Skill Up! (11)

Skill Up! (11) Your Health — Picture This!

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Watch your health!

It’s no fun being ill, especially if you are in a foreign country. It helps if you know the basics for talking about your health. We hope that you won’t have to use all the vocabulary in this issue of Skill Up! to talk about your own personal health problems in English, but we do hope that you find the information useful.

Accidents happen all the time. As you can see in our illustrations in Picture This! (pages 4–5), some accidents are a lot nastier than others. Use the images to learn to talk about the parts of the body. If you do have to call a doctor, it is helpful to know what kind you should be calling. The last thing you want is to turn up at a gynaecologist, when what you really need is a kidney specialist. You can learn formal and informal titles for doctors in Word Bank (pages 6–9), as well as the terms for typical diseases, tests and treatments.

When a doctor asks “How are you?”, it’s essential to describe your state of health and relevant medical history in detail. Turn to In Focus (pages 12–15) to learn how to do this.

But when a colleague asks “How are you?”, it’s best not to go into too much detail. Our dialogue in Small Talk (pages 20–21) shows you which idiomatic expressions people commonly use. I hope you don’t feel sick after reading this!

The sections:

• Picture This! Use illustrations to help you to visualize the meanings of words.
• Word Bank Study key expressions and translations in our vocabulary list.
  
• False Friends Use visual memory aids for tricky translations.
  
• In Focus Memorize common word partnerships to become more fluent.
  
• Essential Idioms Learn idiomatic language through dialogues.
  
• Close Relations Focus on words and word families.
  
• Small Talk Learn common idioms and expressions for socializing.
  
• Your Profile Personalize our guide with your own example sentences.

We hope you enjoy our new guide and look forward to your comments.

Deborah Capras