Students attitudes on learning English for medical academic purposes and adapting the teaching process to their needs

Abstract

Since the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade is the institution of long-term tradition of the study and teaching of EMP, the aim of this paper is to investigate the attitudes of students towards these teaching programmes and the teaching material in order to adapt them to the students' real needs. Two questionnaires were used in the research and they were completed by 128 first and second year students of the integrated academic studies and 9 students of the English studies. These questionnaires consisted of open and close questions (the first research) and evaluating statements on Likerttype scale (the second research). The results we got in this small-scale research show that the students are aware of the need to learn this specialized language, that they consider it difficult to master as related to General English (GE), as well as what in their classes they find useful or useless for learning English for Medical Purposes and if they would change anything to their actual needs. As for the teaching material used in classes, the opinions of the limited number of surveyed students are mostly very positive, but a larger-scale research should be conducted to get more relevant results.