Abstract:

The English for Specific Academic Purposes course for health professionals is expected to be based on attendees’ needs analysis, which enables language teachers to prepare the programme tailored for those whose obligation is to attend the course or whose selection of the course is based on their personal preference. Designing such a programme needs teacher’s willingness to get knowledge related to healthcare disciplines and the language appropriate for healthcare professionals. As language and culture are interrelated, misunderstanding can be caused by the choice of improper language as well as cultural ignorance. Therefore, such programmes need to include training focused on developing both a language relevant for their professional contexts and cultural repertoire which will enable them to adopt an appropriate language and to act accordingly.

The Jessenius Faculty of Medicine of Comenius University and Trnava University cooperate within the research scheme, called KEGA, to improve the ESAP courses for their students. In a two-year project several concepts have been piloted, which enables to write a course book for doctoral students to help them learn a target language their future professional life cannot be developed without because of the current status of English as a lingua franca.

One of partial studies was based on indicating which linguistic competence and cultural repertoire are necessary for healthcare professionals to convey meaning and be enough accurate to avoid misunderstanding. Professionals need to be communicative in real-life situations and be able to produce and maintain speech. Therefore, fluency needs to be practised as unnatural, discontinuous flow of language can negatively affect real-life communication. However, the form and function of linguistic interactions are affected by interpersonal considerations and linguistic choices. The sociolinguistic and sociocultural implications of language are part of language acquisition with the aim to have control of the pragmatics of politeness in a foreign language.

The findings related to the aspects of accuracy and fluency will be analysed and classified by their common features. This will allow of drawing some conclusions that might help other language teachers to train their students to have a good command of a target language.

Keywords:

English for Specific Academic Purposes, accuracy, fluency, sociolinguistics, cultural repertoire.