The current situation and issues of medical English education and suggestions toward improvement--reports from the 5th meeting of the Japan Society for Medical English Education

Abstract

This is a report from the 5th academic meeting of the Japan Society for Medical English Education held at Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare on August 3rd and 4th of 2002. It also includes a course description of our English courses, their problems and some suggestions for improvement. First, I report several papers presented at the meeting that are useful and suggestive for the English education at our university in order to bring them to everyone's attention and to improve our English program. The topics of the papers include; what "Medical English" is; reports of English courses taught by medical doctors; reports of English courses for developing specific proficiencies such as listening, writing summaries and delivering oral presentations. Next, I give a course description of our present English program and point out some problems that should be dealt with. In this connection, I make several suggestions for future improvement. Lastly, I refer to the "strategies to educate the Japanese who can use English", which were proposed recently by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and suggest our improvement be in line with these strategies.