Medical English Leaning Motivation and Attitude of Clinical Students In one Chinese University

Abstract

Medical English is a specialized elective course for clinical undergraduates with a total of 32 hours. The students should complete the study of college English before they begin to learn medical English. The goal of this course is to cultivate students’ ability to read medical English materials independently and to grasp the trends of research both at home and abroad, in order to train the clinical students engaged in basic medicine and related disciplines of scientifi c research ability and literacy. As significant factors affecting clinical students’ English for specific Purposes learning, medical English learning motivation and attitude have been increasingly emphasized in the field of foreign language acquisition. An increasing number of studies indicate that medical English becomes crucial to the clinical major students in terms of the acquisition of the ESP and the application of medical English in both global and domestic academic and daily contexts. However, there are few researchers who investigate the correlation among medical English learning motivation and attitude. In addition, there are few studies involving the diff erence of responses on medical English learning motivation and attitude when grouped according to sex, rating in English and year level. Therefore, the study aimed to investigate the relationship among the two important factors and the diff erence of responses employing the clinical students in one Chinese university as research objects.