English-speaking people. For example, anytime a less than forth-coming response occurs, the cases cause the company to lose the business. There is a lot of hands-on problem-solving in the course, and most people would learn a lot from it. The perspective is colored a bit by its U.K. origins (the Queen's English, rather than the American version), but that is more noticeable to an American than it would be to anyone else. If you don't speak English well, and want to improve your business letters, e-mails and faxes, this is a good book for you.

Hi I'm Andrew Littlejohn and I just wanted to add an extra note to Don Mitchell's review of my book 'Company to Company'. A new edition came out in Feb 2000, and the book now includes emails and web pages - which is why I've given it Don's 5 promised stars! The book is also now in full colour.