Course Description:
This two-part Medical English programme is designed for first-year medical students and aims to develop the linguistic, communicative, and interpretative skills required to operate effectively in academic and clinical contexts in English. The course begins with an introductory component focused on scientific English and language skills, where students build grammatical accuracy, strengthen question formation, and learn to describe physiological processes, symptoms, and patient data with precision. It then progresses to a broader scientific English module in which students engage with core areas of medical knowledge and discourse, including the nature of medicine, body systems, disease classification, hospital organisation, diagnosis, treatment, pharmacology, and the language of pain and injury. The main aim of the programme is to help students acquire a solid command of medical English as a tool for understanding scientific content, describing the body and illness, interacting with patients, and interpreting clinical information. Particular attention is given to the relationship between grammar and medical reasoning: students learn to use tense systems to reconstruct patient history, present forms to describe ongoing physiological processes, and question structures to conduct doctor–patient interviews and diagnostic exchanges. They are also trained to read and interpret extended medical texts, analyse terminology in context, and express clinical observations with greater accuracy and register awareness.By the end of the courses, students should be able to understand and use core medical vocabulary related to anatomy, physiology, symptoms, disease, hospital settings, pharmacology, and injury; read and respond to medical texts and case-based materials; ask and answer clinically relevant questions; describe symptoms, vital signs, and temporal progression in patient history; and participate in structured spoken interaction in simulated medical contexts. More broadly, they should develop the ability to move from general English competence to discipline-specific communication, using English not only as a foreign language but as a professional and academic resource within the field of medicine.
- Docente: Bronwen Hughes