Valley Medical Center is the largest and most comprehensive health care delivery system between Seattle and Tacoma. The hospital approached us because its international Registered Nurses, Patient Care Associates, and housekeepers needed to improve their English pronunciation skills. While these employees' technical qualifications and job skills were excellent, native English-speaking managers and patients were having difficulty comprehending their speech.

The RNs, PCAs, and housekeepers represented two different departments - Patient Care Services and Environmental Services - each with unique job functions and job-specific vocabulary. In addition, the students themselves represented a variety of cultures - African, Latin American, and South East Asian - each with a different pronunciation of the English language.

The challenge involved developing an English pronunciation curriculum that prioritized these employees' job-specific vocabulary and phrases, and at the same time corrected the unique mispronunciation habits of each represented culture.

English League custom-developed a syllabus for the course, incorporating each department's unique and most frequently used job-related vocabulary and phrases. Each represented culture's pronunciation habits were addressed and corrected regarding their job-specific vocabulary. Classes were provided on-site at Valley Medical Center in Renton,WA. Class times were adjusted to the employees' available study times.

The following training solutions were implemented (click for course descriptions):

English as a Second Language training:
· Accent reduction: job-specific
· Business writing: forms completion
· Vocabulary expansion