Preliminary steps toward Medical English materials development: Student skills preferences

D. Riley The dilemma of choosing a textbook for second language learners that provides course content appropriate to both student interests and language level is an ongoing one. Is there a course book that provides it all? Or would a source book, a bank with more than enough lessons, tasks, ideas, skill components, etc., be a more useful ongoing resource? For teachers considering developing materials for a specific population, to what extent can they identifo their students ' needs? This paper presents preliminary results of a survey administered to Japanese medical and pharmaceutical university students. In an effort to establish a clearer picture of learners with specific needs, it reports on students' preferred focus for language skills, preferred course content ofgeneral English or medical English and classroom groupings. [Part 2 of this needs analysis will be presented at a later date. It will report on students ' perceptions of the degree of usefulness of language functions and their feedback regarding both general English and medical English topics.J 1. lntroduction The past wenty years has seen an abundance of English language t aching (ELT) materials offered in publishin