Silvana Dushku works Faculty Administrator & Director of UCF Global English Language Programs, Florida. She was Director of the Community Language Program, TESOL Certificate Program, and Language Program Management Certificate Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has taught EFL/ESL for over 35 years, and has been involved in language program development, curriculum and materials design, and teacher training in Europe and the USA. Her interests include teaching and researching vocabulary and spoken English, and applications of corpus linguistics and technology in ELT. Paul Thompson is a Reader in Applied Corpus Linguistics at the University of Birmingham. He has twenty years of EFL/EAP teaching experience in Japan and the UK, and has worked in higher education since 1983. His interests are in both written and spoken language in academic contexts, in the linguistic aspects of human-computer interaction, and in uses of educational technologies in language learning.
The authors designed Campus Talk to ""help learners develop effective speaking skills and strategies for communicating successfully in their everyday social life, both on and off campus"" (p. xiii). Did they accomplish this task? Our answer is a unanimous and enthusiastic yes. These two volumes can be particularly useful not only for English language learners who plan to pursue their studies in predominantly English-speaking universities but also for international teaching or research assistants whose goals are to enhance their level of English speaking proficiency, improve their ability to maintain meaningful communication in academic or nonacademic contexts, or communicate their ideas in a pragmatically appropriate manner. Teachers working with upper-to intermediate-level learners of English who need increased confidence in speaking or in successfully communicating their intended meaning will find the two-volume Campus Talk insightful, as it offers plentiful authentic and real-world communication practice activities.--Iroda Saydazimova, Westminster International University in Tashkent & Ulugbek Nurmukhamedov, Northeastern Illinois University ""TESOL Journal""