SERVICIO NACIONAL DE APRENDIZAJE SENA

CENTER FOR HUMAN TALENT TRAINING IN HEALTH

ENGLISH CONVERSATION SERIES
REGIONAL DISTRITO CAPITAL

TOPIC:
Health tourism 03 – Comprehension Stage.
TIME:
3 hours
COMPETENCE:
Comprender textos en inglés en forma escrita y auditiva.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
 Encontrar vocabulario y expresiones de inglés técnico en anuncios, folletos, páginas web., etc.
 Comunicarse en tareas sencillas y habituales que requieren un intercambio simple y directo de
información cotidiana y técnica.
 Realizar intercambios sociales y prácticos muy breves, con un vocabulario suficiente para hacer una
exposición o mantener una conversación sencilla sobre temas técnicos.

WORDBANK:
Fare, insurance, dining, hip, trend, FAQ, millennia.
FIRST STAGE – INTRODUCTION
Lead in:
What do you think health tourism is?

Read the following text, listen to your tutor and practice it with your partners.
What exactly is medical tourism?

Medical tourism is the practice of traveling to another country in order to receive medical attention,
be it heart surgery, breast implants, a hip replacement, or dental work. Depending on the location
and procedure, a medical vacation can cost 50%, 30%, or even 10% of what you would pay at
home. Even when you factor in air fare, hotels, travel insurance, car rentals, shopping, and dining,
many medical vacations are substantially more affordable than domestic health care is. For
example, a heart valve operation that might require $100,000 in the States could cost well under
$10,000 in a country like India where lower labor costs help drive down the price considerably. The
same is true in popular medical tourism destinations like Thailand, Argentina, Singapore, and
Hungary. Medical Tourism For Life-Saving Procedures. Ten years ago, medical tourism usually
referred to cosmetic, plastic, or elective surgery. Increasingly, however, patients are receiving life-
saving medical operations such as heart surgery. Hip replacements, fertility work, and cancer
treatments have also become quite popular in recent years. In addition, some medical and dental
destinations offer procedures that are unavailable in certain Western countries. Hip resurfacing, for
example, was only recently approved by the US Food & Drug Administration, even though it had
been available in India for quite some time. We don't always recommend signing up for
experimental treatments, but certain medical conditions warrant exploring any and all available
options. Medical Tourism's Growing Popularity. Thanks to Internet technology, more affordable
international travel, and major advances in medical science, medical tourism is becoming less of a
novelty and more of a global trend. But in truth, medical tourism has existed for millennia.
However, as a general rule, we rely on the broader term of "medical tourism" to refer to the entire
health vacation industry.
Taken and adapted from: http://www.healism.com/medical_tourism/overview/what_is_medical_tourism?/

Discuss about the text, what is it about? What is the objective of it, and underline the words that are

1
unknown for you.
SECOND STAGE – PRACTICE

We are going to work in the vocabulary construction, for this we are going to design a chart of four
columns by the rows we might need in the following way:
Word Prediction Find meaning Spanish

After we are going to categorize the words in terms of their function:

Adjective Noun Verb Prepositional phrase
Description Name, person, place, thing. Action - State Where, how, when.
Big (Example) Chair (Example) Play (Example) In the park. (Example)

Finally, we are going to associate meaning in diagrams, add as many fields as necessary.

Tourism

THIRD STAGE – EXTENSION – ASSESSMENT

In this section you will tell your partners what is the benefit of health tourism. By answering the
same question:
- What are the reasons for travelling to other countries looking for health?
- Is it really important to consider health tourism as a way of life?
- Why is the Colombian health industry interested in tourism?
Then by groups take one text related to the health tourism industry and present it to your partners
after doing all the previous steps.