STUDENTS’ LINGUISTIC SKILLS AND PROBLEMS IN LEARNING MEDICAL VOCABULARY AT A HEALTH SCIENCES UNIVERSITY IN THE UAE

Authors

  • Huma Zaidi Dr. Assistant Professor in English, Dept. of General Education, RAK Medical & Health Sciences University, Ras al Khaimah, UAE
  • Omar Al Jadaan Dr., Associate Professor & Chairperson, Dept. of General Education, RAK Medical & Health Sciences University, Ras al Khaimah, UAE

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v9i6.4330

Keywords:

medical vocabulary, English for specific purposes, English for medical purposes, linguistic skills, retention

Abstract

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses help the students to be more effective and confident in their profession. The main aim of this research was to explore the difficulties faced by students of a Medical and Health Sciences University in learning medical vocabulary which is a vital part of teaching English for Medical Purposes (EMP). It was hypothesized that students coming from non-English medium backgrounds find it difficult to understand and learn medical vocabulary due to weak linguistic skills. A questionnaire was sent to the undergraduate and post-graduate students of Medical, Dental, Pharmacy and Nursing Colleges and it was observed that the majority of students agreed that knowing medical vocabulary in English is important for their profession and students coming from Arabic medium schools find it difficult to understand and learn medical vocabulary and more than 50% use an English-Arabic dictionary. Interestingly, listening emerged as the weakest skill but 97% of participants feel that practice in hospitals can make learning the medical terms easy. Based on these findings, the authors have suggested some interactive activities that can be used in the class for better retention and made some recommendations.

 

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Author Biographies

  • Huma Zaidi, Dr. Assistant Professor in English, Dept. of General Education, RAK Medical & Health Sciences University, Ras al Khaimah, UAE

    Dr. Huma Zaidi is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of General Education, RAK Medical & Health Sciences University. She completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English from the Aligarh Muslim University, India and Ph. D in 2003 from the same university in Language and Literature. She teaches English and Health Sciences Communication and has conducted many workshops in India and the UAE. She has many research articles to her credit.

  • Omar Al Jadaan, Dr., Associate Professor & Chairperson, Dept. of General Education, RAK Medical & Health Sciences University, Ras al Khaimah, UAE

    Dr. Omar Al Jadaan is an Associate Professor in General Education Department, RAK Medical and Health Sciences University, UAE. He received his Ph. D (Multi-Objective Optimization in Engineering using genetic algorithms) in 2010 from Osmania University and Masters in Computer Science (MTech CS) in 2004 from the University of Hyderabad, India. He graduated with Bachelor of Computer Science Engineering in 1996 from Aleppo University, Syria. He is experienced in optimization and Artificial Intelligence algorithms, and multidisciplinary research activities. He has also published a number of original and review articles related to his research.

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Published

2022-06-13

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 6 (2022)

Section

Articles

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