On this page, I’d like to keep an ever growing list of internet resources that medical English teachers in the region might find useful. If you have interesting and helpful links to add please send them to me through the comment menu on this website or contact me at michael@med.miyazaki-u.ac.jp . Remember, adding a short description of the linked content will always help.
1. I’m sure that many of you use PowerPoint for your presentations or even in your classroom lessons. Here is a website that offers free medical presentation templates. I particularly recommend the templates named Rynaldo and Caius. Most valuable is this: if you scroll down to the 27th sample slide of both templates, you can find a huge and very helpful assortment of medical symbols that can be easily copy-pasted into the body of your PowerPoint presentation. Quite a happy find!
2. If you are an academic researcher and want to keep a public record of your projects and achievements as well as contact other researchers in similar fields and read their works you should strongly consider joining on of academia.edu or Research Gate. I’ve benefitted tremendously from having a presence at the latter in particular and strongly encourage that you do too. Be aware that academia.edu does tend towards becoming a spam source.
3. Among the most interesting general books on medicine and/or being a doctor that can easily be understood by most students and/or non–native speakers of English are: 1) Emergency by Mark Brown M.D.. Brown interviewed over 1500 doctors on their most unforgettable moments in the emergency ward and this is the result. Most entries are one or two pages at most, making it an easily digested read for medical students and teachers alike. 2) In Stitches by Dr. Nick Edwards. Another title with short (1-3 page) vignettes, this U.K.-centered book focuses on the humorous side of healthcare. 3) The Healing of America by T.R. Reid. Reid visit 9 countries around the world to compare their healthcare systems firsthand with that of the U.S.. This should help medical students rid themselves of the belief that the U.S. represents the norm for healthcare systems.
Do you have any reading recommendations? Send them in…
4.One of my most helpful recent discoveries was this website containing hundreds of sample medical (and other professional) documents. Low res samples are free but considering going for the full medical document package at $47 U.S. You can get a LOT of teaching mileage out of these!
5. A number of EMP instructors are rightly concerned about teaching vocabulary, particularly the sequencing or level at which vocabulary can be expected to be learned or introduced by nursing and/or medical students. Ray Franklin of Osaka Prefectural Nursing University recently compiled a list of vocabulary teaching items deemed most suitable to first-year nursing students. Included in Franklin’s development of the list are some widely accepted academic and medical specialty references, which are listed below in academic reference form:
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213-238.
Lei, L., & Liu, D. (2016). A new medical academic word list: A corpus-based study with enhanced methodology. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 22, 42-53.
Nation, I.S.P. (2008). Teaching vocabulary: strategies and techniques. Boston: Heinle Cengage Learning. (Nation deals with the wider scope of vocabulary rather than medical vocabulary per se but he has something interesting to say about specialist vocabulary lists and priorities. See p.135 for comparisons of medical vs. linguistics technical vocabulary)
Yang, M. N. (2015). A nursing academic word list. English for Specific Purposes, 37, 27-38.
6. Linked below are articles and descriptions on English for Medical Purposes from various countries across the East Asia region. Included are: a report from Indonesia, one from South Korea, an English guide for medical professionals in Laos/Cambodia (please do not copy without permission from the author!), a slideshow (publicly available) regarding the state of EMP in Thailand, an article from China, an outline of a detailed analysis from Taiwan, a short blogpost about teaching EMP in Vietnam, a very interesting website/project from Mongolia, a commentary from one of the pioneers of EMP in Japan, and a short overview of EMP in Myanmar.
7.The colossus among all medical English websites is surely PubMed, the almighty compendium of published English scholarship in medical fields. If you are writing scholarly papers in the field of medical English it is absolutely indispensable.
8. Many medical English educators are deeply interested in the Medical Humanities. The most comprehensive linking website is probably this one, hosted by Florida State University.
9. Of the medical humanities website linked from above the most interesting maybe Hektoen International, who focus more upon the arts/humanities side of the medical spectrum and are always seeking contributions. This is a site where viewpoints of Medical English from Asian perspective would likely be very welcome.
10. Likely the most famous and widely-read medical journal (as well as the most prestigious, save for the New England Journal of Medicine) is surely The Lancet. The Lancet actually publish several journals. The two probably of greatest interest to medical English instructors, as they appeal to a wider non-clinical audience, would be Global Health and Planetary Health
11. A new site, wholly dedicated to the teaching of EMP, is this one, which offers links to EMP classroom materials.
12. Many medical English educators at some point need to look up, learn, or use medical abbreviations/acronyms. There are many sites that propose to do so but I’d say the best is this one.
13. One of the most interesting and well-designed EMP specialist websites from Japan is LinguaMedica. Much to be explored here!
14. On a self-promotion note from the coordinator of EAMET – my recent book publication on ‘Conferencing and presentation English for young academics’ is available from Springer Texts in Education at:
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9789811324741
This book is expensive but your university library might be interested… Or, if you wish, individual chapters can be downloaded separately.
14. If you’re not already familiar with it, The Language of Medicine is probably the most popular choice among non-native English speaking medical students and teachers. The problem for teachers however is how to actually teach it, as it is pretty much a self-contained study guide. A second issue would be how to go from terms and phrases into actual longer units of medical discourse, written or spoken. Perhaps some of you have answers to that question…
15. The links below come from a colleague in Vietnam (Thanks!)
INTERNET RESOURCES FOR MEDICAL ENGLISH TEACHERS
Websites:
- http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/hp.asp
- http://medlineplus.gov/
- http://www.webmd.com/
- http://www.businessenglishsite.com/medical-english-tests.html
- http://eleaston.com/medicine.html
- http://www.nursingcenter.com/lnc
- http://allnurses.com/
- http://www.rong-chang.com/esp.htm
Podcasts:
http://www.nursingschools.net/blog/2011/02/50-awesomely-educational-podcasts-for-nurses/
Videos:
Multimedical English https://www.youtube.com/user/InglesparaMedicos