An Investigation Into Medical Terminology Learning Strategies: A Case Study Of Third-year Students At Constantine-3 University
Keywords:
Medical terminology, Constantine University-3, medical students, vocabulary learning strategiesAbstract
English serves as the global lingua franca and primary language of scientific communication; therefore, its acquisition becomes important, this is especially true in the medical field, since most new technologies and publications are available in English. The aim of the present study is to explore the various learning strategies used by medical students to learn medical terminology and to identify the most and least frequently employed ones, in order to determine the extent to which students are interested in medical vocabulary learning strategies as reflected in their choice of learning techniques. To this end, this research used a survey based on Schmitt's (1997) taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies grouped into Determination, Social, Memorization, Cognitive, and Metacognitive. The survey was distributed online (Google Forms) to 32 medical students at Constantine University-3 and quantitatively analysed using SPSS 23. Data analysis revealed that some strategies are used more than others by medical students. The most frequently used strategies are the less cognitively complex ones; these include drawing on context, decomposing new medical terms into prefixes, roots, and suffixes, looking up the unknown word's meaning from peers, remembering the written form, and using cognitive strategies such as repeating the word out loud. The results have important implications for teaching English for Medical Purposes (EMP) and vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) at the start of a university program. Incorporating explicit VLS instruction into EMP curricula can empower students to take more responsibility for their own language learning.
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