Improving English Skill Confidence in Japanese Medical Students Using Omnibus Style English Exposure

Abstract

Medical education is undergoing rapid globalization and development of medical English courses is necessary to enhance the English competence of medical students in non-native countries including Japan. We examined whether omnibus style English exposure could influence English skill confidence of second-grade Japanese medical students. We applied an Medical English course with omnibus style lecture series focusing on how English skills are required in future career of medical students as a clinician or a researcher. From 2016 to 2018, we conducted a questionnaire-based survey asking their self-estimate of English skill confidence at the beginning and the end of the course (n=296). Four English skill components including reading, writing, listening and speaking were self-estimated on a Likert scale from 1 to 5. Self-estimation of skills at the beginning of the course showed higher confidence at reading (mean ± SD: 3.25 ± 0.92), writing (2.64 ± 0.89) and lower confidence at listening (2.42 ± 1.09) and speaking (2.13 ± 1.04). Although reading skills did not show significant improvement after the course (p= 0.79), we observed significant improvement of writing (p= 0.026), listening (p<0.001) and speaking (p<0.001) scores at the end of the course. Omnibus style English exposure improved students’ English skill confidence especially for skills with lower scores such as listening and speaking.