TESOL Student's Experience

I would like to write my own experience of language barriers I ever encountered when I lived abroad. Last year, I studied and lived in the Philippines, since I was pursued my doctor degree there. When I lived there due to the hot weather and sometimes I eat some spicy food, so my gums were often inflame. At the beginning , I just went to pharmacy to buy some anti-inflammatory drug and take it, but a month later ,I found that was not working, so I went to dental clinic to see dentist. I knew if I go to see dentist, they will ask my symptom and that will be refer a plenty of medical vocabulary, so before I saw the dentist I prepared and memorized some medical vocabulary I might be encountered and asked. When the dentist asked ”what are your symptom ?”, I replied   “my gums are swollen, inflamed and festering”. And dentist also asked “how long has this been going on?”, then I relied,” this symptoms has been going over a month”. Since above questions I prepared in advance, so I can replied. But to be honest, when the dentist prescribed the medicine to me, I could not understand the name of the medicine at all. To ensure safety, I had to take out my mobile phone to translate the medicine. After the translation, I understood the efficacy of the medicine. Miscommunication in the healthcare sector can be life-threatening. The rising number of migrant patients and foreign-trained staff means that communication errors between a healthcare practitioner and patient when one or both are speaking a second(Renata F. I. Meuter, Cindy Gallois , Norman S. Segalowitz, Andrew G. Ryder, and Julia Hocking,2015)

We found that language barriers in healthcare lead to miscommunication between the medical professional and patient, reducing both parties’ satisfaction and decreasing the quality of healthcare delivery and patient safety.(Hilal AI Shamsi, Abdullah G. Almutairi, Sulaiman AIMashrafi & Talib AI Kalbani, 2020) .Above example was just a real experience I met. So it gave me the revelation is that, in our teaching, we can according to experience in life, learning, teaching in a real scene has, for example, a hospital, buy medicine, an injection of the scene, some of the common session expression, such as, describe their symptoms, sore throat, cough, fever, stomach pain, sneezing, itching, etc. . Some commonly used drug names vocabulary, such as, anti-inflammatory drugs, antipyretics, cough medicines, painkillers and so on. And the course of medication, for example, three times a day for three days. These expressions should be understood, and spoken, because patients and doctors can accurately convey information, can effectively reduce misunderstanding, to ensure the personal safety of patients.

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