Need Some Help Here

I’ve just been offered a contract to give some occupational therapy students a ten-week technical English course. The goal of the course is to optimise their reading comprehension. Rather than try to teach them to speak better English, they must try to use their school English to their best advantage.

When the students become occupational therapists they will occasionally have to treat non-German patients, read English literature, or communicate with other professionals in their field outside of Germany. The course focuses on these three learning scenarios. Up until now, the person giving the course relied strongly on photocopied texts and question sheets for encouraging and testing reading comprehension. This has not been successful. The students remain unmotivated, sullen, and unwilling to participate in class. The teacher was not able to get the students to do the weekly homework, let alone work collaboratively with the other students or communicate with the outside world.

I would like to get the students to use the Internet to explore and communicate with outside sources. I want to see if the students could learn more about the world of occupational therapy outside of Germany than me.

My question to all of you is,

Could you refer me to any blogs, wikis, or websites dealing with occupational therapy in particular, or health and health care as a whole?

I’ve been told that overall the occupational therapists work a lot with children or aging patients. So, if you know any blogs or websites concerning these target groups, please send along the links.

I’d very much appreciate some starting points. Thanks.