READING AND WRITING INTO MEDICAL
STUDENTS’ ESL INSTRUCTION
Soloviova N.M., Semisiuk A.M. , Lapa G.M.
Bukovinian State Medical University
Reading Comprehension Program for
advanced medical students in the credit – module format is the specific objective of
learning as the part of the academic working model “How to Teach More
Effectively”. The technology is based on the classroom experience and includes
mastering the course “Basic introduction
to medical terminology”, aimed to provide the learners with good word –
building skills so that they can identify terms by their word parts; acquiring professional competence of speed reading:
the present system provides learners with skills to read more rapidly and with
deeper understanding; integrating reading,
note-taking and writing for medicine: this part of the language instruction
develops students ability to express their ideas in a written form; improving students’ vocabulary via reading a lot
and often, making flash cards of new words with synonyms to be learnt.
Assessing the role of suggested technology, designed to teach and
practice the essential study skills of reading and writing, we support the
point, that over the course of the study the second language learners by
following this effective self-help work on their own and get the very most from
the reading materials.
Although during the early 1980’s there was a shift toward oral
instructional goals and practices, reading and writing were never completely
removed from higher schools curricula of teaching English as second language.
Nowadays reading and writing process, as integral part of most academic program
is beginning to play a larger role in ESL classes being a communicative act
with an intended purpose and audience. Researches have different concepts on
the role of investigating problem.
A modern view of reading as an active action
described Frank Smith (1978) in his
work “Understanding Reading”. Green and
Lapkin (1984), estimating the second language proficiency of the students
has focused mainly on grammatical and discursive aspects of reading
comprehensive tasks. M. Freedman
(1991) has done a small constructive survey of current uses of writing in
advanced students’ ESL classes.
The recent task,
as mentioned previously, is to set
forth an approach to problems of teaching and learning language. We call this
“the language experience approach in integrating reading and writing into
advanced medical classes ESL instruction. We believe that this aspects of language
– learning leads to more efficient results in developing techniques of the
students understanding how the knowledge of special subjects is expressed
through English.
Before a student
turns to the learning program of the course “Basic introduction to medical terminology” he (or she) is tested
to determine how much they already know about medical terminology.
Ongoing
through the testing, a teacher will explain students the peculiarities of
creating the medical terms. A student is focused on the three parts of a
medical term, including the prefix, the stem or root word, and the suffix.
Having
developed the techniques of building the medical terms they fulfill about 38
exercises with different tasks: Can you
break down this word and define it? If
we introduce the stem ren-, meaning kidneys, what would adrenal mean? Where
would you find the epicardium? Which of the following terms denotes occurrence
after birth? (a. postnatal; b. prenatal) and et. cetera.
With
respect to our reading program, it
enlarges the learner’s medical vocabulary, provides acquaintance with the study
list, which comprises 35 medical prefixes: ab-, ante-, -brady, -per, -peri,
-syn-, etc.; 15 prefixes: bi-, di-, hemi-, macro-, mega-, semi-, tetra-, etc,
denoting size and number or amount; 20 suffixes covering diagnostic and
symptomatic word class; 12 suffixes are surgical ones, that describe the type
of operative procedure to be performed. Stems (sometimes called root words) the
learners can get to know through mastering the information concerning the body
systems.
The
learning program also intends the student’s
efforts on the most commonly used abbreviations in relation to time and
hour of administration for medications
and other treatments (20 abrs.), preparation and administration (50 abrs.) and
other 58 common abbreviations.
In
the exercises that follow each step an attempt has been made to avoid the more
mechanical types of drill, and to ensure that the practice material is always
fully rich in content. All the exercises are drawn from the context of basic
medical text-books.
In
conclusion the post-test is given for summative evaluating how well the
students have learned the language teaching material.
It
should be stressed that this course would prepare the learner to cope with
complexity of reading and understanding the language of medicine.
The
Reading Recognition technology is
geared toward the individual and the reading material has been specially
chosen, in most cases is of real professional interest to the learner. In a
learning situation of the target language the students are dealing with reading for a purpose, discussion points,
note-taking exercises and selection of the professional material on the
definite theme, which is always meaningful.
The
above mentioned system provides the learner with a more complete understanding
of the subject-matter; a series of multiple choice questions pertaining to the
reading material will prepare the learner for the new format of reading.
Our special
attention was focused on “making speed
reading easy” and based on the classroom experience. The present teaching
method that provides acquiring professional reading competence by students via
their mastering series of simple skills and willing to learn completely
comprehensible techniques of reading. At the beginning of the course, each
student receives explanatory materials, indicating the ways of attaining a new
art of reading in response to his/her deeply-felt need of everywhere at
classroom, at home to read faster and better original medical literature. The
first type of speed reading program acquaints the learner to read for ideas and take in several words at each glance, but not
get the full meaning of a passage. The learner improves his/her reading by
following simple steps: to study the title, which holds important information
and may be deciding factor in determining whether or not the learner wants to
read the selection; to survey quick subheadings as door-openers to better
understanding of the text; to examine the length of the paragraphs, as each of
them is a thought unit, and a single
idea is developed in each.
The
ability to express one’s ideas in written form for medical students
whose first language is not English is a major achievement. But for many
students it is very difficult truly master this skill as to write well in a
second language is no doubt even harder to reach than to read, speak or
understand the language. And we try to find strategies to improve students’
reading comprehension, their reading speed and at the same time a range of
effective note-taking techniques is introduced by us. This part of the language
learner’s course is designed to teach and provide practice in writing for
advanced students. It is important at the beginning to give the students the
teaching material in simple language in order to get them to concentrate on the
rhetorical features used in medical writing.
Note-taking
exercises acquaint the learners which the forms of so-called guided writing: sentence building, paragraph reconstruction;
with ways to shortening words, sentences and reducing language: using symbols,
abbreviations; making up a table, diagram as an appropriate method of
taking notes is become known through practice. We have included writing as a
communicative activity that suggests an interactive process which takes place
between the writer and the reader on the text.
In
the final units the language is more complex and is intended to approximate to
the kind of language that the students will find in the medical special
literature.
The
use of readings in the writing class serves some practical purposes: the
students are asked to produce an English text to match the style of the model
text. The reading exercise can be done to draw students’ attention to
grammatical features of the text. On another level, it is useful to prepare
academic writing assignments by using readings as a basis to practice such
skills as summarizing, paraphrasing, and
interpreting.
Thus,
the students are led by a variety of tasks at all levels to the point where
they can write paragraphs of their own. And as the learners grow more and more
accustomed to writing within academic
program they will start to do the same in reading,
because writing is closely related to
reading.
References
1. Carol A. Lillis. Brandy’s introduction to medical terminology. – Norwalk: Appeltion and Lange, 1990. -
P.3-230.
2. Freedman, M. Writing for
language acquisition in beginning and low-literacy adult ESOL classes. –
Albany, – 1991. – P.6-10
3. Gibbs, Graham. Assessing more
students. – Oxford: Polytechnics and
Colleges Funding Council, 1992. – 72 p.
4. Heath, S.B. Intelligent writing in an audience community. The
acquisition of written language. –Norwood: Ablex, 1988. –P. 3-32.
5. Meyers, Chet. Promoting active learning. – San
Francisco: Jossey – Bass, 1993. – P. 10-25.
6. Smith, F. Understanding reading. – Holf, Rinehart and Winston,
1978. – P. 30-37
7. Stodt-Lopez, B. Word choice and narration. – Norwood: Ablex
Publications, 1993, - P.43-70.