Official Review: Compelling American Conversations

[Christina O Phillips]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Compelling American Conversations" by Eric H. Roth and Toni Aberson and Hal Bogotch.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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I have been teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) at an intensive English language program for the past ten years. Despite my years of experience, I am constantly trying to keep my classes fresh and am always on the lookout for new resources to use. So when I saw Compelling American Conversations as a review option, I knew I had to read it.

Compelling American Conversations is written by Eric H. Roth, Toni Aberson, and Hal Bogotech. The majority of the book is divided into fifteen chapters, with the first two focusing on “Opening Moves” and “Going Beyond Hello.” The topics are useful in their variety, such as culture (“Celebrating American Holidays” and “Playing and Watching Sports”), life (“Handling Stress” and “Valuing Money and Finding Bargains”), and more. After these chapters lies other useful information, such as recommended online ESL resources and links to the academic word list.

I found this to be a good source that I could use in my classroom, a tutor could use for their lessons, or a highly-motivated, independent learner could use alone. The chapters were full of action items and information connected to their respective topics. A chapter would open with a brief introduction, a list of questions to warm-up and to help connect with the topic, a list of vocabulary, idioms or proverbs to paraphrase or talk about, more questions and quotations to discuss, an “on your own” section, and finally a “search and share” section.

I found the topics in the book to be relevant. The questions were open-ended and the language used would be understandable to an ESL student yet also included words they may not know, which is not a bad thing. The vocabulary was defined and included example sentences. I particularly found the “on your own” and “search and share” tasks to be great exercises. In the “on your own” part, a student would be asked to write a postcard or create questions. The “search and share” task asks students to find an article or video and provides them with questions to think or write about after viewing or reading.

There were no glaring errors, but there were a few problems that I noticed. One “on your own” task asked the student to “...write a favorite food or dish next to each letter” but no letters were provided. Another issue I found was the font and spacing. The version I read was a PDF that I put on my Kindle Paperwhite so it may not be an issue with other versions. There were times that the beginning of a task (“Caption this photo”) was given, but the rest was on the next page. There was also a time when a quotation was at the bottom of a page, but who said the quote was on the next. Again, these are more formatting issues than issues with the actual content and a print version of the book or an e-book and not a PDF may not have these problems.

I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars. It is an excellent resource for a language learner whether using it independently or with a tutor or teacher. The writers made sure that the topics are relevant and that the book is interactive. While I did say that a student could use this alone, most of the tasks would require them to have at least a conversation partner. The students that this would be used with should also be at least in the intermediate level of their language learning; this would not work as well with a beginner especially if they are using this alone.

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Compelling American Conversations
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Like Christina O Phillips's review? Post a comment saying so!

[Kat Berg]

The teacher in me loves this book, but some of the critiques you named are the very reasons I do not like purchasing these kinds of books via ebook. The formatting always gets messed up somewhere. Hardcopy is typically the best. I am glad you appreciated this book. Thanks for the review.

[Laura Ungureanu]

Being a "highly-motivated independent learner", I will definitely check this book out. As my second language, english was not easy to learn and I am still fascinated at how much I still have to learn. Thank you for reviewing this book!

[Jonida]

The more you learn, the more you know you don't know enough, I will definitively check this book. Want to improve to the best level my english. Thank you for your honest review!

[Jonida]

Being a "highly-motivated independent learner", I will definitely check this book out. As my second language, english was not easy to learn and I am still fascinated at how much I still have to learn. Thank you for reviewing this book!

English is the second language for me too, and I agree with you, this book should be read and learned.

[ChimayoPress]

Thank you for sharing this detailed, fair, and nuanced review. Well done!

[ChimayoPress]

By the way, this fluency-focused ESL textbook is used by several community college, adult ESL, and intensive English programs in Southern California. It's also being used by several Los Angeles public library programs for their adult literacy classes and ESL programs. As one of the co-authors living in Los Angeles, I'm quite pleased that this niche book has found both a local audience and a few fans across the planet. I'm particularly pleased that an English language program for Syrian refugees in Amman, Jordan chose this book for their conversation classes!

Sometimes our writings allow us to contribute, in a small way, to making the world a better place.

[Christina O Phillips]

The teacher in me loves this book, but some of the critiques you named are the very reasons I do not like purchasing these kinds of books via ebook. The formatting always gets messed up somewhere. Hardcopy is typically the best. I am glad you appreciated this book. Thanks for the review.

I would highly recommend a print copy, but an ebook version would work, too. The problems were not numerous, but I felt I did have to mention them.

[Christina O Phillips]

Being a "highly-motivated independent learner", I will definitely check this book out. As my second language, english was not easy to learn and I am still fascinated at how much I still have to learn. Thank you for reviewing this book!

I hope that you enjoy the book!

[bookreviewmi1111]

This book does a great job on making people discuss English. I enjoyed it. Thanks for the nice review.