Improving Students’ English Proficiency at Faculty of Medicine: Recommendations

Abstract

From a longitudinal study on English needs analysis for students of the Faculty of Medicine, the University of Mataram, Lombok, Indonesia, it was found that there was a big gap between the target needs and the present situation of learning English. The high demand for English does not correspond to the current teaching and learning situations. This article aims to provide recommendations for the improvement of students' English proficiency at the Faculty. The data for recommendations were taken from the analysis from previous studies involving students, lecturers, documents (SKDI/Competency Standards of Indonesian Medical Doctors, the Profile of Faculty of Medicine). From the analysis of all documents, it is recommended that the Faculty (1) reconsider the policy of teaching English from a block system to a semester system to provide more input; (2) apply CLIL (content and language integrated learning) model by involving subject specialists in the block system; (3) provide online learning or online clinic for English consultation to facilitate students on their self-access language learning (SALL); (4) give exemptions to students with high scores on English proficiency tests (TOEFL, IELTS, or other recognized English proficiency tests).