Speakers
Description
Medical students in a remote province face numerous challenges and difficulties in improving their English competence. According to Wright, Betteridge, and Buckby (2006) "games can be found to give practice in all the skills, in all the stages of teaching and learning, and for many types of communication". Building on this insight, this study attempts to investigate whether the use of scrambled texts - scrambled sentences, scrambled paragraphs, scrambled procedures, collaborative unscrambling and scramble and justify tasks - could help improve medical vocabulary and reading skills of third year general medicine-majoring students at a medical school in Thai Binh province. The study followed an action research model and was done with the procedures of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting, with the participation of six English teachers in the Foreign Studies Department and more than 400 third-year medical. The students were divided into 10 different classes. Five classes had lessons using scrambled texts in the first half of semester while the other five did so in the second half of semester. The result of the study revealed that there was a significant improvement in students reading comprehension competency and mastery of medical vocabulary related to human body systems. It is crucial to note that the use of scrambled texts in medical lessons of human body systems had a positive impact on both teaching and learning process. This also implies that these games play an important role in enhancing students’ enthusiasm and motivation in studying new medical vocabulary and reading medical texts. Clearly, it gave positive improvement to students’ active participation, confidence in using English vocabulary of human systems and also creates good, enjoyable circumstances and reduces the boredom and stress of the learning process.
Biography
Ms. Huyen Pham has been a lecturer of English at Thaibinh University of Medicine and Pharmacy for nearly 20 years. She did her Bachelor in English and Master in Applied Linguistics at Hanoi University. She got Fulbright scholarship to be Language assistant at Michigan State University in the academic year 2016-2017. Her research interests are teaching English for children and students at medical universities in Vietnam. She’s really interested in exploring and applying different English teaching methods and technology in her English classes.
Ms. Huong Nguyen Thi Thanh has been a lecturer of English at Thaibinh University of Medicine and Pharmacy for 10 years. She did her Bachelor in English and Master in Applied Linguistics at University of Languages and international studies, Vietnam National University. Her research interests are teaching English for children and students at medical universities in Vietnam. She’s interested in applying different English teaching methods and technology in her English classes.
