Journal Article

Analysis of high-frequency errors and linguistic patterns in EFL medical students’ English writing: Insights from a learner corpus

Dehnad, Afsaneh, Ehsanzadeh, Seyed Jafar

2024

Overview

Background The perceived language barrier in English is said to hinder, and in certain instances, impede the global dissemination of knowledge, including medical information, to non-native English speakers within medical institutions. As English for medical purposes instructors, we contend that the issue persists in medical universities across various EFL contexts. Medical students face the challenge of presenting their research findings in English for international journals and conferences. Given this, the present research study aimed to compile a comprehensive catalog of high-frequency errors and examine them in recurring linguistic patterns commonly found in the writing of Iranian medical students. Methods In conducting the present study, we developed a learner corpus of 1,040 essays (339,040 words and 18,235 sentences in total). Through using the results obtained from Wordsmith Tools 8 and sifting the leaner corpus, we identified 11 high-frequency errors and five commonly used linguistic patterns. Results Only five out of 11 high-frequency errors account for 61% of the total number of errors. Results also showed that a majority of errors were of grammatical nature. In this regard, cohesion and cohesive devices (16%) were the most prevalent errors followed by omission/misusing of articles/determiners (14%). Additionally, results showed that discourse markers were extensively used in the corpus (22.07%), followed by hedges (11.42%). Conclusions The outcomes of this study are expected to assist English for medical purposes instructors in designing focused lesson plans and classroom activities. Ultimately, these efforts might contribute to enhancing medical education in non-English speaking universities.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Analysis / Communication Barriers / Education / Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Educational aspects / English / English (Second Language) / English as a second language / English for medical purposes / English Language Learners / Error analysis / Error Analysis (Language) / Error Patterns / Essay / Essays / Grammar / Humans / Intellectual Disciplines / Iran / Knowledge / Language / Language errors / Language Patterns / Learner corpus / Linguistics / Medical advice systems / Medical colleges / Medical Education / Medical errors / Medical students / Morphemes / Multilingualism / Native Speakers / Non English Speaking / Psychological aspects / Records and correspondence / Semantics / Sentence Structure / Social aspects / Students, Medical - psychology / Teaching / Theory of Medicine/Bioethics / Writing / Writing Instruction