Effectiveness of ESP Courses in Improving the Productive Skills of Medical Students at Alyarmouk College -Khartoum ( A Case Study of the 2nd Year Medical Student at Alyarmouk College, Khartoum)

Abstract

This study seeks to explore the possibility of designing a syllabus that can account for the teaching of the productive skills namely writing and speaking to medical students. The study took as its point of departure the setting a diagnostic test to determine the different standards of the students, then two more tests have followed, pre and post test. Then two distinct groups of students adopted to conduct the experiment. The pre-test was used to examine the students’ knowledge of the affixation as the medical language heavily draws on prefixes and suffixes. The researcher carried out the study at Alyarmok Medical College where a number of as many as 60 students have formed the population of the study The obtained data from the pre and post test were analyzed by means of a number of statistical methods including namely SPSS. The findings revealed that students need right from the beginning as part of their English syllabus a good dose of morphology which exposes them the different uses of affixation. Moreover, the type of medical English language course to be adopted should not neglect this very important aspect of language. Based on the findings the study came up with a number of recommendations that tutors should seek to enrich their students’ scientific vocabulary in general and medical vocabulary by drawing heavily on texts and materials from the internet. Moreover, they should encourage their students to browse the internet for original interesting ESP and medical material that suits their likes and inform them on different topics. This will help them a lot as they prepare to fill reports, conduct seminars and attend forums. Tutors should encourage conducting of seminars to help improve their student oral abilities. Good authentic texts should be used in classroom as they improve other productive skills such as writing which is very important for medical students who fill sick and medical reports