What is it about?
This study reports on a pedagogical experiment conducted with the aim of enhancing EMP learners’ understanding of the lexico-grammatical features of pain language in patients’ descriptive accounts and in the use of pain assessment tools.
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Why is it important?
The need to teach medical students plain language for their future engagement in pain communication can no longer be underestimated. Pain education has traditionally neglected the teaching of pain language, yet patients’ descriptive accounts have been acknowledged as the standard in medical care. English for Medical Purposes (EMP) can make its contribution to tertiary pain education, especially at a time when the plain language paradigm is considered key for health literacy.
Perspectives
Following a data-driven learning approach, students compiled a small DIY corpus of accounts from online health support groups and exploited its direct use through corpus-based tasks. These were designed to facilitate learners’ understanding of the features of pain language and of patients’ use of pain descriptors related to those in the McGill Pain assessment tool currently employed in medical care.
Prof. Anna Franca Plastina
University of Calabria
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Putting the plain into pain language in English for Medical Purposes: Learner inquiry into patients’ online descriptive accounts, Language Learning in Higher Education, January 2016, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/cercles-2016-0010.
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