An Investigation into Medical Students' English Language Needs
Abstract
Due
to the acceptance of English in twentieth century as international language of
science and medicine, a considerable body of medical research and literature
has been produced in English. This dominance of English in medical accounts
paves the way for emergence of a new ESP branch (English for Specific Purposes)
as EMP (English for Medical Purposes). The basic insight into this trend is to
offer course design, content and materials by being responsive to target
language learners’ own agenda. Therefore, it is necessary to find out first
what is specifically appropriate, available and applicable for the target
situation and target language learners in terms of their needs. In discovering
their needs, needs analysis is regarded as an integral part of decision making
processes in EMP. Without conducting a needs analysis process, using a medical
English course book might not be enough for a medical student studying in an
EFL (English as a Foreign Language) context like Turkey since most of the
medical English course books in use are mostly addressing the needs of students
in an ESL (English as a Second Language) context. Accordingly, as a part of a
needs analysis process, this study aims to investigate academic English
language needs of first year medical students who are attending advanced
English course at the Faculty of Medicine at Karadeniz Technical University.
The data was collected via a structured questionnaire with 47 items. It covers
five different parts focusing on medical students' purposes of learning
English, significance of learning English, their preference of learning
environment, language learning needs of major language skills (reading,
writing, speaking, listening), their preference of assessment type. The
questionnaire was administered to 169 students at the Faculty of Medicine at
Karadeniz Technical University. Descriptive statistics was employed in order to
analyze the data.
Keywords
English language teaching,English for medical purposes,language needs,needs analysis
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