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ВОПРОСЫ ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И ПОДГОТОВКИ КАДРОВ
Прудникова Надежда Николаевна
Кандидат педагогических наук, доцент кафедры гуманитарных и естественно-научных дисиплин Балковского филиала РАНХиГС
Nadezhda N. Prudnikova
Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Science, Balakovo branch of RANEPA
e-mail: [email protected] УДК 378.016
The predominance of the context-based approach over Communicative Language Teaching during English for Specific Purposes instruction of the qualified medical doctors
Предпочтение контекстного подхода коммуникативно-ориентированному обучению профессиональному английскому языку в процессе подготовки квалифицированных врачей
В статье анализируются теория и практика лингводидактики специализированного английского. Контекстно-обусловленное обучение детализировано как предпочтительное по сравнению с коммуникативным обучением иностранному языку. Представлены дидактические задачи, описаны варианты контекстно -обусловленных упражнений для обучения грамматике и академическому письму в российских медицинских вузах.
Ключевые слова: профессиональный английский, смена методологии лингводидактики, контекстно-обусловленное обучение, обучение медицинскому английскому
The author of the paper analyzes the theory and practice of the English for Specific Purposes teaching. The context-based approach to ESP teaching is explained as the most topical in comparison with CLT. The primary tasks of the lecturers and the most common examples of context-based exercises and activities for grammar learning and academic writing practice used in the Russian Medical Universities are substantiated.
Keywords: English for Specific Purposes (ESP), methodological shift in linguo-didactics, context-based approach, English for Medical Purposes Instruction
1. Introduction
The present-day healthcare means intense international cooperation. Discussion of theoretical and practical matters, ongoing technological development, equipment upgrade and implementation of the newest robotic minimally invasive methods of surgery as well as mutual projects, overseas training, internship and employment become routine reality of the Medical Doctors from the large federal medical centers. It is hereby evident that spheres of medicine, which are better equipped, are ahead of the less technologically developed fields of medical practice [1, ^ 10].
Doctors' mobility, variants of remote or direct communication with the leading foreign specialists, international consulting in the format of telehealth put the English for Medical Purposes (EMP) competence in the spotlight.
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Conception of the development of higher medical education of the Russian Federation implies incorporation of the European educational traditions into the Russian system of higher medical education for the sake of improving the quality of professional development [2, c. 5].
Quality means comprehensive development of the personal characteristics and proficiency of the medical and paramedical staff in alignment with competence-oriented approach, which makes education more effective and forms
the ability of the graduate to act properly in different situations of professional life [3, c. 146].
2. Issues and objectives of the Medical Doctors training
Higher medical education in the Russian Federation is confronted to three current challenges:
1. lack of clinical experience of the young professionals (the issue is presupposed by the necessity of employment as a doctor right after graduating from the University due to cancellation of the obligatory internship course);
2. issue of mentoring and succession of experience (lack of the Medical Doctors of a middle age, prevailing of the theory over practice, lack of simulations, deficiencies of the control of the progress in the form of tests);
3. isolation of the regions and as a result lack of integration of the professors and students into the global educational area.
The above-mentioned drawbacks can be partially eliminated through modifying the criteria of the level of the communicative competence of the doctors.
According to the Federal standards of EMP teaching, graduates of the Medical Universities have broader objectives than comprehension of the English texts and communication with foreign interlocutors. Modern communicative competence implies application of English language as a tool of professional communication, monitoring, active analytical activity, ability to do research in a target language, speak in public, and discuss professional matters.
In the context of higher medical education, English language as lingua franca of the international professional medical community becomes a tool of formation of a new physician who is ready to ongoing personal and profes sional development.
The examples of continuous attention to the EMP competence are the mutual projects worked out by the professors of the leading Russian I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University together with European colleagues.
Competence based model of the measuring academic progress and proficiency presupposes significance of the acquired competences in both social and personal life of the graduates. All the competences acquired during instruction must be in demand from the point of view of the society and primarily from the point of view of the employers in the labor market [4, c. 85].
The researchers view English for a Medical Purposes (EMP) competence as a complex category, i.e. a meta-
concept, comprising cognitive, functional, social competences of the modern medical practitioner.
The EMP competence comprises three parameters: language ability, interactional competence, clinical com munication.
Language ability presupposes overall communicative effectiveness, intelligibility, fluency, appropriateness of language, resources of grammar and expression.
Therefore, EMP teaching is a system of different theoretical and practical aspects and a very specific mecha nism of modern physician upbringing.
Russian researchers described and systematized ideas of professional linguo-didactics. They distinguish be
tween:
1. idea of anthropocentrism;
2. idea of continuous learning and proximal development;
3. idea of integrative factors of education [5, c. 45].
Idea of anthropocentrism is implemented through the instruction, coherent with professional activity, determination of students' groups according to the age factor, intercultural character of teaching, individual trajectories of
professional development.
