339
QUESTIONS OF
TEACHING IN MEDICAL
HIGHER EDUCA
TION INSTITUTIONS
Sharipova F.I.
CHALLENGES IN TEACHING ENGLISH FOR MEDICAL STUDENTS
Tashkent pediatric medical institute
This study is an analysis of the educational
curriculum of teaching English language in
medical high schools
.
In the beginning of 21st
century, English has become as integral part
of educational curriculum in the medical high
schools in the Republic of Uzbekistan. Generally
speaking, the process of teaching and learning
English as a foreign language in the Republic of
Uzbekistan has get high levels. But there are still
some problems and different local specificities that
involved in this process. The researcher
in the aim
makes a contrastive view
of the possibly existing
problems of teaching English in the medical
institutes to elicit possible factors and to suggests
that learning problems provided to students are
influenced by a teacher’s short-term pedagogical
experience, his or her evolving more theoretical
than practical approach, routinized behaviors.
Materials and methods
The research questions, concerning
problems of teaching English language in medical
high schools, data collection and analysis are such
methods and material of the given study.
Results
After discussing these various problems
the researcher proposes that teachers and medical
students need to interact to construct better-
informed understandings for diminishing the
above mentioned problems.
Introduction
The classroom, is a scene where teachers
as instructors, that transmitting knowledge on
English language to students, as learners. In the
field of English language instruction, we have
been slow to recognize that teaching needs to
be examined and understood on its own terms.
Teacher education, curriculum development,
program design, education standards implicitly
held views of what teaching is and how should
be done. To date, however there has been no
organized research or study of the conception of
teaching which undergird the field of medicine and
influence on teaching English language in medical
high schools. Teaching English as a foreign
language is a challenging task in the medical
institutes in general and in our institute (Tashkent
Medical Pediatric Institute) in particular. English
has been included in the curriculum of medical
institutes and considerable attention has been paid
to this language in our society for the following
reasons: first of all, access to and use of the latest
medical and scientific resources mainly written
in English that requires for an efficient level of
English language proficiency. Secondly, coping
with the demands of the era of information
explosion and the efficient use of the Internet
makes learning English as a necessity. Thirdly,
mastery of English facilitates in searching medical
vacancies including the proposal of the work in
abroad. In spite of all these, some studies show
that teaching and learning English in medical
high schools has not been able to satisfy the
specified goals. Thus, due to the shortcomings of
curriculum the at medical high schools to fulfill
the professional needs of the students on the one
hand, and the need for learning English to satisfy
these communicative needs on the other hand, the
modulations and changes have been developed
throughout the last years. The foreign researchers
Zheng JY, Zhao JX, Zhao QC, Wu GS, Dou KF,
Tuo J. (2105)’s paper displays the need to reassess
the approaches used to teach English language
in the medical institute. English as a compulsory
course is being taught at the TashPMI, starting from
the first courses in almost all faculties it continues
for three years years. In spite of studying English
for a long period of time in the TashPMI (almost
3 years), students are not able to communicate in
English in the real contexts. The researched data
displayed that medical students after nearly three
years of education neither are enabled to speak
fluently in English language nor interact with
other people because of emphasis on grammatical
structure. So, it is really necessary to explore
real reasons behind the poor achievements of the
students in English. To do so,
this study aimed
at eliciting and classifying the related factors in
this regard. This is achieved by scrutinizing the
available studies dealing with the problems of
language teaching in the medical institute. It is
also an attempt to highlight what can be done to
improve the situation significantly.
340
ВОПР
О
СЫ ПРЕПО
ДАВ
АНИЯ В МЕДИЦИНСКИХ
ВЫСШИХ УЧЕБНЫХ ЗАВЕДЕНИЯХ
Materials and methods
It is important to identify the problems
the medical students encounter in the process of
learning English. The main obstacle for learning
English is that there is no environment that makes
them familiar with the original language. In other
words, there is no active role for English outside
the classroom. So, they do not feel the immediate
need to learn English. And the educational system
should bring about such need. The significant role
of the English language as the lingua franca of
today’s world in establishing foreign relations is
simply neglected in the medical institute. Very few
learners and /or teachers travel to English speaking
countries or have contact with English speakers.
A few native English speakers are visited the
medical institute with short-term courses. We can
see only a few English speaking foreigners in the
country as invited medical students by exchange
or tourists. Moreover, the places you may find
the tourists are limited to tourist sites, hotels, or
business companies. This can be explained in
a study carried out in the Tashkent Pediatrician
Medical Institute, in which the existing problems
of teaching and learning English as a foreign/
second language in the medical high schools in
Uzbekistan were identified. The results indicated
that lingual students had better access to English
audio-visual aids (e.g., listening or watching
English TV news or programs), they read English
newspapers and magazines more than five
times as compared to the medical students and
majority of them find the contents of their English
textbooks interesting. It should be noted that a
number of English textbooks/journals is much
higher than in the medical institute. The extent
of speaking English in their English classes was
higher than the medical institutes. Moreover, poor
English knowledge of the medical students may
further discourage them to read English medical
textbooks/journals.
