À la recherche d'un emploi: Business French in a Communicative Context by Amy L. Hubbell (review)

processing instruction, Total Physical Response, and self-instructional methods for teaching language forms. This eclectic approach provides readers with a host of techniques to help build or expand their teaching repertoire. Furthermore, while Brandl makes a convincing research-supported case for CLT and taskbased learning, he also recognizes the challenges inherent in implementing these methods, and guides readers to anticipate and address them. Despite its strengths, some significant omissions prevent Communicative Language Teaching in Action from being a complete language teaching methods resource. A discussion of teaching writing is completely absent (though the chapter on assessment contains an appendix of suggestions on evaluating writing). This serves to reinforce the all-too-common misconception that writing is incompatible with CLT, and leaves pre-service teachers unprepared to help their students develop this key skill. Moreover, discussion of teaching culture is cursory, limited to mentions on choosing culturally authentic materials and preparing students to encounter cultural references when reading. A more comprehensive treatment of these fundamental topics would be welcome in future editions of the book. Saginaw Valley State University (MI) Julie A. Foss HUBBELL, AMY L. À la recherche d’un emploi: Business French in a Communicative Context. Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2010. ISBN 978-158510-372-0. Pp. 254. $59.95. As implied by the Communicative Context part of the title, the author intends to offer a practical guide to students wishing to acquire the basic knowledge and skills required to function in the French and Francophone world of business. The structure of the book reflects its objective, with the two introductory chapters (“La géographie et l’administration de la France et quelques régions francophones,” “L’économie et les entreprises”) providing a broad overview, while the next five chapters (“À la recherche d’un emploi,” “Le curriculum vitae,” “La lettre de motivation ,” “L’entretien d’embauche,” “La communication professionnelle”) are more pragmatic, focusing on specific aspects of the business world with which the student must be familiar in order to succeed. The final chapter presents a case study involving a small French company, Rose la Biche, which markets its distinctive line of women’s clothing. The vocabulary list, presented at the beginning of each chapter, is generally germane and of reasonable length, although a number of easily recognizable cognates could be omitted: l’économie, la technologie (32), la personnalité, la qualité (74), l’enveloppe (192), l’adresse (193). Some items are listed twice: le chômage (2, 32), embaucher (65, 100), un en-tête (134, 192), une formule de politesse (132, 194). The book contains a significant amount of useful material that could be applied to a job search: practical advice and models for preparing a CV (including attention to differences between the French and American CV), presenting oneself for a job, decoding classified ads, guidance on preparing an effective cover letter (again with models provided), advice on preparing for an interview (including a list of 50 possible questions that might be anticipated), and also suggestions on how to follow up in writing after a job interview (the formules de politesse appropriate for a follow-up letter are especially useful). The video segments provided for the book vary considerably in applicability and utility. Some are quite relevant and well integrated into the chapter to which they correspond. The interviews with Henri Kaufman (co-creator of Les vidéos du Reviews 415 succès) are generally entertaining and informative, although interference from background street noise will challenge comprehension for many students. Most students will find some segments too difficult to follow. Chapter 1 contains a list of fifteen questions based on a film trailer for L’auberge espagnole, in which very few of the questions actually correspond to any of the scenes shown in the clip. In chapter 2 a ninety-second film trailer for Ressources humaines does not correspond to the questions, which appear to be based on a twelve-minute scene from the movie. Chapter 6 contains a video activity for which no video could be found. Although many of the links included in the book’s Web site are useful resources for further research, a few are inactive, one links to Amazon.fr, another to Yahoo! France, and...