Psychological Attitude of Medical Students towards Course-book Modification: A Case of Text Simplification in ESP Courses

Abstract

Introduction: The current study sought to investigate the impact of linguistic modification of medical textbooks on reading comprehension ability of medical students and their attitude towards text simplification. Materials and Methods: 150 male and female medical students coming from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences participated in this study. The homogeneity of the participants was attained through passing a placement test, followed by completing the pre-requisite and general English courses. For the purpose of modifying the texts, the framework proposed by Van Den Branden (2000) was adopted. Moreover, the questionnaire developed by Saito, Horwitz, and Garza (1999) called Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) was used. Results: Data analysis was conducted, using one-way analysis of variances (ANOVA). Concerning the major research question, analysis of the data indicated that there were significant differences between the participants’ performance on the four reading tests. Thus, the major null-hypothesis as “lexical modification, grammatical modification, and lexical and grammatical modification in comparison with no modification of input do not significantly affect the reading comprehension ability of Iranian medical students differently” was rejected. The last research question deals with medical students’ perceptions towards different types of input modifications Conclusion: The overwhelming majority of the interviewees chose lexically and grammatically modified texts. However, “not modified text” was regarded as the most boring one. Also, the participants believed that grammatically modified texts were best for improving students’ work knowledge. Moreover, the interviewees mentioned that grammatically modified texts with fewer complicated structures were more straightforward for them.