A new class for health-care students could improve their communication with Spanish-speaking clients and patients.

FLSP 109 will teach students to develop their Spanish vocabulary and grammar through role-playing, presentations and other teaching methods this fall.

NIU professor Anna Pietrolonardo is eager to instruct the course.

“It represents an integration of my favorite workplace experiences — teaching Spanish and improving communication in the health-care field,” she said.

Pietrolonardo attended Northwestern and DePaul universities before teaching at NIU and is the director of American Prairie Body/Mind Center in Amboy, Ill.

“It’s not a class in theory,” she said of FLSP 109. “It’s something the students can really use.”

Pietrolonardo said NIU considered offering the class previously, but had held off. When she arrived last fall, she brought experience for the job and began to plan out the class.

Raymond Tourville, Foreign Languages and Literature chairman, said medical practitioners at Kishwaukee Community Hospital can take the course. Pietrolonardo said it will be formatted around students’ needs — for example, if many enrolled students work with nutrition, the class will focus more on that.

She noted that many people who seek medical help are scared or worried, and a language barrier doesn’t help.

“A lot of times when you’re in situations where you need health care, you can’t express yourself well using a secondary language,” she said. “I come from a second-generation family. Once, my grandma broke her arm and when she went to the hospital, no one spoke Italian.”

For more information on the course, call Pietrolonardo at 753-6450 or e-mail her at [email protected].