Document Type: Conference Papers
Pages: 146-153
Year published: 1999
City published: Hong Kong
Publisher: Reprographic Unit of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Conference: Conference on Quality in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (1998: Hong Kong)
This paper reports an action research project which aims to develop an English enhancement course for medical students undergoing clinical training at the University of Hong Kong, We videotaped six one-hour sessions of ward teaching and identified linguistic skills that students need in order to activate their medical learning. These skills were found to include the ability to use appropriate colloquial and technical terms in questioning and reporting case histories, to recite the chronology of a medical history, to report the results of physical examinations, and to describe the location and pathology of internal organs accurately. Based on the data analysis, we developed teaching materials which aim to raise students' awareness of the cognitive and linguistic demands of the clinical training program, and to improve their performance through various communicative tasks and through the role-play of parallel cases.
