Clil: Teaching Cardiovascular English to Medical Students

Abstract

Nowadays, higher education institutions pursue the aim of teaching their students foreign languages. This is due to the fact that both professional knowledge and experience are currently gained within the framework of such processes as internationalization, globalization and digitalization. International languages, including English, can help specialists to build relationships with their foreign colleagues, exchange ideas and cooperate successfully. Consequently, for students to acquire both professional and linguistic competencies, new methods and techniques need to be provided at classes. One of such methods is CLIL, or Content and Language Integrated Learning. This approach implies the use of a foreign language for teaching and learning of a non-linguistic subject. CLIL includes content, cognitive, communicative and cultural components and encompasses didactic, linguistic and psychological principles. With medicine being one of the most fastdeveloping fields of knowledge, medical terminology is also subjected to quick changes such as emergence of new notions and lexical units. There are several ways of developing medical terminology, among which are morphological, syntactic and semantic ways as well as linguistic borrowing from other languages. In this article the focus is on the semantic way which implies metaphoric and metonymic transfer. Metaphors and metonymies have been chosen since medical terms often imply similarity or contiguity with real objects or processes. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to provide a classroom task corresponding to CLIL methodology within the framework of teaching cardiovascular terms built on metaphoric and metonymic transfer.