Do Filipino Nurses Need Remedial English Classes Before Going Overseas?

prmenrs, RN · Jul 26, 2008

As a nurse who works w/LOTS of Filipino nurses, IMHO, it's not English lessons that are needed as much as accent reduction. Depending on where the nurse is from in the Philippines, the accents can be brutal to understand. And if that wasn't enough, many times the pt population is Spanish speaking. So now we're trying to understand Spanglish w/a Philippine accent.

The basis of accent reduction is phonemic awareness--being able to distinguish between different phonemes--kind of pieces of words. Speech therapists work w/this a lot.

One example is "he" and "she"--this is often very hard to understand from a Filipina speaker. The words might both come out sounding like "see".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_awareness

jennygump · Jul 26, 2008

Daly,

I think the IELTS exam is a good measure of English proficiency. I can vouch for those who have an overall band of 8.5/9.0. I know three nurses (all second coursers) with that grade and they speak near native English. However, I think the passing score for nurses is much lower - 6.5 or 7.0. And I would suspect most nurses get scores around that cut-off mark.

IMO you cannot learn English in 3 months. The remedial class you proposed would not make much difference.

Not all schools are created equal. And many of the good universities are not into nursing. Nursing is pang masa.

suzanne4, RN · Jul 27, 2008

It is not a point of learning English from scratch, all of you have had English in school; just depends on how many of you use it now all of the time or use the Tagalog.

The other issue that comes up is where the teachers were from that taught you English back when you are were in grade school and up, if their skills were not good, then the students under them are going to have issues with it later on.

And this is exactly what we are seeing with the English exams, whether the IELTS as well as the TOEFL series.

The English instructors need to be native speakers and this is even more important when one is preparing for these exams if one is going to have a review. That is also why we push English here so that everyone can learn and use sentence structure as they will need to do to be able to work in another country and pass these required exams.

If one has a good, basic understanding of English, then there is no reason that they cannot be quite successful with a three month course to prepare for these exams. They really do work, but you cannot take someone that has not been speaking English in years and get them thru the course in three months and functioning at the college level. That is impossible to do.

linejes · Jul 27, 2008

i never though that this will going to be a problem for us filipino. Anyway, im not suprised Everything is deteriorating here in this country.

When i was in elementary, highschool and even in college. Everyone is hesitant to speak in english.

THIS MAY BE DUE TO THE FOLLOWING:

1. MOST OF THE FILIPINO ARE HYPERCRITICAL TO THE GRAMMAR (I AM MORE CONFIDENT TO TALK TO AN AMERICAN OR OTHER NATIVE SPEAKER THAN TO THE FILIPINO)

2. tHE RULE OF THE THUMB IN THIS COUNTRY IS WHEN YOU CANT SPEAK PERFECT ENGLISH, DONT EVER ATTEMPT TO USE THE LANGUAGE ( I END UP BEING MUTE! DO THEY EVEN KNOW THAT NO FILIPINO CAN SPEAKS FILIPINO LANGUAGE PERFECTLY)

3. YOU HAVE TO MIMIC THE AMERICAN ACCENT OR THE BRITISH ACCENT. LOL (IF YOU DONT HAVE THIS ACCENT, YOUR ENGLISH IS LOW CLASS)

fILIPINO DONT NEED TO LEARN ENGLISH. eNGLISH IS ALREADY PART OF OUR CULTURE AND THE FILIPINO LANGUAGE ITSELF. wHAT WE NEED IS TO REMOVE SOME BAD BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES TOWARD THIS LANGUAGE.

suzanne4, RN · Jul 27, 2008

Sorry, but beg to differ with you. If skills were that good, then the English exams would not be required by all countries. They would be waived. and since there are issues with many that cannot pass the first time, this only proves that there are problems.

And you always want a native speaker when learning another language right from the beginning.

