Página 12 - Teacher’s book - ENGLISH FOR HEALTH-CARE PROVIDERS

10 ENGLISH FOR HEALTH-CARE PROVIDERS
2. Word-definition matching exercises
These exercises help students relate the meaning of a word with a full definition (or expla-
nation) of the term.
3. Classification exercises
These ask students to classify a number of items (health-care jobs, pains, etc.) into given
categories (healthcare fields, type of pain, etc.).
5.LISTENING
Each unit contains one (or two) listening activities based on videos that have been carefully
chosen and transcribed. The duration of the listenings is variably, but most range between
2 and 5 minutes.
The videos are available from YouTube, one of the most popular video-sharing websites
on the Internet. YouTube was chosen as the repository for listening activities as it is free,
available to students at all times, and it has a wide variety of resources like documentaries,
commercials, tutorials, etc. that are relevant for health-care providers. In fact, the selected
videos, from a variety of sources, are relevant for the unit they are found in. The appear-
ance of videos displayed in the “Related Videos” section can also help teachers and stu-
dents visualise other relevant and potentially interesting videos. One disadvantage of using
YouTube is that links may cease to be available. Should this happen, teachers and authors
should find replacements in their classes/further editions of this book.
The linguistic difficulty of each video varies, with some of them being more challenging
than others from a grammatical and vocabulary point of view. As to the pronunciation of
the videos, they exemplify a variety of accents, such as different American English accents,
several British English accents, Australian English, or English spoken by fluent non-native
speakers. This variety aims at helping students familiarise themselves with the inherent
variety of accents any language like English exhibits, and which is necessary for students.
As is the case with reading text, teachers should reassure students that it is not always
necessary to understand every single word in the videos. Instead, students should think
instead of the context and the real-life situation that is described as they try to listen for the
main ideas and necessary information to complete the exercises based on the listening.
Although students should known they are not expected to understand every single word
from the videos, it may reassure them to know some things about each video before do-
ing the listening activities. In this respect, teachers could prepare students for the listening
activity before it is carried out by a vocabulary presentation of key words to understanding.
A vocabulary presentation of key words, for example, could be one aspect of a necessary
step to a listening task, i.e. preparing the students for it. This preparation could also include
an introduction to the specific topic of the listening, a discussion, or giving the students the
necessary linguistic and cultural information to understand what they will hear.