{"id":1196,"date":"2010-10-12T22:00:20","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T20:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1196"},"modified":"2010-10-12T09:34:36","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T07:34:36","slug":"en-activo-practical-business-spanish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1196","title":{"rendered":"En activo: Practical business Spanish"},"content":{"rendered":"
En activo<\/strong>: Practical business Spanish. <\/strong>By Esther Santamar\u00eda Inglesias <\/strong>and Helen Jones<\/strong>. New York: Routledge, 2008. Pp. xxii, 282. ISBN 9780415408851<\/a>. $44.95.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Louisa Buckingham<\/strong><\/a>, Sabanci University<\/em><\/p>\n

En activo<\/em> is aimed at intermediate to upper intermediate learners of Spanish who intend to work in a professional office environment where Spanish is the medium language. Both peninsular and Latin American variants of Spanish are featured. This work is not as narrowly focused and specialized as, for example, the Espa\u00f1ol por profesiones <\/em>series (Madrid, Spain: Sociedad General Espa\u00f1ola de Librer\u00eda, 2007). For this reason, instructors without specialized knowledge of the business world will feel comfortable using it. It may also have a place in general language courses with a vocational component. Nonetheless, En activo<\/em> is a serious text that will provide learners with the solid linguistic basis required to perform adequately in a work setting. From an initial visual perspective, it has sacrificed the glossy full-colour and costly format typical of many textbooks currently on the market for a more sober approach, with relatively densely laid out texts and exercises. This will appeal to professionals, particularly those with an autodidactic leaning, as the text includes both an answer key and tape scripts at the end of the book. Moreover, each chapter encourages further individual learning through the inclusion of websites from the Spanish-speaking world that are relevant to the chapter\u2019s topic.<\/p>\n

En activo<\/em> comprises twenty units, each of about fifteen pages. Four of these units constitute review lessons that consist of discussion exercises. Topics covered include communication in the work place, integration of disabled people and foreigners in the work place, health care, the stock market, international trade, and the media. Each unit is divided into six sections with a particular focus on one of the four skills, although all have follow up exercises involving other skills. The first two sections in each unit concentrate on receptive skills. Grammar (the usual selection of prepositions, tenses, use of subjunctive and the passive voice, and adverbial phrases) is covered with a short, pithy presentation of a particular point in the \u2018Recuerde que\u2019<\/em> (\u2018Remember that\u2019) section, while vocabulary (including fixed phrases) is extended in the subsequent section. Productive skills are promoted in the final two sections that require students to undertake a work-skills related task (e.g. filling out forms, understanding documents such as pay slips and bank statements, and drawing up a contract) and complete an activity through researching informative internet sites. Both extend learners\u2019 understanding of the chapter\u2019s topic and encourage learner autonomy.<\/p>\n

The organization and content of this work provides learners with the necessary support to complete the relatively controlled and the subsequently less controlled activities included at the end of each unit. A further laudable feature is the book\u2019s ample online support where learners can access all audio texts and a blog, regularly updated by the authors of the book with information relating to the Hispanic business world. En activo<\/em> is highly recommended both as a classroom text and as a medium for self-directed learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

En activo: Practical business Spanish. By Esther Santamar\u00eda Inglesias and Helen Jones. New York: Routledge, 2008. Pp. xxii, 282. ISBN 9780415408851. $44.95. Reviewed by Louisa Buckingham, Sabanci University En activo is aimed at intermediate to upper intermediate learners of Spanish who intend to work in a professional office environment where Spanish is the medium language. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1197,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions\/1197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}