The Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, whose stated objective is to provide bilingual French-English services, has established a training program in French as a second language for health care professionals. The program was designed to provide health care providers with a minimum level of communicative competence in specific job-related language skills in the shortest possible time through careful curriculum design. The stages of curriculum development included a language needs assessment, formulation and selection of objectives, selection and organization of content, selection and organization of learning activities, and evaluation of both student performance and course quality. Experience with the language program for nurses, originally designed as a 60-hour introductory course, has shown that it is well enough received to be extended to an additional 60 hours of more advanced training. The fundamental design process for the course is the same for any language, while the formulation and selection of specific objectives and the selection and organization of content and learning activities varies with the profession for which the curriculum is designed. The program has been bought by another hospital, and the Ontario Ministry of Health has awarded the originating hospital a contract for teaching it in other Ontario hospitals. (MSE)