English At Work: Find and Fix Your Mistakes in Business English as a Foreign Language (Teach Yourself)

This book was recommended to me for staff training. It completely rethinks the needs of English learners in the business setting. Where most courses teach with lists of new vocabulary, grammar, and jargon. This changes the focus to self-awareness and identifying your own errors as a means of self-improvement. I’ve gone through the daily quizzes myself and got immense satisfaction in finding the errors and correcting them with zeal. The examples are great and explanations clear, concise and witty. There is a mix of errors in each daily ‘quiz’ so it keeps you on your toes and doesn’t feel like drilling or get too repetitive. It reflects real life where we are bombarded with different language and need to react and respond intuitively. The review sections help you identify specific weaknesses. But what tips this book towards brilliance are the author’s cartoons which punctuate the quizzes. They’re adorable and capture the charm and humour of common misunderstandings and errors. Of course mistakes should be avoided, but we also need to be light-hearted and forgiving of ourselves and others.Overall I think it’s an effective book for busy people because it’s designed in a way you can digest easily and do quickly. You definitely would need to be an intermediate level to benefit from this.

English lacks the logic of many other languages, and it's difficult for non-native speakers to master. Ellen Jovin's book is a great resource to help them sound more native and colloquial in American English, which has quirks of its own. With straightforward explanations and a useful vocabulary of words people might encounter in business writing, she uses humor and fun stick-figure drawings to illustrate the points. As a longtime editor who often works with writers whose first language is not English, from students through midcareer professionals, I have recommended this book multiple times, and have been thanked by nearly everyone.

My entire family refers to "English at Work" for clear explanations, advice, activities, and humor on using English in any environment. Examples for every level are also useful for students with various learning abilities who need an extra boost in English as a first language. This handy reference will not gather dust on a bookshelf -- we even leave it out to quiz each other for fun. All careful writers will enjoy Ellen Jovin's approach! (Cats agree!)

I could not disagree more with the negative reviews under this book. I went over all of them, and they seems to be written by Native English Speakers, who are NOT the target audience. I have a passion for learning languages (I speak 7) and I know how hard is to teach your own language, or even evaluate material meant to teach your native language.I am an Italian living in US. constantly looking for resources to improve my writing skills in English since writing is such an important part of my work (sending emails). I have been living abroad since 2006, speaking English as my primary language.WHY I LOVED THE BOOK SO MUCH:The book helped me not only improve my grammar, which was the original goal, but also express myself with more clarity and avoid confusion. I understood how fixing mistakes is important to improve your style but also to add clarity to your communication. This book helped me driving my point with more power, without using weak or weird expressions.I found the exercises at the end of every chapter really valuable. I can see how a native english speaker might have a hard time appreciate them, how they might look like weird example. In reality I found those exercises incredibly useful, they were twisted in a way that made it extremely easy to lock in concepts intuitively. The way the author used common mistakes foreigners like me make all the time, when porting their own grammar and structures from other languages into English. I was actually so excited that on my first week I shared the photos of the exercises in a whatsapp group with 10 other Italians all living abroad (speaking a very good English) and they all loved it and learned tons.So the book has changed my life. It made me more effective professionally and helped me communicating with my wife with more clarity avoiding those "grammatical" misunderstanding. Forever grateful.

I recommend this to all our advanced ESL students who need to mop up those last pesky issues or old habitual errors. The focus is on avoiding confusion with small errors common to non-native speakers of English. The reader just needs to focus on 10 common errors and fixes in the morning and 10 more at night. This is very doable for the busy professional. I further recommend our students highlight each one they got wrong and review each day as a reminder (old habits die hard). Whereas some business ESL books focus on sounding overly professional (which can make the person sound even more non-native), this book focuses simply on avoiding the common errors that might lead to misunderstandings between the non-native and native speaker. Some errors are as small as using "on" instead of "in", which she demonstrates with a funny cartoon with one person sitting on top of a bus since that is where his friend said to meet (instead of in the bus).

I’m not so convinced that this is as terrible as the other reviewers make out.It does use American spelling.Some of the corrections are reasonable colloquial English.It would help someone spot some minor mistakes.If you can put up with some of the intransigence, it will help. And it’s a fairly short book.

The first thing to bear in mind with this book is that it is in American English. I think it is a good idea for English students to mainly use materials from the country they are going to move to or be dealing with. If you are in the UK, will be moving here or will be mainly doing business with the UK there may be better books out there for you.The book gives you a list of sentences to correct each day and then explains the answers to you. I do like this structured approach but I would say it is definitely for people who already have a good grasp of English. There is a handy and quite lengthy glossary at the back but it is in American English so be aware of that if you are in the UK. Like the other reviewers, I also did not agree with all of the author's answers and corrections. I think this book is useful but it would be best to use it with an English teacher or someone else who you can discuss the answers with.

I don't care that it is written in American English as many of the errors pointed out in the lists are general issues that foreigners are struggling with when learning English and also issues that many native English speakers could do well to understand and correct.I think that the explanations given on the reverse side of the questions in general are very clear and easy to understand.I've been thinking about why I don't like this book so much. I had very high hopes for it and I have also learned a thing or two - or at least I'm now able to explain the errors better when I do proof-reading on projects.One issue I have is that some of the errors pointed out were difficult to spot because they weren't exactly errors, but there was just a better way to do it (I think there is an example of that in the 3rd or 4th list).I think it is good to go through the sentences on an error finding mission, but the errors have to be clear otherwise it backfires - or at least it does for me.A good way to become aware of general issues and also a good way to understand the grammar behind, but it is not perfect.

I like the idea of this book, but I find its execution disappointing. It presents two sets of questions per day, over 25 days. Each set contains 10 questions comprising a sentence or phrase that has an error. You have to spot and correct the error. Answers are provided, together with brief explanations. The book also contains a glossary of grammatical terms, and a glossary of words commonly used at work. All this sounds good and useful. The trouble is, it’s not put together very well. The questions are randomly combined, so it's difficult to compare similar examples or see a concept demonstrated across multiple examples. The brief answers are laden with advanced terms and definitions, making them difficult to understand. Here are two examples:• She said that if she hadn’t been promoted, she would have never moved there. In verb strings such as would have moved, put the adverb (e.g., never) after the modal verb (e.g., would) or first auxiliary verb.• I suggest to talk to Yuri first. After suggest, use a gerund (-ing verb form). You can’t use the infinitive here.The book also has a difficult to use index system (see photo). Another gripe is that the paper is a little dark, and the text a little faint. Consequently, the text is tricky to read unless you are in a well-lit room.

I really like the idea of this book and it would be better if it was not in American English. I think this book is aimed at those that already have a good understanding of English and so this book would be good as a reference book or for refreshing the memory.There are some good examples of responses to everyday situations and questions. It gives alternatives and also explanations as to alternative words. There are various examples of the rules of the language, although some of these had me scratching my head.The book is ok but not always correct, there are some good points about the book. There is a grammar glossary and also examples of useful words and there meaning in everyday life.