The Medicine Faculty ESP Curriculum: Perspective of Students and Faculty Members

The processes of teaching and learning have changed dramatically over the past decades. The present study aimed to evaluate the ESP curriculum of faculty of medicine at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences from the perspective of students and faculty members. In this cross-sectional descriptive study, a number of 600 third- and seventh-year students of medicine studying in the second semester of 2016-17 academic year and six ESP instructors were selected through census method. A researcher-made questionnaire, already checked for reliability and validity, was used to collect data. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, one-way and two-way t-tests and median test. A total of 380 questionnaires were analyzed. The participants were not satisfied with the ESP materials and believed that the number of credits offered was inadequate. They also indicated that the sequence of the semesters offering the ESP courses was not appropriate. Moreover, the participants believed that the ESP courses should be designed while considering their familiarity with the course Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM), and that the materials should be updated. They also maintained that it was necessary to include medical terminology together with case studies in each unit. According to the participants, final exam was not an adequate way of evaluating students’ abilities and they preferred intermittent quizzes. Moreover, they believed that language instructors were more skillful in teaching ESP courses than medical instructors. The content of ESP textbooks for medicine need to be changed, and it is suggested that language instructors should teach these courses.