Idea of continuous learning and proximal development is realized in the principles of quasi-professional simulations, communicative approach, English for Specific Purposes blended learning, multilevel teaching of the target language in the format of school, undergraduate and postgraduate studies.
Idea of integrative factors of education means comprehensive formation of the EMP competence, problem-oriented instruction, diversity of the both contents and technologies of teaching, interactive methods, authentic texts, blended learning, international environment.
3. Materials and methods
Fundamental principles of autonomous, professional-oriented, problem-oriented innovative teaching are imple mented in the following attitudes:
1. activity of the students (intensification of their internal motivation to EMP learning);
2. instruction built in alignment with requirements of the certain region and abilities of the higher educational institutions (cooperation with potential employers of the graduates);
3. interdisciplinary curriculum (invitation of native speakers, use of authentic manuals, audio and visual aids, Internet sources revealing both professional thesaurus and the research aspect of the modern medical discourse) [6, ^ 63].
Methodology of English for Specific Purposes teaching is different from that of a General English training. It is aimed at the needs of the adult professionals and implies methods relevant for working with grown up people within certain simulation environment or real professional settings.
The aim of the graduates is to acquire skills of the 21-t century: awareness of major concepts, knowledge base, skills and competences helping to become successful in both social life and profession [7].
The way of thinking of any modern professional is determined by creativity, innovation, criticism, ability to make decisions, solve problems, apply metacognition and self-learning. Any professional must have digital competence [8, a 1] and be on the leading edge in a certain field of expertise for successful working in unreliable environ ment of the epoch of change.
Existential skills, important for life and occupation, are civic consciousness, cosmopolitanism, eagerness to make a career, personal and social responsibility, and intercultural competence.
According to Stephen Bax, many teachers, trainers, and materials writers, not only native speakers, are operating with the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) attitude regarding it as the whole and complete solution to language learning [9].
The discourse of CLT constantly sends out the message to teachers and educators that the priority is for the teacher to generate communication—while the context is not mentioned. Further, it gives out another message—that the solution to classroom problems is to be found in method rather than anything else. According to the view of Stephen Bax, these twin messages inevitably imply that context is incidental, or to be taken for granted—that CLT works no matter what the context is.
In fact, many aspects of the context—such as students' attitudes, cultural expectations, and so on—are clearly at least as important as teaching method. Any training course should therefore make it a priority to teach not only methodology but also a heightened awareness of contextual factors, and an ability to deal with them.
This is especially true in English for Specific Purposes classes, because the context in the situation of language for Specific Purposes teaching is broader.
Many learners need English to use it in specific occupational or educational settings. For them it would be more efficient to teach them the specific kind of language and communicative skills needed for particular roles rather than to concentrate on more and more General English [10].
Situation of post method offers educators to adapt the chosen linguo-didactic approach to the factors of local setting and at the same time to consider the macro strategies of teaching (building their own theoretical and practical objectives).
Thus, the goals of EMP teaching become more difficult due to modern philosophy of education, which presupposes that a graduate of a Medical University must be ready to life-long development, and have informational and intercultural competencies along with proficiency in business, research and communication.
During the recent years, scientific rendering of medical issues is becoming paramount. Accumulation of knowledge is the goal of any individual and a society as a whole. That is why scientific presentation of different matters is the dialectic process of several generations. People have developed several forms of communication for many years' period: oral presentation (monologues, dialogs, and discussions at the conferences) and written variants of presentation of the research (articles, letters, critiques, reviews, cases).
Writing on medical issues is a very specific work. Its characteristic is clearness of statements: explicit text, unambiguity of the formulation of goals, objectives, materials, methods and the results of the presentation.
Russian students confront with Academic register of English language only after entering higher educational institutions; consequently, first it is useful to acquaint them with socio-cultural specifics of Academic writing. Academic writing teaching is implemented through two approaches:
1. deductive one (the instruction is oriented at the product of writing);
2. inductive one (the instruction is oriented at the process of writing).
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Academic writing on medical issues is mostly oriented at the product (result).
The most difficult task is to teach the proper style of Academic English writing, because the mentality of the
native speakers and a research register of the texts presuppose the certain way of ideas rendering.
Medical terminology is not the only difficulty of the Academic writing. Grammar aspect is also very difficult. This aspect demands proficiency of the Linguistics teachers. During teaching EMP and EAP, grammar is not viewed as an ultimate goal, it is used as the instrument of cognition, and the system of scaffolding becomes a priority (scaffolding, in this respect, means supporting teaching, which is based on contextual explanation, situational transpar ency and clarification of difficult phenomena in the format of case studies).
EMP means predominant use of Present Simple and Past Simple tenses for clear communication, use of Past Perfect tense for composing a case history (when dealing with a patient), use of modal verbs for medical forecasts (which express possibility and instead of categorical conclusions).
