The Cupertino Courier
Education
ESL students come to terms with health care vocabulary
By Crystal Lu
Cynthia Cheng, a teacher with Sunnyvale-Cupertino Adult Community Education, writes the word "gastrology" on the white board and draws a vertical line to break it into "gastro" and "logy."
"Do you remember what gastro means?" Cheng asks her students.
"Stomach," the students answer.
"Yes, and you know 'logy' means study," says Cheng. "So gastrology is the study of the stomach."
Cheng's class is called Vocational English for Health Care. It is a free ESL (English as a second language) course that targets non-native speakers who are interested in entering the field, where the demand for workers is much higher than the supply.
The California Employment Development Department has predicted that nine out of the 25 fastest growing occupations in the state by 2010 are in health care services.
"As far as I know, this is the only vocational ESL for health care program in Santa Clara County," says June Wong, ESL program specialist for Sunnyvale-Cupertino Adult Community Education. The adult education center is located at 591 W. Fremont Ave. in Sunnyvale.
The ESL program has another vocational class in business computers. It also offers regular ESL classes at seven levels from beginning literacy to advanced high, and a conversation class at an even higher level. In addition, there is a community-based English tutoring workshop to help parents communicate with teachers and administrators at their children's schools.
The ESL for health care program was created four years ago because some non-native speakers found the medical certificate programs at the adult education center too difficult and dropped out, according to Wong.
Tam Nguyen was in the vocational ESL class for nearly two months before entering the certified nursing assistant program.
"The ESL class helped me a lot," says Nguyen. "It gave me the basics."
Cheng has been teaching the course for approximately three years.
"I enjoy vocational language training because it gives students valuable job skills," says Cheng, who has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of California-Davis, a master's degree in teaching English as a foreign/second language from San Francisco State University and a teaching credential.
Cheng has no formal training in medicine but enough medical knowledge to teach the vocabulary. Her background in language education is helpful in explaining the Latin roots of each medical term.
"This class offers a language foundation for students to build various kinds of careers in health care," says Cheng.
Jan Juang, Teresa Sun and Jane Yuan would like to be certified home health aides. Elizabeth Tabarez, a Sunnyvale resident, is taking the class to prepare herself for the administrative medical assistant program at the adult education center.
Nina Kao, formerly a registered nurse in Taiwan, is planning to take an exam in May to qualify as a nurse in California.
"I know all the medical terms in Chinese, but I'm not so familiar with them in English," says Kao. "This class helps me study for my exam."
Kay Cho, a Cupertino resident who used to be a pharmacist in Korea, is not sure which path she would like to take in the American health care field.
"I'll get familiar with the terminology first and decide what to do later," she says.
There is such a variety of health care jobs that the adult education center can't cover all of them in its medical certificate programs.
"I had a student who wanted to be a phlebotomist, to draw blood," says Cheng. "We don't have a lab for that, so she went to a community college after taking my class."
"We don't have the facilities to train X-ray technicians, either," says Wong. "Our main purpose is to help students get jobs. If we don't have the medical certificate program they want here, we'll refer them to community colleges that have it."
For more information about the vocational ESL course, call the Adult Education Center at 408.522.2704.