About Us

ABAX is an independent publisher of ELT materials with offices in Tokyo, Japan and in San Francisco, California. ABAX texts are in use in hundreds of universities, colleges, high schools and private language schools around the world.

Adult ELT Materials: Our main focus is on making skills and two-skills materials for classroom use with adults and young adults.

Enjoyable to Use, Based on Research: In creating materials our goals are pretty simple—to make English language learning materials that teachers enjoy using and that learners both enjoy learning from AND learn from. No magic bullets. Just a desire to ground our materials in what is known about how people learn language.

And in the larger scheme? A world where more people can talk with one another. A world where people have greater understanding of one another. 

American Plus: The format we follow is American Plus—that is, while American English is the main element in all our texts, we also expose students to other standard variations, increasingly important in a world in which English is more and more the way people from different nations communicate. In other words, we aim our texts at students who wish to learn American English as a tool for communication but as a tool they are likely to use in an international setting.

Best-sellers: Our best-selling texts are Communication Spotlight: Listening Skills & Speaking Strategies and Top-Up Listening, both three-level series.

New in 2010! Fiction in Action: Whodunit. Something not seen before—a textbook designed to act as a bridge to extensive reading. Over 12 units encompassing two original six-chapter stories, the book introduces students to the hows and the pleasures of reading accessible fiction in English. For college and high school level reading classes. Check in on this website for more information on this book's release.

Custom Publishing: In addition to the ABAX imprint books seen here, ABAX has also written, edited and produced customized texts for customers such as Berlitz International, URBest Publishing in Taiwan and Kyushu Sangyo University in southern Japan (this last one based on the Communication Spotlight series).