History
The faculty of English division consists of three Japanese (Prof. Tamada, Assoc. Prof. Yokoyama and lecturer Ms. Nambu) and a Canadian national (Assoc. Prof. Guest) who teach in the School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and Graduate School of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. Each faculty member carries out specialized research in areas such as African literature, Persian language, and Islamic culture, while providing English education as a second language specialized for Medicine and Nursing.
We provide a program called EMP (English for Medical Professionals) under the entire Faculty of Medicine’s promotion of “cultivation of English speaking medical professionals.” This program is designed to enable students speak English in clinical situations confidently. We emphasize English education for medical science and medical treatment, as well as developing training content with full-scale support from the whole university. For the accredited overseas clinical clerkship elective, now in its tenth year, English lectures are given by doctors, both domestic and from overseas, as well as from inside the university, and are implemented to prepare students for international clinical experience at Prince of Songkla University in Thailand for eight sixth year medical students and four fourth year nursing students plus the University of California, Irvine, for six sixth year medical students. We have also added an elective for laboratory training last year for a total of ten third grade medical students to study abroad for a month at Prince of Songkla University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, and the University of Cagliari in Italy. The program further extends to the School of Nursing, and Administration Office staff members also participate in staff exchanges for visitation and/or training, resulting in close international cooperation with Prince of Songkla University. The program has become increasingly complex due to repeated positive feedback from participants.
Leading the nation, we have been successful in cultivating English speaking medical professionals with our specialized form of English education. The program’s distinguished outcomes have resulted in obtaining a GP (Good Practice) grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2008 as it continues to garner immense praise both internally and externally. The achievements and successful results of the program are expected to have a ripple effect throughout the whole university as a model case of English education. The curriculum of foreign language education of the entire university was restructured significantly with a focus on ESP (English for Specific Purposes) in 2014 following the success of the EMP program in the Faculty of Medicine.