Logics of medical research corresponds to the IMRAD system (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Conclusions/Discussion), which consistently reveals progress and the results of work, answering the main ques tions and objectifying matter presentation.
Researchers of EMP linguo-didactics are unanimous in the understanding of a title of an article or an abstract as the consistent explanation of the objective, scope, subject of a study, that is, revealing of the theme from broad understanding of the essence to the specification of a matter.
Annotation also requires a certain systematization of knowledge and skills. The popularity of the work depends on correctly composed annotations. In the English scientific discourse, such concepts as "abstract" (descriptive abstract) and "summary" (informative abstract) are distinguished. The descriptive abstract is intended to systematize the ideas of the article with simple concise phrases. It is usually two or three sentences in length; hence it is not very informative. The informative abstract is an abbreviated version of the most significant points in research. It is usually about 5% to 15% of the length of the original. It condenses material, informing the reader of the original's most important points. It lists the main ideas and conclusions, detailing the author's thoughts.
Descriptive abstract style must be a recommendatory reference, and the detailing in this type of annotation is inappropriate.
Annotation of a medical research is the so-called "structured abstract", which follows IMRAD formula. Its writing often presents a problem to students because of lack of fundamental move (e.g., the objective, the methods, the results, the conclusions of the study), and illogical structuring (methods precede the statement of purpose, objec tive is presented after results).
The format of a medical structured abstract is as following:
1. objective (the question addressed in the paper);
2. design (the basic design of the study);
3. setting (the place where research was carried out);
4. patients or participants (the number of patients who were enrolled in the study);
5. main outcome measures (the treatment);
6. results (the study end-points);
7. conclusions (the main conclusions including direct clinical applications)
4. Results
The selection of an optimal approach to teaching grammatical structures in a target language is determined by several factors: age of the students, their linguistic level and experience, individual style of understanding the material, essence of grammatical phenomena, time limits for internalization and so on. Deductive method of grammar teaching means presentation of the rule and its explanation on the certain examples demonstrating the variants of rule applica tion. Inductive method of grammar teaching is based on the study of a set of examples and autonomous formulation of a rule by the students or by the students with the assistance of a lecturer (discovery learning, self-inferring of the rule).
Lecturers choose explicit method for adult learners and implicit method for young learners because they are more inclined to understand and recollect context-based constructions without complex rules and detailed explanations in a metalanguage.Practical tasks and exercises are also selected according to certain rules. The most rational are the following activities:
1. mnemonics aimed at speech fluency,
2. grammar exercises aimed at contextual linguistic accuracy,
3. actual grammar implementation for speech fluency.
During working with a text students react at conceptual level first, and the lecturer switches their attention to the linguistic layer of the text, emphasizing the grammatical phenomena. Since in most Universities groups are differentiated by the level of language training, some students simply repeat the grammar using authentic material, and the rest literally learn grammatical phenomena. With the intermediate groups, EMP is taught through simplest activities. Exercises on linguistic accuracy help to learn professional thesaurus on the examples of simple grammar rules. For instance, filling in the blanks in a table of derivatives presupposes simultaneous learning of professional vocabulary. Exercises on selecting the correct grammatical form in brackets are also aimed at developing contextual accuracy.
With the upper-intermediate groups EMP is taught from the perspectives of medicine and by aiming at reinforcing vocabulary acquisition, grammar and structure, by means of tasks related to medical practice, pharmacology, anatomy and physiology, pathology treatment etc.
Actualization of grammar for speech fluency is a demonstration of productive level of ESP competence in the forms of essay, composition, Power-Point presentation, abstract, report within a certain project and so on. Such exercises help to learn both grammatical phenomena of a target language and terminology of EMP in the context of quasi-professional work simulating future reality of actual employment as a Medical Doctor. The main task of a lecturer teaching EMP is to stimulate students to independent work and ongoing learning, which is necessary for a modern physician working in the international setting. Every student should be aware of the EMP competence level he or she achieves and develop it further.
5. Conclusions
EMP teaching means consistent formation of English for Medical Purposes (EMP) competence and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) competence. The importance of this training is determined by the intensifying of English language use as lingua franca of a modern medical research and actual medical practice under the conditions of intercultural multilingual environment. EMP lecturers have to motivate the students to continuous learning, work out appropriate syllabus, select effective linguo-didactic strategies and achieve a progress in the form of EMP competence of a certain level necessary for employment.
Ideal result of learning is EMP course mastering and orientation at life-long learning in the form of periodical retraining, internship, and experience exchange within the medical field of expertise.
Both context-based grammar teaching and Academic writing teaching are optimal strategies of organizing tutorial classes in the Medical University. The approach enhances all the aspects of EMP and EAP, necessary in actual professional life. Contextual based grammar teaching helps to comprehend research papers, learn the structure of an annotation, and select variants of proper assignments for development of EMP competence.
References
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