Balancing Evidence and Experience: A Guide to Teaching Clinical Communication in English

10.6145/jme201607

Patrick Y. Tan

English for medical purposes ； foreign medical educators ； learnercentered ； teaching ； non-English learners

Journal of Medical Education

20卷2期（2016 / 06 / 01）

63 - 72

英文

The emergence of English as the lingua franca for medicine institutes a need for English-speaking medical educators to teach medicine in China and other countries that do not commonly use English in their medical curricula. The importance and rewarding nature of teaching, i.e. the need and fulfillment of educating young minds, is hindered not only by the problems of language, but also by differences in learning-teaching approaches between foreign medical educators and students from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESBs). These problems could be due to the different educational and sociocultural conditions foreign medical educators encounter in their places of work. In this article, the author provides a list of key points on how to integrate evidence from educational research with the process of teaching clinical communication in English. It is hoped that these key points would encourage medical educators to use learner-centered principles and applicable educational research evidence in addressing language learning issues similar to those that the author encountered with his Chinese NESB learners.

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