Aviation English Reviews and Testimonials
Find out what teachers using Aviation English think of the course!
" Taking into account the ICAO Language Proficiency Requirements for aviation personnel and lack of the material it's a very necessary and useful book.
Aviation English for ICAO Compliance. By Henry Emery and Andy Roberts.
The principal authors are experienced aviation English teachers. The 127 pages hold 12 units, either as self-study or for classroom use. They are said to teach communication skills for pilots and air traffic controllers, helping them to achieve and maintain ICAO Operational Level 4.
Each colorfully illustrated unit begins with a reading on an aviation theme, and is followed by listening and speaking activities presented with professionally produced video and/or audio recordings. Following suggestions from ICAO Doc 9835, the units are organized by aviation topics such as aerodrome layout, runway incursions, fly by wire, electrical failure, engine failure, bird strike, hydraulic failure, on-board fire, gear/braking problems, decompression. Despite a lack of empirical evidence to support inclusion, this seems like a rich collection of industry topics that will be of interest and benefit to aviation personnel. The accompanying recordings, delivered for the classroom at an appropriately slower rate than in the real world, use a wide range of accented Englishes, which gives Aviation English a solid international footprint.
Systematically organized among these topics are exercises that address features of pronunciation and English grammatical structure and include, for example, word and sentence stress, intonation and pausing, diphthongs, question forms, and past tense endings, which are all issues probably beyond the knowledge of flight personnel to organize and tackle. In addition, each unit contains a series of functions of language that include asking for clarification, explaining how something works, stating intentions, announcing decisions, expressing non-understanding, and so on. Each of four sections in the Units contain vocabulary exercises, and the back of the book has a pair work section, and listening scripts.
The accompanying Teacher's Book (which we did not see for this review) should help less well trained aviation instructors to operate the contents.
Because Aviation English is designed in the tradition of English teaching texts, its color and interesting graphic design may, perversely, cause it not be taken as seriously as it warrants by the aviation community. Even in the hands of minimally qualified language instructors, this well-conceived English training product can play a central role in an English for Aviation program that is targeting L 4.
Graham Elliot, FAA, written for the International Journal of Applied Aviation Studies.
As a former NY based Jet Captain I know first hand the underlying need finally being addressed by ICAO's Language Proficiency Requirements. Now, as a Europe-based professional ESL teacher I can also speak of the challenges of sourcing and/or developing the materials needed to properly meet the training needs of those seeking ICAO compliance and, perhaps more importantly, needing to actually put safe, "plain-English" conversant crew members on the flight deck.
Kudos to Henry, Andy and the rest of the Macmillan team for filling the void. The Aviation English package; Student's and CD-ROMS, Teachers Book, CDs and supporting web site, provides the all-inclusive solution that I needed to bring my students up to speed. While technically accurate, particularly on phraseology, the plain-English skills training demanded by today's exploding air travel industry is where the materials really shine. I could go on, but I will simply say this: I highly recommend Macmillan's Aviation English Resource package to anyone interested in proficiency in Aviation English.
Thomas Simon
Aviation English Instructor
and Language Consultant
Gdansk, Poland
I sincerely want to congratulate Macmillan, your team, Andy and Henry for this very professional material. I am specially glad because it is not just phraseology, as most of the books that I have previously reviewed, but it covers plain English (in an aviation context), very nicely and effectively and that is something that all English for Aviation Teachers were always looking for. For sure, I will recommend it to my colleagues.
I think that it will be very useful for Aviation Teachers around the world because it fits exactly what is needed to help pilots and ATCOs to reach an maintain language proficiency at Operational Level 4, according to ICAO language proficiency requirements.
William Aranda, ICAO Language Proficiency Expert, Peru
I'd like to mention that in my opinion you made a brilliant choice of aviation topics. Tasks set and pair work exercises help to train main skills in comprehension and interaction which are very necessary for passing the test successfully. Plenty of exercises, whose purposefulness is vocabulary training, are also very well chosen and organized."
Helen Gamayunova, Ukraine State Aviation Administration
" Wow !! I am impressed with the Aviation book.
Thank you very much and hats off to the authors of the book. A need has been met due to their efforts."
Amy Mabrouk, Teacher Coordinator, Amideast, Tunis
I was very impressed with the in-depth quality of the material. As a pilot I found the material to be true-to-life and as an English teacher, easy to use.
Britt Karlin, Aviation English Teacher, Thailand
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