Specifics of the Greek and Latin Medical Terminology Instruction in the General Medicine Programme for the English Parallel at the First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University
Abstract
The paper deals with selective pedagogic issues of the medical terminology instruction in the General Medicine programme for the so-called English parallel at the First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University. The first part describes specifics of the students learning in English with respect to their nationality, mother tongue and dispositions to learn a dead Indo-European inflected language.
Next, based on the content analyses of the two textbooks used until recently, the paper characterizes the typical teaching methods and contents. These textbooks are subsequently evaluated as inadequate in terms of both the general requirements for an effective instruction (demanding a pragmatic and descriptive approach and an emphasis on the semantization process) and the specifics of the English parallel (demanding a step by step learning, a "less is more" principle and a good methodical guidance).
Then, the makeshift textbook compensating at least part of the instructional shortcomings is described. At the end of the paper, the three possible scenarios of the future development of medical terminology learning related to the three basic instructional models are outlined.