Advanced Practice Columnist / Guide · Jul 27, 2008

As a nurse who works w/LOTS of Filipino nurses, IMHO, it's not English lessons that are needed as much as accent reduction. Depending on where the nurse is from in the Philippines, the accents can be brutal to understand. And if that wasn't enough, many times the pt population is Spanish speaking. So now we're trying to understand Spanglish w/a Philippine accent.
The basis of accent reduction is phonemic awareness--being able to distinguish between different phonemes--kind of pieces of words. Speech therapists work w/this a lot.
One example is "he" and "she"--this is often very hard to understand from a Filipina speaker. The words might both come out sounding like "see".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_awareness

I agree with you on this. I learned basic English from a PUBLIC elementary school in the Philippines. The teachers taught me sentence construction, grammar, and spelling well. I attribute my command of written English to my elementary school teachers. However, I did not learn spoken English from them. They spoke English like a Filipino pronouncing each word the way it is spoken in the Philippines - very hard to understand by an American. I learned to speak American English by watching American mass media while growing up in the Philippines. I ried to speak American English even when I was in the Philippines and didn't mind others thinking I am pretending to be American or upper-class.

Daly City RN · Jul 27, 2008

i never though that this will going to be a problem for us filipino. Anyway, im not suprised Everything is deteriorating here in this country.
When i was in elementary, highschool and even in college. Everyone is hesitant to speak in english.
THIS MAY BE DUE TO THE FOLLOWING:
1. MOST OF THE FILIPINO ARE HYPERCRITICAL TO THE GRAMMAR (I AM MORE CONFIDENT TO TALK TO AN AMERICAN OR OTHER NATIVE SPEAKER THAN TO THE FILIPINO)
2. tHE RULE OF THE THUMB IN THIS COUNTRY IS WHEN YOU CANT SPEAK PERFECT ENGLISH, DONT EVER ATTEMPT TO USE THE LANGUAGE ( I END UP BEING MUTE! DO THEY EVEN KNOW THAT NO FILIPINO CAN SPEAKS FILIPINO LANGUAGE PERFECTLY)
3. YOU HAVE TO MIMIC THE AMERICAN ACCENT OR THE BRITISH ACCENT. LOL (IF YOU DONT HAVE THIS ACCENT, YOUR ENGLISH IS LOW CLASS)
fILIPINO DONT NEED TO LEARN ENGLISH. eNGLISH IS ALREADY PART OF OUR CULTURE AND THE FILIPINO LANGUAGE ITSELF. wHAT WE NEED IS TO REMOVE SOME BAD BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES TOWARD THIS LANGUAGE.

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I have been living in the U.S.A. for 30 years now and have been working with Filipino-American nurses for the past 27 years. I beg to differ with you, those who were born and educated in the Philippines I say well over 90 percent of them speak in grammatically incorrect English in some degree or another. (I am first to admit that I attended public school in grade school and my command of the English language leaves a lot of room for improvement.)

Most Filipinos mistakenly believe that the Philippines is an "English-speaking country". Let's stop and think for a moment. Many Filipinos speak English but they are not native speakers, for them English is a second language, but there's nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately these Filipinos speak it in grammatically incorrect English. Millions and millions of the latest generation of Filipinos have received inferior education both from public and private schools in the Philippines. The end result is the vast majority of Filipinos are not fluent in the English language, there is something very wrong with that. You can blame the Philippine government and the Philippine society for allowing this situation to happen.

I have been visiting the Philippines just about every two years so no one can say that I have been out of touch with the old country. Like millions of Filipino-Americans we watch the two Filipino channels on cable TV to continually keep in touch with the Philippines on a daily basis. Sadly, the evidence is out there on the Filipino TV channels, the vast majority of Filipinos can't speak English well.

No you don't have to mimic the American or the British accent. That would be a futile and ridiculous attempt to sound like a foreigner. Many Filipinos in the Philippines think that they don't have an accent. Yes, you do! Everyone has an accent. It is just that when you go to a foreign country that your accent becomes very obvious.

During my last year in nursing school I thought it would be fun to speak mostly in English. I recruited my seat mate in all of our classes, an intelligent male student nurse, to speak English with me even outside the classes. Our other classmates thought we were nuts, but when I explained to many of them that we were practicing to sharpen our English grammar because we planned "to go abroad" right after graduation. Two of them, both with very good grades, joined our exclusive group. That was in 1977-78 and I left the Philippines in 1978. Had I not practiced to speak English on a daily basis back then, I would have probably found myself in a more difficult situation after I moved to California, U.S.A.

