English for Specific Purposes 23 (2004) 85100

www.elsevier.com/locate/esp

Book reviews
A Handbook on Oral Presentations for Speakers in Engineering
S. Seliman and B. L. Dubois, Pererbit: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2002,
paperback. ISBN 983-52-0249-4
This slim volume on preparing for an oral presentation in the eld of engineering
is based on the PhD thesis of one of the authors, a point which we are constantly
reminded of with the single reference, Seliman (1996), repeated throughout the
book. However, any publication aimed at helping engineers prepare for oral presentations in English is a welcome addition to the limited resources we have in the
eld of English for Science and Technology (EST). There are nine chapters in 92
pages, plus ve appendices of authentic talks.
Each of the nine short chapters contains a list of hints and strategies of how to
prepare for, and then deliver, an oral presentation in engineering. Many of these
suggestions are supported with examples from authentic engineering talks, which is
a nice touch. In each chapter the hints and strategies are presented in brief sections
and so the information is very accessible and mostly easy to read.
The book is divided into three main parts: Chapters 14, getting ready for a talk;
Chapters 57, presenting the talk; and Chapters 8 and 9 additional comments and
points. Chapter 1 introduces the notion of having a rationale for professional
speaking, a point often overlooked when preparing students for conference talks. In
many instances in my own research with lecturers in dierent disciplines I have come
across comments such as In true legal fashion, lets attempt a few denitions; As
Im an engineer, Ill use graphs and overhead transparencies. (Flowerdew & Miller,
1995). So, it is useful for engineers to be aware that there is a disciplinary culture
which helps guide their talks, and that there are dierent types of sub-genres in
giving a professional talk.
Chapter 2 deals with abstracts and visuals. Although it may seem a bit odd to
have a section on written abstracts in a book about oral presentations, the premise is
that (i) an abstract helps clarify ones mind when preparing for a talk, and (ii), for
those engineers interested in having a research paper accepted at a conference an
abstract is the way in. In Chapter 2 the authors also deal with the importance of
visuals in oral presentations. However, due to the brevity of the chapter there is very
little by way of examples, and it is really only a reminder to the reader to use some
visuals during a talk.
Chapters 3 and 4 continue the style of the preceding chapters in providing more
information for an engineer to consider prior to making an oral presentation.
Chapter 3 highlights the important dierences between speaking and writing, while

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Book review / English for Specic Purposes 23 (2004) 85100

Chapter 4 reminds the reader of extra-verbal considerations, e.g. dress, eye-contact.

Although there are useful tips in these chapters in preparing for and delivering an
oral presentation, readers need to consider individual contexts when making decisions about their talks. For instance, the advice of Plant your feet slightly
apart. . .and keep them there. Do not move from that stance. . . (p. 36) contradicts
my own experience when interviewing engineering students in that they prefer a
lecturer who uses body movement when delivering a talk as this often helps maintain
their interest and concentration .
Chapters 57 are the main part of this book: they deal with the oral presentation
itself and are divided into the Introduction, Body, and Termination of the talk. The
authors use this three part format, which is more familiar to writing, to indicate to
the reader that a talk can be as well structured as an engineering article, and perhaps
should be so that the audience does not have to struggle to understand the style of
presentation used. One problem I had when reading these chapters was that the style
adopted is more like a discourse analysis as presented in a research thesis. There are
lots of authentic examples which simply act to illustrate how some engineers have
presented information without any indication as to which of these the authors might
recommend, and how useful each are in what they are trying to convey. It would be
dicult for an EST teacher to try and use the book with a group of students as there
does not seem to be any attempt at teaching techniques based on the examples, they
are simply presented as information to the reader. However, the short sections format used help the reader get through these chapters and if nothing else each section
alerts the reader to a potential issue in presenting engineering talks.
Chapter 8 reports on some of the most common rhetorical devices engineers may
use when presenting a talk. Once again, the small sections are easy to read and
contain examples from authentic talks. Chapter 9 is perhaps the most original
chapter in the book, as it is an area most textbooks that help second language learners prepare for public speaking ignore. In this chapter, the authors attempt to
sensitize the non-native-English-speaker to some of the linguistic conventions commonly found in native-English-speakers talks.
There are ve appendices at the end of the book. Each appendix contains complete talks given by engineers. At the beginning of the book the authors mention
that these appendices are presented as slightly edited transcriptions (p. xii). However, I feel that the authors should have adopted the format they used earlier in
Chapter 3, p. 30, when presenting an authentic transcript so as to make it more
readable as oral text. As the talks are presented, they look more like scripted text.
Seliman and Dubois maintain that A handbook on Oral Presentations for
Speakers in Engineering can be used by both native-English-speakers and nonnative-English-speakers. I was hoping that this book would be a useful text for
undergraduate second-language engineering students, a group who might benet the
most from knowing more about how to present a talk in English, but I imagine that
an EST tutor would have diculty in adapting the sections into teachable work
units, and the students would need to be of an advanced prociency level to fully
benet from many of the points presented. Perhaps the title is also a bit misleading
in this case. The term handbook could perhaps be replaces with manual, or

Book review / English for Specic Purposes 23 (2004) 85100

87

resource list. The book is a good read, if somewhat brief, but I doubt that I would
use it as a class text. I would, however, recommend it to an engineering postgraduate student of advanced language ability to use when preparing for his or her
rst public presentation.

References
Flowerdew, J., & Miller, L. (1995). On the notion of culture in L2 lectures. TESOL Quarterly, 29(2), 345
373.
Lindsay Miller is an associate professor in the English and Communication Department at City University
of Hong Kong. He teaches methodology to pre-service teacher-trainees (BA level) and in-service teachers
(MA level) and researches in the areas for self-access language learning, academic listening, and teacher
education.

Lindsay Miller
Department of English and Communication
City University of Hong Kong
83 Tat Chee Avenue
Kowloon, Hong Kong
E-mail address: enlinds@cityu.edu.hk
doi:10.1016/S0889-4906(03)00030-9

Learning Vocabulary in Another Language I

I.S.P. Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 477 pp. ISBN 0-52180092-7 hardback, ISBN 0-521-80498-1 paperback

As the series editors indicate in their preface (p. xiii), the place of vocabulary in L2
teaching and learning has deservedly received greatly increased attention in recent
years and Paul Nation has become a leading gure in the eld. Among his many
publications is Teaching and Learning Vocabulary (Nation, 1990) and now Learning
Vocabulary in Another Language builds on this, especially taking into account
research carried out in the past decade. It joins and complements other recent
volumes such as Schmitt and McCarthy, (1997), Read (2000), and Schmitt (2000)
The book consists of an introduction and 11 chapters, followed by six appendices,
mostly of vocabulary tests, and a list of about 640 references. In the introduction
Nation begins by identifying the place of vocabulary learning among the whole range of
goals in the language learning classroom. He then states that the approach taken in the
book is that a balanced language course should consist of four major strands: learning
from comprehensible meaning-focused input, language-focused learning, meaningfocused input, and uency development. Next he points out the three major themes
in the book: the cost/benet concept based on the results of word frequency studies,
the idea that learning a word is a cumulative process involving a range aspects of