Early in 2005, Yale University Press (YUP) released “¡A su salud!: Spanish for Health Professionals,” a multimedia-based course joining the growing number of Spanish language courses for medical professionals developed by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's health care and language professionals, faculty, and staff. The course is designed to help English-speaking health professionals and students in the health professions and social work improve their communication with Spanish-speaking patients and to familiarize them with health-related issues affecting the recent Hispanic immigrant community in the United States. An intermediate-level knowledge of Spanish is recommended for this course.
The “¡A su salud! (To Your Health!)” course packet consists of two DVDs with one CD-ROM installation disk for setup information, Web resources, and a workbook (Cuaderno). Because of its versatility of formats, this product could be used for self-paced study, distance learning, traditional classroom instruction, or a combination of settings. This course uniquely encompasses a Spanish-language course in the context of the public health arena and the Hispanic immigrant culture to make learning Spanish more meaningful and useful to the student.
Though the authors claim that the three components of “¡A su salud!” are equally important, the DVDs are the heart of the course and could be used alone. The two DVDs work with a DVD player in a computer or television. They contain a variety of interactive and creative learning activities with video clips in a telenovela (soap opera) style plot reminiscent of Destinos, an earlier, popular Spanish-language telecourse produced by McGraw-Hill.
Each DVD contains two Unidades (Units), each of which is divided into four sections: “Preparación (Preparation),” “Repaso (Review),” “Historia (History),” and “Aplicación (Application).” As their Spanish titles indicate, these sections help students acquire background information in “Preparación,” review the previous episode in “Repaso,” view the unit's episode or main plot in “Historia,” and apply the language lessons in a specific cultural and health context in “Aplicación.” Students can easily view the four units in any order, and they can go back and review units as often as needed. Students will see that the plot, delivered in the eight video clips and exercises in “Historia,” is reinforced in the exercises on the DVDs, in the workbook, and in some of the Web resources.
The ninety-six-minute Episodios (two Episodios in each unit) were produced with a cast of twenty-six actors to portray some of the linguistic, social, and racial diversity of Latin American Spanish-speaking countries. Set in a rural community, the telenovela takes the students inside the lives of a group of Hispanic health professionals, their families, and their patients in a fictional community health center, La Comunidad. The characters include an American nurse who is learning Spanish. Despite the overly dramatic tone of the video clips, the actors convincingly portray their characters and convey an engaging plot with a rich variety of Spanish accents, dialects, and body language, as well as other silent forms of communication. In some units, students can listen to the actors' dialogue, read subtitles, and follow along with English-language lessons.
In a health context, students are asked to reflect on specific medical issues they might encounter with their patients, such as pregnancy and HIV/AIDS. They can also listen to interviews and analyze cultural expectations of Spanish-speaking patients such as the different immunization standards of the United States and Latin American countries. Interestingly, cultural stereotypes, some profanities, and Spanish colloquialisms are used, adding to the realism of the video clips. Universal issues such as the immigrants' longing for their cultural roots and difficulties in learning English are also addressed.
The workbook supplements the primary content of the DVDs by providing additional grammar and vocabulary exercises, background information, and further grammatical and cultural explanations, which are also based on the sequence of episodes and exercises on the DVDs. Answers to exercise questions are in the back of the workbook.
The links to the Web resources component of the course are accessible through the DVDs and include a course Website and the Recursos site. The course Website comes with an instructor's manual in portable document format (PDF) and provides additional interactive exercises and other resources introduced on the DVDs. Students with Internet access can also access a list of relevant Web resources, such as online dictionaries and patient education materials, on the Recursos site.
The DVDs have well-developed instructional design principles and applications: objectives, easy-to-follow installation instructions, trouble-shooting instructions, help screens, self-assessment exercises, explanations for graded quizzes, printable unit tests, and a time estimate for completing each exercise. In some activities, students can record their audio responses, redo exercises, review video clips and files, and save and print their responses. Exercises are available in multiple-choice and short-essay formats. However, the video clips cannot be fast-forwarded, and the translation button located on the bottom left-hand side of slides in all lessons is barely visible. Additionally, no feedback is available for some exercises, and viewing requires a lot of clicking to select answers and proceed in each section.
The benefits of providing culturally relevant lessons for improving acquisition and comprehension of Spanish in a health care setting outweigh the technical flaws of the DVDs. This bilingual course is well suited as part of a Web-based course or traditional classroom instruction. However, it is not recommended for self-paced study due to the length and intensity of materials.