English in Medical Education

This is an unusual book, and an unusually interesting one, bringing together two distinct traditions - academic medicine and English for Medical Purposes. The authors' claim that the book represents a 'change of direction' is well substantiated - it's full of good, sophisticated, intelligently argued ideas, but always a pleasure to read. Those involved in the development of EMP courses will gain real insight into how medical educators perceive medical language, while the actual learning tasks offered by way of example are stimulating, original and tremendously useful. The book would also be of value to medical educators who want to broaden their understanding of the challenges faced by non-native speaker medical students or doctors.

-- John Skelton, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK

Peih-ying Lu and John Corbett have written an innovative and valuable book with memorable chapters highlighting and analyzing vivid examples of physician-patient dialogue. They provide fresh approaches and thoughtful discussions regarding exploring patients' cultural beliefs about health. This book is an essential resource for medical educators and faculty interested in improving cross-cultural care education.

-- Helen M. Shields, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, USA

Underpinning this engaging and wide-ranging book is the idea that being a doctor in today's globalised societies means becoming an intercultural communicator and ethnographer. Drawing on medical anthropology, sociology and humanities, this book contributes towards establishing a new medical sub-discipline: medical linguistics. It brings together widely discussed notions of intercultural competence from language education with medical concerns about working with diversity. With an elastic view of language, it landscapes in an exciting range of resources. It is packed full of practical suggestions as well as being theoretically informed and analytically driven. This is a really useful read for medical educators throughout the world.

-- Celia Roberts, Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication, King's College London, UK

In English in Medical Education, the authors take a fresh and very contemporary look at the topic of language education in medicine, examining the importance of cross-cultural competence in both language and medical training and discussing the methodological shift towards 'task-based' language learning and 'problem based' medical training. This is a highly readable, thought-provoking book which any EMP teacher will find useful.

-- Catherine Richards * EALTHY Magazine, Issue No. 5, October 2017 *

The authors have written a highly readable, thought-provoking book in response to a rapidly developing educational field. They successfully highlight the parallels between inter-cultural communicative competence and cultural competence in medical education and suggest valid ways of exploring medical language and medical talk by using contemporary digital resources.

-- Catherine Richards, University of Swansea, Wales * LINGUIST List 25.956 (201