Chapter 24: Facilitating the Learning of Medical Terminology through the Use of Effective Mediation Strategies: A Model for the Teaching of Technical Vocabulary

Abstract

A common problem encountered by a teacher who is working with hearing-impaired students on vocabulary development is a seemingly continuous inclass confusion over the specific term which is being discussed at any given moment. After significant experimentation with a variety of media forms, a system has been developed for the purpose of providing instructional support for the learning of medical terminology at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Slides and flashcards have been produced to assist with inclass activities and out-of-class study of approximately 4,000 medical word elements (prefixes, roots, suffixes), terms, and abbreviations. Each slide and card contains a term, diacritical marks, definition, and body system symbol. Slides are produced using a two-color split frame method with the term and diacritical marks on top in red and the definition and body system symbol on the bottom in blue. Slides are used with a random access projector and a red/blue/ clear filter wheel, allowing for immediate visual display of term only, definition only, or both. Each student is provided with a set of flashcards, produced from the same art work as the slides, with the definition printed on the back of each card. The use of these materials has increased student comprehension scores while simultaneously decreasing student learning time. It is proposed that this process might be successfully employed to assist in the learning of vocabulary in other technical areas.