Book Review: Business French

The textbook Affaires globales: S'engager dans la vie professionnelle en franais is designed for instruction in French for the Professions at the intermediate to advanced level.It includes seven units with abundant content for one to two semesters.The first three units cover general skills and knowledge relevant to everyday professional situations -the basics of oral and written communication (Unit 1), job searching (Unit 2), and working in francophone countries (Unit 3).These units also introduce intercultural awareness, concepts, and skills.Building on these first three units, the last four units address specific professional domains from an international and intercultural perspective -sales and marketing (Unit 4), global health (Unit 5), diplomacy (Unit 6), and sustainable entrepreneurship (Unit 7).One of the textbook's stated goals is to prepare students for the standardized business, international relations, and health exams of the Diplme de franais professionnel (DFP), an internationally recognized certification in languages for specific purposes developed by Le Franais des Affaires (Center for Business French) of the Paris le-de France Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI).The textbook facilitates curriculum expansion from the traditional "Business French" course to a broader range of professional perspectives.Having taught for two semesters with this textbook, I feel that it works best for upper-division (third or fourth year) college language courses.In particular, students who have already taken an intensive advanced grammar and composition course can assimilate business communication norms and genres into their existing language skills.Expanding the course to two semesters would allow for slower pacing with more time for developing students' language skills overall.The textbook employs an "interdisciplinary and communicative" methodology (Reisinger et al., 2021, p. xix), placing the focus on authentic, realistic situations and tasks.Each unit adopts the same six-part organizational structure, beginning with three lessons called points interculturels (intercultural points); followed by a cas d'entreprise (business case); a perspective professionnelle (professional perspective), i.e., an example of a person whose work engages with the topic of the unit; and one step of the textbook's cumulative project, lancer un start-up, a simulated start-up launch.A set of "can-do statements" is provided for each unit, aligning its learning objectives with the 2017 National Council of State Supervisors for Languages-American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NCSSFL-ACTFL) Can-Do Statements, based on the ACTFL's World Readiness Standards.Each unit's objectives are therefore clearly identifiable as interpretative (via statements using stems such as "I can understand"), interpersonal ("I can participate"), presentational ("I can write" or "I can deliver a presentation"), or intercultural (for example, "I can respond to interview questions in a culturally appropriate manner").These units incorporate numerous authentic documents, media, and text, including infographics, short videos, and audio clips, to complement each "intercultural point," as well as longer-form, journalistic business cases and interviews for the "professional perspectives" section.In sum, the textbook's organization and alignment with recognized standards is readily apparent.Units are sequenced to progress from the ACTFL intermediate to advanced-low or -mid level (CEFR B2 to C1 levels).The earlier units include shorter, structured tasks, such as writing