Abstract:

Traditionally, to learn a new language you need textbooks, grammar sheets, vocabulary lists, and, of course, tests to evaluate performance. However, this sometimes makes language study artificial and tedious and overwhelems learners with rules, so that they feel they would never be able to follow them all. If we go a step back to the basic purpose we learn any language, it becomes clear that the beauty of acquiring new languages lies in the access it grants to new worlds, cultures, systems of thought and, maybe, to a new soul. Storytelling has already been established as a successful method of language teaching, although the actual texts to be used are subject to debates, as adaptation to the linguistic skills level poses various issues and can hinder the flow of an engaging narrative.

This paper focuses on how learners acquire medical specialized language at B1 level and proposes a fresh approach. Instead of vocabulary lists, the focus group of this study was exposed to medical cases and was involved in a discovery process. Although this case study focused on Romanian as a foreign language, the methods proposed can be applied to any language. The results obtained offer a strong basis for a futher development of the approach, that could be materialized into future study materials consistent with the promising findings of this study.

Keywords:

L2 acquisition, specialized language, storytelling.