CHAPTER 1
Why You Should Use This Book
Welcome
This book provides you with effective tools to communicate in Spanish with your patients. Read this chapter to help yourself use these tools more successfully. This information on communication, respect in Hispanic culture, and the nature of learning will make it easier for you to learn Spanish and speak it with your patients.
Learn to greet and part appropriately; to extract the information you need from your patients; and to further develop your Spanish skills.
Your Goal Is Successful Communication
Have you ever heard or said, "I studied Spanish for years and couldn't speak a word"? Or have you decided that it is too difficult to learn Spanish because you are too old and children learn better and faster?
The solution is simple: Communication, not perfection, is your goal! Make communication your goal and learn Spanish in the same manner as children learn it. Your result? Successful communication in Spanish.
Communication and Language
The majority (90 percent) of your communication is nonverbal. Of this, 30 percent is your intonation, and the remainder is body language. Your words represent only 10 percent (some say 7 percent) of your communication!
Success with Nonverbal Communication
Do you realize that babies are always communicating with you through body language? Children hear and understand before they can speak. The baby may slap at the bottle or push it away. If uncomfortable, the bebé cries.
Success with Verbal Communication
Young mothers today use sign language to communicate with babies as young as six months of age. At a party I attended one weekend, a young mother, having just fed her baby, intuited and confirmed via sign language that the baby just wanted the chupete (pacifier) and not more food. Sign language, an aspect of body language, created successful communication. As a result, both Mommy and baby were happy.
Your patients will be equally happy and appreciative if you communicate with them in Spanish, however simply. Like communication with babies, you will begin with simple expressions—one word or phrase. Your efforts will be immediately rewarded with a smile or a gesture. Wow! This person cares about me enough to try to communicate, the patient says to himself or herself.
Why You Want to Use Spanish
Despite the fact that many native speakers bring an interpreter or that you may have one, your efforts to communicate are a powerful, heartfelt message: I care about you! The respect that you will give your patients through your efforts will be invaluable.
Immediate Success with This Book
This book's goal is to teach you to communicate with a few clear words. To succeed, you keep your communication simple.
Why? If you use too many words, you may miscommunicate. Or your listener may believe you understand everything and overwhelm you with a barrage of words.
In this book you will use simple, direct methods to learn medical Spanish. No complex grammar rules. No memorization of verb conjugations. You can use this book to be courteous and begin communicating immediately.
Learning Methods Determine Learning Success
How We Adults Learn
We adults focus on perfection. We write the answers. We worry what others will think. We are inhibited about responding. We memorize vocabulary in a straightforward, boring way. We worry about what we do not know instead of paying attention to what we are learning.
How Children Learn
Children learn language faster than adults do. Why? Children employ a variety of learning activities. These activities include right-brained, creative functions that imprint on the left brain.
• Children sing songs, which opens both brain hemispheres. The rhythm imprints the words, pronunciations, and sentence patterns into the children's memories.
• Children play learning games, which provide repetition and fun. Repetition puts facts into our memory and builds useful habits. Fun relaxes us so that we learn new information and skills more easily and quickly.
• Children use vision, touch, and action to learn vocabulary. They identify pictures, touch body parts, and act out verbs. In this way they directly connect words with the physical reality.
Children are absorbed in the activity that produces language learning. All their energy goes into that activity.
Results of Learning Methods
The following diagram illustrates how different methods of learning determine how much language we remember after twenty-four hours.
After twenty-four hours, we remember 90 percent of all words that we see, say, and hear while speaking Spanish. That is why we learn best by speaking aloud while we read and touch the words and while we stand up, walk, and/or tap while saying the words. This is the reason that you will learn Spanish more easily and quickly if you always follow the practice directions in this book.
Learning Methods in This Book
You are going to learn the way our children learn—through fun, music, and action.
Why Fun?
Our attention and energy are naturally drawn to fun activities, and learning requires our attention and energy. Fun is an instant reward that motivates us to repeat the activity, and repetition assists learning. Fun relaxes us and dissolves fear and self-criticism. Our comfortable engagement makes our minds open and flexible. We naturally learn more and learn it more easily.
Why Music?
In chapter 14 of Eric Jensen's Brain-Based Learning, we learn that both sides of the brain are involved in processing music. The pulse of the body (heart rate) tends to synchronize with the beat of the music; the faster the music, the faster the pulse. Music relaxes the learners and stimulates the limbic region of the brain that affects long-term memory. This combination of language with music dramatically increases motivation and learning. Many of us have heard of the "Mozart" effect.
Because music is so useful in enhancing our learning process, the CD Spanish for Fun and Forever was created to add fun and interest to your learning experience. The lyrics to the tracks on this CD are presented in chapter 5. Why Action?
Using physical actions to learn Spanish is based on the strategy of Total Physical Response (known as TPR). This is a right-brained approach to second-language learning. It was researched and popularized by Dr. James J. Asher, professor of psychology. "TPR (total physical response) is a method of teaching language using physical movement to react to verbal input in order to reduce student inhibitions and lower their...
