A Functional Grammar Approach to a Text Comparison of Taiwanese EMP Students and International EMP Experts for an Understanding of the EMP Writing Gap
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Date
2011-03-??
Authors
鄒文莉
洪慧玲
Wenli Tsou, Hue-lin Hung
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
英語學系
Department of English, NTNU
Department of English, NTNU
Abstract
此專業英語課程研究為南部一所大學醫學院醫學教育改革計劃之部分成果。本課程結合了醫學系教師及外語系研究學者共同參與，以提昇台灣醫學院學生的英文溝通能力為教學研究目標。此合作計劃之推動，開始於2009年所進行之一短期寫作訓練課程。藉此短期課程之研究結果，我們了解到醫學院學生當前的英語學習需求，在於能精確地紀錄患者轉述之病情及陳述醫療過程。因此本研究之目的為提出病歷寫作教學之建議。藉由帶入以社會語言學為理論背景之“功能性文法教學”為概念， 透過比對專家及學生所撰寫之病例，幫助學生深入體會「單字」 及「句法」之字面意義，以及其所涉及之文化涵義及專業性來訓練學生了解字彙之選擇及句法結構之編寫不同所可能涉及之不同語意、語氣、及目的間之關聯性。文末也對未來醫學英文寫作課程提出教材及教法上之建議。
This study is part of a medical education reform project conducted in a university hospital in southern Taiwan. To fulfill the goal of advancing medical students’ English communicative abilities, interdisciplinary collaboration between the language department and the medical college was launched, beginning with a writing workshop in 2009. Insights drawn from the workshop shed light on the students’ needs with regard to learning the micro-level lexical-grammatical resources of Medical English. The current study was undertaken using a Functional Grammar approach to comparisons of word choices and grammatical usages in two sets of medical texts, one written by NNS learners and the other by published authors. The discrepancies of particular word frequencies between learners and experts highlighted the problematical conception of language utility in terms of the EMP writing gap. Thus, the improper language contexts of student texts were examined in detail and interpreted by using the three perspectives of semantics, grammatical pattern, and cultural assumptions. Importantly, the results reveal the inevitable language gap derived from the learners' lack of awareness of native cultural assumptions in line with word choice and grammatical structure, which might lead the NNS medical descriptions to be more subjective, personal, and less professional.
This study is part of a medical education reform project conducted in a university hospital in southern Taiwan. To fulfill the goal of advancing medical students’ English communicative abilities, interdisciplinary collaboration between the language department and the medical college was launched, beginning with a writing workshop in 2009. Insights drawn from the workshop shed light on the students’ needs with regard to learning the micro-level lexical-grammatical resources of Medical English. The current study was undertaken using a Functional Grammar approach to comparisons of word choices and grammatical usages in two sets of medical texts, one written by NNS learners and the other by published authors. The discrepancies of particular word frequencies between learners and experts highlighted the problematical conception of language utility in terms of the EMP writing gap. Thus, the improper language contexts of student texts were examined in detail and interpreted by using the three perspectives of semantics, grammatical pattern, and cultural assumptions. Importantly, the results reveal the inevitable language gap derived from the learners' lack of awareness of native cultural assumptions in line with word choice and grammatical structure, which might lead the NNS medical descriptions to be more subjective, personal, and less professional.