Since this forum is mostly read by nurses, and by Filipino nurses in particular, then if you are a Filipino nurse who hope to come to the U.S.A. or to any other foreign country I suggest that you practice to speak and write English in grammatically correct manner. Knowledge of English is very advantageous to any Filipino. As everyone knows English is an international language, used in business, education, health and lately the world wide web. So go ahead and learn it well.

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Advanced Practice Columnist / Guide · Jul 28, 2008

i never though that this will going to be a problem for us filipino. Anyway, im not suprised Everything is deteriorating here in this country.
When i was in elementary, highschool and even in college. Everyone is hesitant to speak in english.
THIS MAY BE DUE TO THE FOLLOWING:
1. MOST OF THE FILIPINO ARE HYPERCRITICAL TO THE GRAMMAR (I AM MORE CONFIDENT TO TALK TO AN AMERICAN OR OTHER NATIVE SPEAKER THAN TO THE FILIPINO)
2. tHE RULE OF THE THUMB IN THIS COUNTRY IS WHEN YOU CANT SPEAK PERFECT ENGLISH, DONT EVER ATTEMPT TO USE THE LANGUAGE ( I END UP BEING MUTE! DO THEY EVEN KNOW THAT NO FILIPINO CAN SPEAKS FILIPINO LANGUAGE PERFECTLY)
3. YOU HAVE TO MIMIC THE AMERICAN ACCENT OR THE BRITISH ACCENT. LOL (IF YOU DONT HAVE THIS ACCENT, YOUR ENGLISH IS LOW CLASS)
fILIPINO DONT NEED TO LEARN ENGLISH. eNGLISH IS ALREADY PART OF OUR CULTURE AND THE FILIPINO LANGUAGE ITSELF. wHAT WE NEED IS TO REMOVE SOME BAD BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES TOWARD THIS LANGUAGE.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with a Filipino trying to speak English with an American accent or as close to an American accent as possible. I actually have been told that I speak English with an American accent and have been mistaken for someone who was born or raised in the US by co-workers. I am not speaking the way I do to be pretentious. I just want others to get what I am trying to say as clearly as possible especially when patient care-related information is involved.

As a nurse practitioner in the US, I work closely with attending docs and resident physicians and their biggest complaint when a newer Filipino nurse pages them about a patient concern is that they couldn't understand what the nurse is saying over the phone. I, myself, have been paged many times by the same Filipino nurses in question and have spoken to them over the phone. What I notice is that the newer Filipino nurses for the most part do speak English with acceptable grammar but the accent is so thick it makes it so hard for an American to understand what they are saying. I also notice some regional differences in accents further making communication more difficult, even for me, as I also couldn't understand their English as well.

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Jul 28, 2008

I work with several nurses who grew up in the Philippines. Two of them speak very grammatically correct, only-slightly-accented English. Another, who has lived in Canada for more than 30 years, still has such a thick accent and poor grammar that I can hardly understand her. Her handwriting and written English don't help much, since I can't read her charting so may be missing important information. But this issue isn't limited to people from the Philippines... we have residents and fellows from all over the world working at our hospital and the tower of Babel would be a walk in the park some days compared to working on our unit. Some of the middle eastern countries have very difficult accents. I find myself asking these doctors to repeat themselves over and over, and then I may even need them to write it down for me... and hope I can understand what they've written. People's lives are at stake. For these reasons, it's essential that minimum standards are set for fluency.

linejes · Aug 4, 2008

:wink2:My dear,

Im just trying to point out that proper attitude is essential in learning a language (whatever language it may be).

With regards to the need for remedial classes, it should be case to case basis. Since the english language is our second language (or for some they consider it just their third or fourth language. first our local dialects, second our lingua franca, third english) here in the Philippines, polishing and practice are the more appropriate words for me.

"Dont also forget to take remedial classes on communication process and therapeutic communication, because i also noticed in many forum, these skills are being forgotten:wink2:".

Daly City RN · Aug 6, 2008

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My wife and I attended a wedding in San Jose, Calif. last weekend and I overheard a relative telling her grandson during the reception:

"Don't do that no more!"

Wrong grammar.

She is a former teacher from the Philippines.

Incredible.

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