On The Cultivation Of Medical Students’ Writing Competence

With the globalization of medical education and the reform of College Englishteaching in China, the integration of medical students’ foreign language proficiencywith their professional competence and the promotion of their cross-culturalcommunication competence have attracted great attention from numerous researchersand become sharply focused. Under this social context, fostering the medical students’English writing competence is of great realistic significance. In recent years, scholarshome and abroad have carried out a large quantity of theoretical and empirical studieson the application of a variety of the writing teaching approaches such as the productapproach, the process approach, the genre approach and the problem-based learning(PBL) approach, etc. to the college English teaching of writing in the context ofEnglish as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL).However, there are few studies on the cultivation of the medical students’ writingcompetence. Therefore, exploring effective writing teaching approaches to foster themedical students’ writing competence becomes the major focus of the presentresearch.The present study aims to have a tentative exploration on the development ofthe medical students’ writing ability through integrating different teaching approaches.Based on the analysis of core competences required by the Global Minimum EssentialRequirements in Medical Education (GMER) and the Criteria of China’s MedicalEducation for Undergraduates (CCMEU) and in combination with the Intermediaterequirements for writing established by the College English Curriculum Requirements(CECR), the author defines the English writing competence of the medical students asinvolving the following three aspects: the English language proficiency, the criticalthinking ability and the medical English academic writing ability. Then throughcommenting on the main teaching approaches popular in China such as the productapproach, the process approach, the genre approach and the problem-based learning(PBL) approach, the author points out that in view of the professional characteristicsof medical students, a combination of the advantages of different writing approaches in different teaching stages is of great value in solving the practical problems andenhancing their writing competence in their writing process.An action research, conducted by the researcher in Hebei Medical University,lasted for twenty-four weeks, and43students majoring in clinical medicine wereselected as its research subjects. Following the essential steps of action research, withanalysis of the students’ compositions, classroom observations, participants’interviews, and students’ reflective journals and a questionnaire employed as the mainresearch methods, the researcher conducted three rounds of research during which thecombination of the product approach with the process approach, the integration of theproblem-based learning (PBL) approach with the process approach, the combinationof the genre approach with the process approach were respectively adopted to explorethe roles they played in developing the medical students’ English language proficiency,critical thinking ability and medical English academic writing ability. In the course ofthe three-round action research, the researcher kept reflecting on the problemsdiscovered in her own teaching practice, put forward measures for improvement intime and applied new writing approaches to the teaching practice again. Theresearcher then made an observation on the implementation and effectiveness, didsome reforms and continued the research and teaching practice.The present action research attempts to address the following questions:1. What is the operational definition of medical students’ writing competence? Inwhat aspects does it manifest itself?2. What approaches should be adopted to develop the medical students’ Englishlanguage proficiency in writing?3. What approaches should be adopted to facilitate the medical student’ criticalthinking ability with the development of their English language proficiency?4. What approaches should be adopted to enhance the medical English academicwriting ability of the medical students while developing their English languageproficiency and facilitating their critical thinking ability?Through multidimensional analysis and discussion of the students’ compositions,participants’ interviews, students’ reflective journals and the questionnaire collected during the three rounds of action research, and based on the researcher’s reflectionupon the research results, the author arrives at the following conclusions:First of all, the integration of the product and the process approach contributesgreatly to the development of the medical students’ English language proficiency,especially in such aspects as content, organization, and language use. At the sametime, the combination of the two approaches also helps to improve the medicalstudents’ critical thinking skills such as interpretation, analysis, evaluation andexplanation. However, some problems have arisen. On one hand, in respect of thevocabulary, no remarkable changes have taken place and there exist a number ofproblems about the proper word choice and correct word usage. Therefore, how toenlarge the students’ vocabulary and improve their ability in the appropriate use of thevaried and sophisticated words will still need further study. On the other hand,examination-oriented propositional writing and timed writing in class confined thestudents’ creativity and creative thinking ability, and as a result, the students’ essaysare often stereotyped in organization and sentence structures, lacking personalizationand variety. Therefore, examination-oriented propositional writing is supposed to bereformed, untimed writing practice should be strengthened and the writing tasksshould be interesting, novel and challenging enough to inspire the students’enthusiasm for writing.Secondly, the integration of the PBL with the process approach can greatlystimulate the students’ enthusiasm for English writing, enhance their communicativeand collaborative competence, improve their self-directed learning skills andproblem-solving ability, and most important of all, it can greatly facilitate thedevelopment of their critical thinking ability, especially in interpretation, analysis,evaluation, explanation, and inference. However, no significant improvements havebeen detected in the critical thinking skill of self-regulation in their compositions.Therefore, how to strengthen the guidance and training of meta-cognitive knowledgeand strategies, and how to enhance the students’ ability in self-reflection,self-questioning and self-validation still need further exploration.Thirdly, the integration of the genre approach with the process approach contributes greatly to the development of the medical students’ medical Englishacademic writing ability. Through a period of specific training of English abstractwriting, most students’ abstracts demonstrate explicit writing purpose, strong genreawareness and audience awareness, the integrity of the textual structure, the accuracyand specialty of vocabulary, and the standardization of grammatical structures.However, lack of the specialized vocabulary and correct use of grammar rules stillconstitute big challenges for quite a number of students. Therefore, the input ofmedical English words should be enhanced and the teaching of medical Englishreading and writing should be better integrated in the future teaching practice ofmedical English.Action research, an ideal methodology when an in-depth study is needed, isemployed by the researcher. On the basis of a large quantity of observations, textanalyses, interviews, students’ writing reflections, questionnaires, and the researcher’sown reflective thinking, and with different writing approaches as its variables, theresearcher makes detailed observation and analysis on the medical students’ writingprocess, writing attitude and writing competence. Hence, compared with thetraditional quantitative data analysis, the research findings reached naturally are moreauthentic, valid, flexible and easy to give feedbacks (Chen Jianlin,2004).In accordance with the medical students’ actual needs and their professionalcharacteristics, the researcher makes a tentative exploration on the feasibility ofmaking a “dynamic” integration of various teaching approaches in their differentlearning stages to develop the medical students’ writing competence. The effectiveintegration brings the advantages of different writing approaches into full play, andfurther enriches college EFL writing pedagogy. Moreover, with the knowledge gainedfrom the study, it is possible for EFL educators, researchers and instructors to gaininsight into how to make effective use of different writing approaches for thedevelopment of the students’ writing skills.