Analysis on Medical English Faculty Construction and Teaching

Philosophy

Chundi Zhang

Qiqihar Medical University, Qiqihar, Heilongjiang, 161006, China

Keywords: Medical English, teaching faculty, teaching philosophy.

Abstract: With rapid development of medicine in China, medical English has been valued. However, medical English

faculty construction cannot meet standards in professionalism, teaching forces and teaching philosophy.

This work analyzed medical English faculty construction and teaching philosophy from three aspects—

current situation and characteristics of medical English teaching, problems in medical English teaching

faculty construction, and establishments of teaching philosophy.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, demand for medical professionals is

increasing due to added international hospitals in

China and frequent international exchanges. China’s

medical colleges are challenged and medical English

teaching faces greater opportunities. Medical

colleges are required to train medical professionals

both medical profession and professional English.

Medical English has become increasingly important

and been widely used in medical practice. Thus it

demands higher for medical English teachers to

master strong English skills and solid medical

knowledge (Qin Yizhu, Shi Lei, Xu Yanling, 2014).

Meanwhile they should update their teaching

philosophy instead of applying public English

teaching theory mechanically to medical English

teaching.

2 CURRENT SITUATION AND

PHILOSOPHY OF MEDICAL

ENGLISH TEACHING

2.1 Current situation of medical

students’ English skills

Currently, most Chinese medical students have

certain abilities to read medical literature but much

weaker English speaking and listening skills. They

usually have scanty knowledge of medical lectures

in English, cannot exchange fluently with foreign

scholars and also cannot understand well foreign

patients’ needs. It is extremely difficult for most of

them to accomplish a qualified English thesis

independently. The limited professional English

proficiency has hindered the development of China's

medical career and its international academic

communication (Tang Yi, Chu Changbiao, 2014).

Therefore, it is urgent to establish and improve

China’s medical English teaching faculty.

2.2 Shortage of medical English faculty

Medical English teaching faculty construction and

teaching forces are closely related to medical

students’ English application skills. It is essential to

construct medical English teaching faculty and

change the current teaching methods to improve

medical workers’ English skills. At present, the

shortage of medical English faculty largely impacts

the development of China’s medical English

teaching. In some medical colleges, the proportion

between medical English teachers and simple

English teachers is low, some even reaching 4%.

The teachers’ limited medical abilities directly

impact colleges’ training medical professionals. At

present, China's medical English teachers are

divided into two categories, one having strong

English skills but deficient medical knowledge, the

other being the opposite. The former can teach and

communicate in English, but with little knowledge

of medicine. The latter have proficient medical

background and can use English when looking up

information, but incapable of teaching in English

(Xia Boqiao, 2014). In short, medicine and English

186

Zhang C.

Analysis on Medical English Faculty Construction and Teaching Philosophy.

DOI: 10.5220/0006446701860189

In ISME 2016 - Information Science and Management Engineering IV (ISME 2016), pages 186-189

ISBN: 978-989-758-208-0

cannot be well combined together, causing

challenges to medical English teaching faculty

construction.

2.3 Deficiency of medical English

teaching methods

Chinese students have formed their own habits of

learning English during junior high school. But

medical English learning has its own characteristics

and difficulties, far different from that of junior high

school English and college public English. First, the

vocabulary of medical English is complicated. A lot

of medical English words have evolved from the

ancient Greek and Latin, since modern medicine

stems from Europe. Different from modern English,

medical English words are longer with distinct

morphological methods. Therefore, memorizing

medical English words becomes the primary

problem. Second, medical literature has more

complex sentences, suitable for expressing complex

and strict medical logic. Thus it’s difficult for

students to write and translate professional articles.

Third, different from ordinary English articles,

medical English professional papers have special

requirements, with fixed format. In the long-term

application study, medical students have only access

to writing ordinary English papers, without

knowledge of writing medical English papers. In

conclusion, both teachers and students have flaws in

terms of medical English teaching and learning

methods, not able to jump out of the inherent mode

to meet current demand.

2.4 Deficiency of systematic and

scientific philosophy in medical

English teaching

Medical English teaching faculty construction has

long-term limitations in China. Currently, China has

very few medical English teachers. And medical

English courses are basically taught by public

English teachers or medical teachers with stronger

English skills. These teachers have formed certain

teaching philosophy and copy mechanically

accumulated teaching experiences to current medical

English teaching. As public English teachers with

solid knowledge of English, they have no in-depth

understanding of medical knowledge and cannot

teach the combined knowledge well. They cannot

understand the intrinsic meaning of medical

expertise and medical English, causing limitations in

teaching and learning. So, both public English

teachers and medical teachers teaching medical

English should change the traditional teaching

philosophy.

3 PROBLEMS IN MEDICAL

ENGLISH TEACHING

FACULTY CONSTRUCTION

3.1 Big workload and shortage of

teachers

In most colleges, medical English teaching is served

by college English teachers with loads of English

teaching. The number of teachers has not increased

according to college enrollment, making medical

English teaching faculty construction more difficult.

Plus, college English teachers’ capabilities are

uneven, adding difficulties to effective work. The

number of teachers is an important prerequisite

assurance of teaching quality. Moreover, they barely

get chances and energy to enhance themselves

owing to heavy tasks.

3.2 Urgent need to rationalize the

structure of teachers

Currently, the unscientific and irrational structure of

medical English teachers mainly reflects in age,

gender, job title, education, degrees and so on.

According to statistics, more medical colleges have

lower proportion of associate professor in medical

English teachers and in some colleges, lecturer has

become a dominant force. In addition, female

English teachers are in high proportion and some

institutions present serious imbalance in male and

female English teachers. At present, China has very

few doctoral programs of medical English.

Education of medical English teachers is far from

optimistic, compared to other disciplines. Therefore,

medical English teaching faculty construction

urgently needs improvement.

