The Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) has launched a new website for English as a Second Language (ESL) learners who are preparing for certification as a nursing assistant. The site is called English for the Nursing Assistant (www.cnaenglish.org).
"This exciting project brings together technology, career technical education, and English language learning to help immigrants prepare for a career," said John Fleischman, Assistant Superintendent of Technology Services at SCOE. "Given the huge demand for free ESL instruction, we are confident that the site will be well-received by students and teachers of entry level health career courses."
Website visitors learn positive verbal and non-verbal communication skills, enabling them to communicate effectively on the job with both patients and other health care staff. Each lesson offers ESL students multiple opportunities to practice: listening for main ideas in a lecture, note-taking, pronouncing and understanding key vocabulary, reading academic text, and answering multiple choice questions that are similar to those found on the state CNA certification test.
"The site makes full use of multimedia, including video, animation and interactive learning activities," said Andrea Willis, SCOE's Director of Internet and Media Services.
Through this website, visitors will be able to learn the vocabulary necessary for employment in the health care field. They will learn to identify common communication barriers, as well as the meaning of idioms and words with multiple meanings. In addition, there are lessons available to show how to identify good communication strategies and how to clarify and confirm instructions.
The English for the Nursing Assistant website was produced by the same team of developers that created the highly-successful USA Learns website which gets more than 11,000 daily visitors seeking to improve their English skills.