Natália Gachallová is an assistant professor at the Language Centre at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. She graduated in English and American Studies and Latin language and literature, followed by a PhD in Classical Philology. She has eight years of experience in teaching Basic Medical Terminology courses for international students of general medicine, dentistry, and physiotherapy.

Andrea Salayová, assistant professor at the Language Centre at Masaryk University in Brno, works with both Czech and foreign students and focuses on student-centred teaching and implementation of various interactive tools. She graduated in Latin and Ancient Greek (Comenius University, Bratislava) and received a PhD in Classical Philology in 2021 (Masaryk University, Brno).

 

Introduction

Examples of authentic professional texts are ideal to provide students with a variety of learning activities enhancing their creativity, building up their motivation, and promoting independent thinking. In our courses, for example, we use medical reports when teaching medical students in Basic Terminology courses. Students are required to interpret the meaning of adjusted authentic medical reports and, as a part of practice, also to create their own short reports. The following two activities have proven very useful in terms of not only monitoring students’ progress but also actively involving them in the teaching process. They can be easily adapted to any language lesson in which students need to practice vocabulary related to biology, accidents, or parts of the body.

 

“Alien autopsy”: role-play

This activity has become very popular with students and has proven beneficial when they need to revise complex phenomena. It complements well the topic of autopsy reports and their structure.

After a five-minute presentation including examples of authentic autopsy reports, the role-play is implemented as follows:

1. Students are divided into groups of four based on their own choice (if this takes too long, the teacher facilitates the division). Each group receives a blank autopsy report.
2. The teacher then provides the following context (X-files music playing in the background):

“The year is 1947. New Mexico. USA. You are a group of small-town doctors. There have been some strange events going on in said town—UFO crashes. The secret services have asked you to examine the alien body that had been found at the side of the crash. Fill in the blank autopsy report in front of you with the information you find out about the alien (Students are encouraged to use their imagination). Note all differences to human body (missing organs or limbs, extra body parts, etc). Don’t forget to correctly note the cause of death. You will present your findings at the top-secret conference in approximately 20 minutes.”

3. Students then work in groups on the autopsy reports, while the teacher monitors their progress and answers questions.
4. When the time is up, each group presents their findings in front of the class (each group chooses its presenter). The teacher checks the grammar of the reports and notes when the structure is incorrect. Other students can also provide additional feedback.

Although this activity consumes as much as 40 minutes or even more (which represents almost 50% of the entire lesson, so the time for revision and other exercises is very limited), our experience is that after completing the activity students are able to recall parts of autopsy report much more easily and correctly compared to the groups where the autopsy report was introduced with a regular frontal lesson. We assume this is thanks to the creative process of writing their own report and being able to compare it with the solutions of other groups.

 

Reporting an accident: group work

The following activity is employed in the topics of basic types of injuries and fractures that students are required to become familiar with. This includes understanding the conventional structure of a report and the order and nature of information given. The activity sequence is as follows:

1 Students are divided into pairs/groups of three either according to their own choice or (if the teacher finds it necessary to even out the group skills) based on the teacher’s choice. Each group is given a piece of paper with brief information on the patient and an accident leading to a trauma.

e.g. 65yo male, fell down from a ladder

2 The basic structure of a medical report and its parts are reviewed through general discussion. The teacher reminds students of the problematic or often missed-out parts, e.g. specifying the side or specifying the body region using proper anatomical terminology. The emphasis is put on the comprehensibility of information for a medical professional potentially reading the report without knowing any context.

3 Students are given 10–15 minutes to write a medical report based on their own assessment of the situation and the injuries/fractures that might typically occur in the context given.

4 Each group shares its medical report with the rest of the class. It is recommended to ask students to write their reports in a sharable format for everyone to see and think about. In this part, students can be asked to decide whether their classmates’ solutions are correct, find mistakes in them, or suggest alternative ways of conveying the given information. Simultaneously, the teacher moderates the discussion and corrects or further instructs students, where necessary.

Although the amount of time consumed by this activity is also quite substantial (30–45 minutes), we have found it very beneficial in terms of student engagement, progress monitoring, and presenting the context of the terminology in question. In addition, this activity enhances students’ attention and teamwork in a non-threatening atmosphere, where every mistake is welcome as a part of the learning process. Moreover, it not only enhances teamwork and contextualizes the learned terminology but also serves to revise and brainstorm the traumatological terminology in question. In addition, it is a good tool to detect problematic concepts or areas that need further revision or instruction by the teacher.

To conclude, both activities presented above have proven useful for stimulating students’ creativity and independent thinking—in other words, supporting understanding rather than memorization. They can be employed at later stages of the course for students to brainstorm already learnt language phenomena and vocabulary, while encouraging cooperation in small groups. Most significantly, these activities are used to instruct students on how to structure a clear and concise medical report, which is the ultimate goal of the Basic Medical Terminology courses.

 

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