Includes a glossary and transcripts.

"English for Agribusiness and Agriculture is a skills-based course designed specifically for students of agribusiness or agriculture studies who are about to enter English-medium tertiary level studies. It provides carefully graded practice and progressions in the key academic skills that all students need, such as listening to lectures and speaking in seminars. It also equips students with the specialist management language they need to participate successfully within an agribusiness and agriculture faculty. Extensive listening exercises come from agribusiness and agriculture lectures, and all reading texts are taken from the same field of study. There is also a focus throughout on the key agribusiness and agriculture vocabulary that students will need.

Listening: how to understand and take effective notes on extended lectures, including how to follow the argument and identify the speaker's point of view.

Speaking: how to participate effectively in a variety of realistic situations, from seminars to presentations, including how to develop an argument and use stance markers.

Reading: how to understand a wide range of texts, from academic textbooks to Internet articles, including how to analyze complex sentences and identify such things as the writer's stance.

Writing: how to produce coherent and well-structured assignments, including such skills as paraphrasing and the use of the appropriate academic phrases.

Vocabulary: a wide range of activities to develop students' knowledge and use of key vocabulary, both in the field of management and of academic study in general.

Vocabulary and Skills banks: a reference source to provide students with revision of the key words and phrases and skills presented in each unit.

Full transcripts of all listening exercises" (Book Cover).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

UNIT 1 - Agriculture and business (Listening - Speaking)
Topics: Defining agribusiness - Ethics - The origins of agribusiness
Vocabulary focus: Words from general English with special meaning in agribusiness and agriculture - Prefixes and suffixes
SKILLS FOCUS
Listening: preparing for a lecture - predicting lecture content from the introduction - understanding lecture organization - choosing an appropriate form of notes - making lecture notes
Speaking: speaking from notes

UNIT 2 - Foundations of modern agriculture (Reading - Writing)
Topics: Agricultural advances through the ages - Key agriculturalists
Vocabulary focus: English-English dictionaries: headwords, definitions, parts of speech, phonemes, stress markers, countable/uncountable, transitive/intransitive
SKILLS FOCUS
Reading: using research questions to focus on relevant information in a text - using topic sentences to get an overview of the text
Writing: writing topic sentences - summarizing a text

UNIT 3 - Soil, land and the environment (Listening - Speaking)
Topics: Food security, self-sufficiency and land use - Soil quality - Organic farming methods
Vocabulary focus: Stress patterns in multi-syllable words - Prefixes
SKILLS FOCUS
Listening: preparing for a lecture - predicting lecture content - making lecture notes - using different information sources
Speaking: reporting research findings - formulating questions

UNIT 4 - Technology and agribusiness (Reading - Writing)
Topics: Technological change: positive and negative consequences - Using IT for research
Vocabulary focus: Computer jargon - Abbreviations and acronyms - Discourse and stance markers - Verb and noun suffixes
SKILLS FOCUS
Reading: identifying topic development within a paragraph - using the Internet effectively - evaluating Internet search results
Writing: reporting research findings

UNIT 5 - Agribusiness marketing (Listening - Speaking)
Topics: Definitions of marketing - Types of market - Market research
Vocabulary focus: Words sets: synonyms, antonyms, etc. - The language of trends - Common lecture language
SKILLS FOCUS
Listening: understanding 'signpost language' in lectures - using symbols and abbreviations in note-taking
Speaking: making effective contributions to a seminar

UNIT 6 - Products and strategies (Reading - Writing)
Topics: Product life cycles - The marketing mix
Vocabulary focus: Synonyms, replacement subjects, etc., for sentence-level paraphrasing
SKILLS FOCUS
Reading: reporting findings from other sources: avoiding plagiarism - locating key information in complex sentences
Writing: writing complex sentences

UNIT 7 - The effective production manager (Listening - Speaking)
Topics: Job description - The qualities needed by a production manager - The importance of scheduling
Vocabulary focus: Compound nouns - Fixed phrases from management English - Fixed phrases from academic English - Common lecture language
SKILLS FOCUS
Listening: understanding speaker emphasis
Speaking: asking for clarification - responding to queries and requests for clarification

UNIT 8 - Rural economies and financial management Reading - Writing)
Topics: Agribusiness in the 'free market' - Concepts in agri-economics - Adaptive management techniques
Vocabulary focus: Synonyms - Nouns from verbs - Definitions - Common 'direction' verbs in essay titles (discuss, analyze, evaluate, etc.)
SKILLS FOCUS
Reading: understanding dependent clauses with passives
Writing: paraphrasing - expanding notes into complex sentences - recognizing different essay types/structures: descriptive, analytical, comparison/evaluation, argument - writing essay plans - writing essays

UNIT 9 - Managing financial accounts (Listening - Speaking)
Topics: Documentation: profit and loss accounts and balance sheets - Management accountancy methods - Cash flow statements
Vocabulary focus: Fixed phrases from management English - Fixed phrases from academic English
SKILLS FOCUS
Listening: using the Cornell note-taking system - recognizing digressions in lectures
Speaking: making effective contributions to a seminar - referring to other people's ideas in a seminar

UNIT 10 - Food safety (Reading - Writing)
Topics: Food hygiene - Food safety regulations - Case study: a proactive approach to food safety
Vocabulary focus: 'Neutral' and 'marked' words - Fixed phrases from industrial relations - Fixed phrases from academic English
SKILLS FOCUS
Reading: recognizing the writer's stance and level of confidence or tentativeness - inferring implicit ideas
Writing: writing situation-problem-solution-evaluation essays - using direct quotations - compiling a bibliography/reference list

UNIT 11 - The future of farming (Listening - Speaking)
Topics: EU agricultural policy - Agribusiness strategy in the 21st century - The impact of environmental issues
Vocabulary focus: Words/phrases used to link ideas (moreover, as a result, etc.) - Stress patterns in noun phrases and compounds - Fixed phrases from academic English
SKILLS FOCUS
Listening: recognizing the speaker's stance - writing up notes in full
Speaking: building an argument in a seminar - agreeing/disagreeing

UNIT 12 - The good agribusiness (Reading - Writing)
Topics: Company performance: SWOT analysis - Managing change - Case study: responding to external factors
Vocabulary focus: Verbs used to introduce ideas from other sources (X contends/suggests/asserts that ...) - Linking words/phrases conveying contrast (whereas), result (consequently), reasons (due to), etc. - Words for quantities (a significant minority)
SKILLS FOCUS
Reading: understanding how ideas in a text are linked
Writing: deciding whether to use direct quotation or paraphrase - incorporating quotations - writing research reports - writing effective introductions/conclusions

Intended for students of agribusiness or agriculture who are about to enter English-medium tertiary level studies. Designed for students of upper-intermediate to proficient level (CEF B2-C2).