Medical English materials design : Connecting topics and tasks

Part I of this research study (Riley, 2005) presented preliminary results of a pre-course survey and post-course needs analysis administered to Japanese medical and pharmaceutical university students. The study addresses the predicament that many teachers, syllabus writers and course designers have in selecting course content and materials appropriate to both student interests and language learning needs. The study aims to identify a clearer picture of language learners with specific needs in order to apply this knowledge toward designing materials for classroom use. Part I results identified students’ preferred focus for language learning skills, preferred course content for general English or medical English and preferred classroom groupings. Part II currently reports students’ feedback regarding preferences for general English topics, specialty medical topics, controversial medical topics and classroom task types, as well as learner perceptions of the degree of usefulness of language tasks. The implications of these results for materials development are examined with reference to task based language teaching principles by presenting an example of a collaborative classroom task designed to take into account the many variables toward addressing language learning needs