AN ACADEMIC SPEAKING COURSE BASED ON AUDIO – VISUAL INSTRUCTION: THE CASE OF MEDICAL STUDENTS AT THE FACULTY OF MEDICINE, AT TLEMCEN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

With the expanding influence of English as a global language and with the ubiquity of the internet as a goldmine of information and resources and as a unique meeting space for worldwide communication; it would be no exaggeration to say that English unlike other languages is still the dominant language of scientific knowledge dissemination and wider scientific communication. Thus, Algerian Doctors and medical students avid for up-to-the minute- medical research published in English need to have a good command of English. Actually, at the dawn of the twenty first century, English for medical purposes has not officially been incorporated into the medical curricula, in medicine. Indeed, English is included in the medical education neither in graduation nor in post- graduation. The researcher as a novice medical English teacher very keen to help inquisitive residents longing to learn English to achieve clinical excellence, sought the authorisation of the Dean of the faculty of medicine to conduct the present research. whose prime aim was to help residents speak academic medical English with ease and clarity via the exploitation of medical videos and PowerPoints.Therefore, a quasi-experimental study was carried out with third year post- graduate medical students, at the faculty of Medicine Abou Bakr Belkaid Tlemcen. This small-scale study was conducted within a time frame of nearly eight months.The focus was on examining the relative effectiveness of audio-visual instruction to teach medical English with a special focus on the development of the speaking skill. Hence, the researcher relied upon different data collection tools including: speaking tests, a speaking self-assessment checklist, a structured interview, a course evaluation questionnaire and the researcher‘s classroom observation diary so as to gather credible data. The research ends up by confirming the pedagogic significance of audio-visual instruction and put forth a number of recommendations regarding the selection and the use of audio-visual materials, the criteria necessary to devise speaking tasks, alongside a comprehensive course syllabus covering twelve medical thematically based units, geared towards raising the residents’ awareness of the complexities of Medical English language and aiming at developing their speaking skill .