Helping English Language Learners Succeed in Your Massage Program
You have a new student, Mateo, and he speaks English at a low intermediate level. He moved to your community from Columbia about a year ago. He takes English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, but he is also sitting in your classroom every day to learn massage therapy as a way to support his family.
How prepared are you to teach Mateo and other students like him? How can you set him up for success and he goes through your program?
At Massage Mastery Online, we recognize the challenges you face as an instructor or school administrator and we’re here to help you and your students succeed.
We’ve designed our online textbooks to support students with learning challenges, and in particular, the English as a second language learners who see massage as a career that they can use to better their lives. Here’s a quick glimpse of some of the features that will help your students.
Instant Text Translation
One of the advantages of online text is that your learner can instantly translate the text into the language of their choice. Ultimately, they will have to learn English or Spanish terms to take their MBLEX exam, but while they are learning, being able to move in and out of their native language will assist their understanding of the complex topics that exist in a massage program. They’ll be able to develop a conceptual framework around which they can build their English vocabulary. Massage Mastery textbooks can be instantly translated into over 100 languages with a simple mouse click.
Read Along Audio
To truly understand and use a word you need to be able to recognize it and speak it. So supplemental audio is absolutely essential for English language learners. Users have always been able to use apps or browser extensions to read the text on their screens. But these sound a little mechanical and the pronunciation of anatomical terms is not always very accurate. In our foundational textbook, Massage Mastery: From Student to Professional, we are currently integrating “read along audio” right into the textbook pages. Students can now listen as they read to associate the words on the page with an accurate pronunciation of the words they need to know to get through your program and pass their licensing exam.
Make It Visual
One of the first things you’ll notice about using our textbooks is how visually engaging they are. The online format frees us from the space restrictions of a printed textbook. For example, the printed version of Spa Bodywork: A Guide for Massage Therapists had about 400 images, which was considered to be an exceptional number of pictures for a textbook. In the newly formatted online version, there are over 1,300 images!! Not only will this kind of nonlinguistic representation improve comprehension for ESL students, but it will also help all of your students grasp concepts better. As you leaf through our textbooks, you’ll almost feel like you’re looking at a magazine. But the pictures aren’t there just to “pretty it up”, they reinforce the key concepts in each chapter. By simply looking at the pictures and reading the captions, a student will get all the key points of a topic. They’ll understand the gist of the material before diving into the text.
STRIKING IMAGES KEEP USERS ENGAGED
As you leaf through our textbooks, you’ll almost feel like you’re looking at a magazine. By simply looking at the pictures on the page and reading the captions, a student will understand the gist of the material before diving into the text.
Video, video, video
Movies and television are the number one way that people learn English. Video takes visual learning to a whole new level as it covers the key concepts in the text using vivid images, graphic elements, voice-over, and strong instructional design. Currently, the Massage Mastery and Spa Bodywork textbooks contain dozens of technique videos. In our latest release, Boundaries: The Foundation of Ethical Massage Practice textbook, and all future releases, you’ll find visually stunning video for all textbook topics.
These are only a few of the features that make Massage Mastery Online books so essential for student success. Click here to get an overview of other features or click here to request review copies of our currently available textbooks.
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