Furthermore, there are a lot of medical
students who look for ways of improving their
English, but they do not know how and where
to start. In most of the English classes, little
attention is paid to the conscious efforts learners
make in mastering a foreign language. Many of
students do not know, neglect or pay not enough
attention to how to deal with the task of learning
a foreign language even after years of study; only
a few students who have used a set of strategies,
have been able to succeed and hence, learn the
language. It is a neglected area in our language
classes. Teachers should be concerned with
helping students to learn how to learn the ways of
effective learning of English as a foreign language
and to achieve autonomy in their education. It
has been argued that learning how to learn (self-
directed learning) would be of utmost importance
for medical students for at least three reasons.
First, because of the complexity of the task which
learning presents, there is never enough time
within a formal scheme of instruction to ensure
mastery on the part of students, and if the student
has not been prepared within the classroom to take
responsibility to learn autonomously outside, it is
unlikely that any learning will take place (Carver &
Dickinson, 1982; Dickinson & Carver, 1980). The
second reason is the belief that engaging students
in the process of learning and assessment would
encourage their learning efficiency. Studies of the
characteristics of good language learners (Naiman,
et al. 1978; Stern, 1983) suggest that efficient
learners consciously monitor their performances,
analyze them, and develop a repertoire of
efficient learning strategies. Thirdly, in a self-
directed scheme, through reducing the distance
between the student and the teacher, feelings of
anxiety, frustration, and alienation decrease, and
consequently the student becomes more receptive
to the learning process (Brown, 1973; Schumann,
1975). Another challenging factor is students’
beliefs about the nature of learning English as a
subject consisting of a list of words and a set of
grammatical rules which are to be memorized and
separable skills to be acquired rather than a set
of integrated skills and subskills (Oxford, 2001).
Furthermore, the students in English classes do
not have common background knowledge because
some of them are trained in rural areas in which
un-qualified English teachers teach them while
other students are taught in urban areas having
access to a lot of classroom facilities to gain
advantage of. While some of the students take
advantage of using satellite programs, VCD and
video tapes, and go to private language schools,
most of the students just have their textbooks as
the only source of learning English. Under such
circumstances, there is no placement test to put
students into different groups homogeneously
based on their language proficiency levels. This
makes the situation even much worse for the weak
341
QUESTIONS OF
TEACHING IN MEDICAL
HIGHER EDUCA
TION INSTITUTIONS
students and they resort to guide books. As classes
are crowded, most of the students do not have
enough practice in English and do not overcome
language learning problems and are not proficient
enough to communicate in the foreign language.
Because in the limited hours of instruction, they
normally could not have the chance of learning
English especially the most favored skills of
listening and speaking. There is no place for group
work discussion. To acquire the target language
effectively, learners need to engage actively in
processing the meanings of whatever they hear
and read. Group work in the educational context
generally involves a small number of students
working together to achieve a task (Amatobi &
Amatobi, 2013; Dooly, 2008).
The results and discussion
Not all students have the same motivation or
purpose for learning English. Some of them look
at English just as a course that should be passed
and do not understand its importance as a means
of communication with which they can adapt
themselves to new improvements in medicine and
other sciences. For most learners, learning English
is a duty — something that they have to, but don’t
want to do. They don’t see pleasure in learning
English. These students have low motivation to
participate in class, and they simply try to get a
passing mark to get rid of the course. Other students
attend the classes to learn some special points to
be successful in the getting high-salary vacancy
so they pay attention to special parts of the book.
To be successful in this kind of interview, only
a good grasp of vocabulary, some grammatical
points, and reading comprehension are sufficient,
so the students pay little attention to speaking,
listening and writing skills. Another demotivating
factor is that English is considered as a general
subject compared to special subjects such as
physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology.
In the university entrance exam, the scores for
special subjects outweigh those for general ones.
So, students spend more time on studying their
special subjects than general ones.
Conclusion
One of the major problems of language
learning in the medical institute is that most of
our students do not have the capacity to express
themselves in the foreign language fluently after
studying English at schools for several years. In
other words, they cannot communicate in English.
The researcher tried to examine the reasons behind
the failures of the medical students to acquire the
expected level of proficiency in English in spite
of learning English for three successive years.
The problems fall into seven categories which
constitute five important components of any
education system (students, teachers, materials,
teaching methods, and evaluation) which are
closely interrelated. Knowing about the students’
needs is one critical matter for the teachers to
teach and authors to write textbooks. Most of
students in the medical institute tend to participate
in communicative activities type to learn English.
Some students tend to have more opportunities to
participate in free conversation classes, expressing
their wish towards a more communicatively
oriented approach. On the other hand, there are
those who prefer more emphasis on grammar
teaching and learning (Bada and Okan, 2000).
Thus, the syllabuses should be observed based on
all students’ requirements and interests.
References
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Amatobi, V. E., & Amatobi, D. A. (2013). The influences of gender and attitude differences to students’ achievement.
American Journal of Research Communication.
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Bada, E., & Okan, Z. (2000). Students’ language learning preferences. TESL-EJ, 4(3)
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Brown, H. D. (1973). Affective variables in second language acquisition. Language Learning, 23, 231-244
4.
Crystal, D. (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge University Press:Cambridge.
5.
Dickinson, L., & Carver, D. (1980). Learning how to learn: Steps towards selfdirection in foreign language learning
in schools. ELT Journal, 35(1), 1-7.
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