Abstract
The early 2000s have witnessed significant changes in medical education in Brazil, especially because of the creation of the More Doctors (Mais Médicos) program in 2013 and the publication of the resolution that establishes the National Curricular Guidelines for Medicine undergraduate courses in 2014. The latter focuses on a human, critical and socially responsible education, which comprehends the development of the proficiency in a foreign language, preferably a lingua franca. The objective of this paper is to map the inclusion of foreign languages, particularly English, in Political Pedagogical Projects (PPPs) from public medical schools between the years 2013-2019. Online bibliographical research was carried out and data were collected from the e-MEC system and the PPPs. Descriptive statistics have shown that 65.1% of Medicine undergraduate courses (n=28) include the proficiency of a foreign language in their PPPs, being that language English in 35.7% and any other language in 64.3%; 34.9% of the institutions do not incorporate any foreign language at all. Although the majority of medical schools seem to be conforming with the National Curricular Guidelines, there might be still a gap between targeted English language practices and their association to health education and the promotion of healthcare actions.
Highlights
The study of foreign1 languages has been in the spotlight for the last decades, at least since the spread of communicative teaching methodologies in the 1980s
The vast majority (74.4%) are federal, 20.9% are state universities and only 4.7% are municipal. Most part of these universities are concentrated in the Northeast region of Brazil (39.5%), followed by the Central-West (30.2%) and the South (18.6%). 48.8% of the medical pedagogical projects contain < 8.000 hours and 51.2% ≥ 8.000 hours – that is, at a first glance, offering a lingua franca course in Medicine is not related to having more hours in the curriculum. 64.3% of the institutions state that any foreign language is accepted regards foreign language proficiency, 35.7% restrict this proficiency to English and 34.9% do not include any foreign language in their pedagogical projects
When English is specified, 70% of the medical courses offer it as a curricular component, 10% accept it as extracurricular hours and the remaining 20% do not refer the status of the foreign language in the Political Pedagogical Projects (PPPs)
Summary
The study of foreign languages has been in the spotlight for the last decades, at least since the spread of communicative teaching methodologies in the 1980s. English as a lingua franca democratizes the status of native and nonnative speakers, in a scenario where all adapt to each other’s social and linguistic norms, creating novel forms of interaction through language. Such a context poses challenges to the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) field. ESP might be one of the highest achievements of communicative foreign languages practices, since the starting point of such a methodology relies on the learners deciding what to study the language for. ESP refers to communicational tasks learners undertake in their everyday routines and, as Holmes (2000) points out, should not be considered a separate discipline from other teaching methods, because the fact that it derives from needs analysis and is goal-oriented should work out as teaching principles for each and every language class, and for ESP-based ones
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