3.3 Easy loss of backbone teachers

With the development of society and China's

economic takeoff, flow of talents is no longer fresh.

Especially, as high-level talents, the flow of medical

English teachers is irreversible. It is generally

considered as a two-way choice between talents and

employers. But it is not the case for universities,

often passive. Colleges fail to prevent loss of talents

as well as dismiss the gag teachers. So the brain

Analysis on Medical English Faculty Construction and Teaching Philosophy

187

Analysis on Medical English Faculty Construction and Teaching Philosophy

187

drain is another big problem for medical English

teaching faculty construction.

4 ANALYSIS ON STRATEGIES

AND TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

OF MEDICAL ENGLISH

TEACHING FACULTY

CONSTRUCTION

4.1 Focus on improving medical

English teachers’ self-cultivation

On the one hand, medical English teachers need to

improve their teaching ability and research capacity

through their own efforts. They should make full use

of existing resources, and communicate actively

with medical professional teachers, learning from

each other. Meanwhile, some professional websites

can also be used to enhance their teaching ability.

Additionally, they can observe medical professional

teachers’ experiments and write some medical

papers to deeply understand the meaning of medical

English vocabulary as well as the logic of medical

papers. On the other hand, for medical professional

teachers, opportunity to re-educate English should

be offered. Domestic knowledgeable medical

teachers are imperfect in English and can be

undoubtedly beneficial to medical English teaching

faculty construction if they improve their English.

Colleges can provide more opportunities for them to

learn at home and abroad, absorbing learning and

teaching experiences of excellent medical English

teachers. Meanwhile, young teachers should be

encouraged to pursue degrees, learning the latest

developments of leading medicine. In short, to

enhance teachers' abilities is the basis of medical

English teaching faculty construction.

4.2 Establishing relevant departments

and enriching faculty

University teachers' professional development and

training management agency is essential for teaching

faculty construction. Universities establish relevant

departments to aid teachers’ medical professional

learning and English learning comprehensively in

terms of intelligence, knowledge, resources and

organization. Such departments are mainly

responsible to set relevant standards and regulations

in line with teachers’ development; make training

plans both in and out of schools, with overall

management, targeted research and summary of

experiences; organize all kinds of teaching

competitions and evaluate the results to make

teachers fully realize their deficiencies and remedy

them timely.

Enriching teaching faculty is most important for

medical English teaching construction, local

teachers’ self-improvement and training being the

foundation. Meanwhile, foreign teachers can be

hired according to actual needs. Considering

students’ limited English skills, foreign teachers

should co-teach with local teachers to achieve the

best teaching results. In this way, both students’

English communication skills and local teachers’

medical English teaching ability can be improved.

Colleges should give full play to the role of foreign

teachers to cultivate cooperated young teachers. And

young teachers should seize the opportunity of

cooperation with foreign teachers to learn

professional knowledge and teaching methods. In

addition, flow of talents is another tricky problem

for faculty construction. How colleges can retain

talents is critical. Colleges should make full use of

national preferential policies to solve teachers’

worries, such as housing and other issues.

Meanwhile, they should also improve conditions for

teaching and research as well as pay research

bonuses and allowances fairly and impartially. These

preferential policies to some extent help schools

retain talents.

4.3 Analysis of teaching philosophy

The traditional English teaching methods are spoon-

fed, teachers asking students to memorize words,

read a lot of English articles and develop English

language sense. But medical English teaching is far

different from general English teaching, traditional

teaching philosophy being not any longer applicable.

Firstly, medical English teaching sets priority to

students’ application abilities, solving realistic

problems. Thus in classes, teachers should guide

students to participate actively to enhance the

practicality of teaching. The second capability

medical English teaching pays attention to is co-

writing ability. Communication and collaboration

are integral in medical English teaching. Teachers

should organize students to carry out written

communication to develop their co-writing ability.

Co-writing can be carried out in groups, members of

which are not limited to students. Teachers can also

join students to acquire knowledge and accomplish

tasks together, broadening students’ horizons.

Lastly, it comes to innovation ability, which is

ISME 2016 - Information Science and Management Engineering IV

188

ISME 2016 - International Conference on Information System and Management Engineering

188

essential in learning any disciplines. Teachers should

actively guide students to develop their innovation

ability; make student-led efforts to build students’

knowledge framework; put students' ability of

memorizing words aside. Considering medical

English learning and reciting medicine word as the

same thing is taboo. Students should learn integrated

knowledge and build their own knowledge

framework. And teachers should become their

mentors other than imparters and implanters.

5 CONCLUSIONS

With the continuous development of China’s

medical career and frequent exchanges between

international medical workers, medical English

appears to be much more important. Thus medical

English teaching faculty construction and changing

teaching philosophy are necessary paths for China’s

training more medical talents as well as important

measures to promote medical English teaching.

Despite the difficulties of change, the enormous

mass of medical English educators will work

together and cooperate closely to innovate teaching

methods. In consequence, China’s medical talents

cultivation will achieve better results.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was funded by 2014 Qiqihar Medical

University Education Research Fund Projects

(JY20141042).

REFERENCES

Qin Yizhu, Shi Lei, Xu Yanling. Application of

Constructivist Learning Theory in Medical English

Teaching. Education, 2014 (1): 66-67.

Tang Yi, Chu Changbiao. Analysis on Characteristics of

Medical English Teaching and Discussions of

Strategies. Chinese Medicine, 2014 (4): 122-124.

Xia Boqiao. Exploration on Medical English Teaching of

Adult Education. Education Forum, 2014 (24): 223-

224.

Analysis on Medical English Faculty Construction and Teaching Philosophy

189

Analysis on Medical English Faculty Construction and Teaching Philosophy

189