The title of this article is the title of a book written by Dr. Jameel Ahmad who is an associate professor in the community college of King Abdulaziz University. The book "English for Health Sciences" was published by King Abdulaziz University. It caters to the immediate and specific needs of the students of Health Sciences in general and Arab students of Health Sciences in particular. It is oriented to the teaching of specific English rather than teaching English in general. The author of the book teaches English for Information Technology (EIT) and integrated language skills with electronic devices. He got his PhD in English for Science and Technology (EST) which is a major branch of ESP, from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India. Dr. Ahmad has written several books and published numerous articles in reputed journals and served as an editor of several Applied Linguistics and ELT journals from the UK, US and Canada. He has given presentations in international conferences in different countries. He is planning to write other books similar to the one on medical sciences on subjects, such as administration and management and information technology. I have found the book, which was meant for students of medical sciences, very useful not only for students of medical sciences but also for students of other subjects and even for anyone who is interested in studying the English language in the right way. According to the author, the book aims to develop the following integrated language skills: 1. The Reading Comprehension section aims to improve learners' skimming and scanning abilities, vocabulary and generative vocabulary and their substitute meanings in the Arabic language. The author has also provided meanings in Arabic to inculcate in Arab learners motivation for learning English and to enable them to underhand the conceptual meaning of difficult English words which are used and understood in Health Sciences. 2. Generative Vocabulary familiarizes the students of Health Sciences with English prefixes and suffixes that are responsible for making numerous forms of words from a single root word. 3. Multiple Choice further increases students' knowledge about their specialized field of study. This will improve their ability to guess or to scan the correct answer. 4. Grammar Focus unfolds different components of English grammar. Students will have the opportunity to understand and practice different kinds of language activities. 5. Conversation is written in a dialogue form and this will motivate the students of Health Sciences to practice role-play activities in their own subject-specific areas. 6. The Writing Section is designed to improve learners' writing skills. It has two parts. The first part will enable students to frame grammatically correct sentences from the given scientific words. The second part will enable them to write a paragraph with accuracy on the given topic. 7. In Pronunciation, some important words have been selected from each paragraph and their transcription has been provided with the help of phonetic symbols as given in the Macmillan and Oxford Advanced Dictionaries. 8. Progress Check is designed at the end of every two units in order to enable students to evaluate their own performance. With Progress Check exercises, instructors will explore what and how much the students have learned and retained from each unit. 9. The book also contains Medical Discourse and its core analysis. The book discusses how common words which are frequently used in general English acquire their specialized substitutes in Health Sciences. I am fully convinced of the utility of this book. Students of medical sciences will find this book very useful for learning the integrated language skills that they need in their professional career. It will also be useful to students of other subjects. I wish a similar book would be written in Arabic for non-Arabs which would make the Arabic language easy for those who are interested in learning it, especially expatriates and their families. — Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs. He can be reached at [email protected]
