Development of a method of teaching trainee doctors foreign language professional communication based on an integrated approach

Abstract

Introduction. The integrated approach, being one of the innovative approaches in teaching a foreign language for professional communication, contributes to the parallel development of both students’ foreign language communication skills and their professional competencies within a single academic course. To attain effective outcomes in the dual objective of training, it is crucial not only to meticulously choose the integrated course content, considering its subject-thematic focus, but also to devise a practical training method that mirrors the specifics of future medical specialists' professional activities. The aim of this research is to develop a method of teaching trainee doctors foreign language professional communication based on an integrated approach. Materials and methods. First year trainee doctors of the Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics specialty of Derzhavin Tambov State University (Russian Federation) were the participants of the experimental study. In the control group (N = 20), students studied the language for special purposes, and in the experimental group (N = 20) students studied using an integrated approach. Evaluation of students’ progress was based on seven criteria. The Student's statistical t-test method was used for the results process. Results. The integrated approach effectiveness was confirmed during experimental study, which reflected the mastery of the professional thesaurus by trainee doctors (t=3.19 at p≤0.05), in the development of writing (t=4.8 at p≤0.05), speaking skills (t=4.8 at p≤0.05) and solving professional cases on the studied language (t=2.17 at p≤0.05). However, the study did not confirm the integrated approach advantages in the grammatical speech skills formation of trainee doctors (t=1.45 at p>0.05), in the development of listening skills (t=1 at p>0.05) and reading skills (t=1.45 at p>0.05). The results obtained can be explained by the fact that by the beginning of experimental work, students had already developed the following language and speech skills at a high level (B1-B2). Conclusion. The novelty of the study is in the development of a method for teaching trainee doctors professional foreign language during an integrated course. The prospects for the work are to further study the potential of the integrated approach in teaching students who speak the language at level A2-B1. It is anticipated that the effectiveness of the integrated learning method will be evaluated on a group of students with a foreign language communicative competence level of A2-B1. Additionally, the methodology is of research interest as it aims to identify the speech skills of foreign language interaction, categorized by types of speech activity, in a specific professional field of communication.