MITA Past Meetings

Demonstration of an Audiovisual Language Instruction Technique used at the University of Tokyo Faculty of Medicine

Christopher Holmes

21 March 2001

Christopher Holmes demonstrated a type of classroom activity he developed at the Hongo campus to teach both medical and everyday English simultaneously.

Though the same principles apply to other, videotaped materials, the demonstration used a commercially available DVD recording of the popular American TV series ER.

This method was introduced to familiarize medical and nursing students with natural basic everyday vocabulary, to train them to answer real (as opposed to test) questions, to elicit full-sentence answers to questions, to enliven the classroom atmosphere, to teach summarization, and to activate students' vocabulary. Students' reactions to this method have been overwhelmingly favorable.

Discussion after the demonstration addressed this method's strengths and shortcomings, and strategies for overcoming the passivity barrier in Japanese education.

Following is an outline of the presentation.

The medical English program at Hongo

Academic freedom and constraints
- Curriculum requirements
- Time shortage
- Continuity with Komaba program

Two groups
- Future doctors
- Nurses, future nurses, future health experts, and others...
- Both groups are heterogenous in ability, both have little or no overseas experience.

Other materials
- Medical English Reading Program (MERP, University of Edinburgh)
- Reprints (Scientific American, How to Report Statistics in Medicine, etc.)
- Other audiovisual materials (news, Focus on Health)

Other activities
- Reading
- Discussion
- Writing (self-introduction)
- Lecturing

Perceived problems

Passivity, timidity, test-driven mentality
- Everybody wanna go to heaven, nobody wanna die:
- "I want to have more discussions in class."
- "I want to learn how to make an oral presentation."
- "I don't understand. There were too many difficult new words."

Discontinuity
- Schedule conflicts, smorgasbord mentality, poor communication

Reality gap, etc.
- Knowing only Monbusho English can have tragic consequences.
  - "Freeze!" In Louisiana in 1992, when a Japanese exchange student, Yoshi Hattori, knocked on the wrong door looking for a Halloween party (on the wrong day), he was shot and killed. If you remember the news reports, he didn't understand the command to "Freeze!" Knowing that might have saved his life.
- Other surprising gaps
  - Basic everyday vocabulary
    - Verbs
    - Adjectives
      - Colors, feelings, interjections
  - Basic communication skills
    - Asking questions
      - To ask questions, you have to know how to ask them, and you have to have the habit of asking questions (overcoming an apparent taboo)
    - Answering questions
      - Full sentences
      - Correct use of yes and no

Aims

Teach both medical and everyday English simultaneously
- to familiarize medical and nursing students with natural basic everyday vocabulary,
- to activate students' vocabulary,
- to enliven the classroom atmosphere,
- to train students to ask and answer real (as opposed to test) questions,
- to elicit full-sentence answers to questions,
- to teach summarization

Methods

Play, point, interrogate
Elicit questions
Assign summaries

Results

Good news
- Aptness of material
- Adaptability
- Novelty
Bad news
- No panacea
- Equipment-intensive
Neither-nor/both-and
- Popularity
- Effectiveness

As always, the presentation was followed by a nice dinner at Peking.

Click on the picture for a larger version.

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