engleski

Targeting Croatian Medical Professionals to Enhance English Language Proficiency and Updating English for Medical Purposes Curriculum in Line with Ongoing Developments

English has become a widely spread medium of the international communication in the medical setting. Therefore, English for Medical Purposes (EMP) competence can be viewed as the professional requirement for all medical practitioners who want to perform successfully in their working environment, as well as to pursue their academic career. The purpose of this research was to support the hypothesis about the importance of English language proficiency within the Croatian medical milieu, on the one hand, as well as to get an insight into the perceptions that medical doctors and students have in relation to the specific target situation needs, on the other. To this end secondary data were collected, focus group interviews conducted and questionnaires administered. On the whole, the results revealed that current and future medical professionals are well aware of the need to be highly competent in all four language skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing, whereby the vast majority of the respondents showed great interest in taking an EMP course organised either within Continuing Medical Education programme (MDs) or as an extracurricular course (medical students). The research also indicated the necessity to update the existing EMP curriculum at the School of Medicine that will have to be a) brought in line with the ongoing developments in the area of English for Specific Purposes and b) based on the conducted needs analysis conducted in this report. In conclusion, it is evident that the University of Split School of Medicine, as a highly reputable institution in the educational market, has first identified the market opportunity and defined its market segments, then conducted the needs analysis as a starting point in the process of the EMP curriculum design and finally developed sound marketing strategy so as to launch the new academic service successfully.

English for Medical Purposes, needs analysis, EMP curriculum design, marketing mix

nije evidentirano