Boosting Hungarian medical students’ willingness to communicate in English for Medical Purposes classes
Abstract
The aim of the present qualitative, exploratory study was to elicit Hungarian medical students’ views and impressions on the use of undergraduate teaching assistants (UTAs) in doctor- patient role-play activities in English for Medical Purposes (EMP) classes. The UTAs were either native speakers of English or had a good command of English and attended the English medium programme of the same university. Our main objective was to boost the Hungarian students’ willingness to communicate in English in their EMP classes and to provide a more motivating and natural language learning environment in which the target language was the lingua franca. In addition, we wanted to improve the participants’ intercultural competence by providing a platform where the Hungarian and the international students could study together and socialize. At the end of the courses, the Hungarian students’ views were elicited with semi-structured, focus-group interviews. The data was thematically analysed; and the findings showed that the Hungarian medical students enjoyed and were motivated to participate and interact with the UTAs in English during the role-plays. The interviews also demonstrated that the role-play activities succeeded in bringing the Hungarian and foreign students closer and weakening or even removing the invisible cultural wall between them.
invisible cultural wall between them.
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