The Role of Interdisciplinary Approach in ELT

The paper deals with interdisciplinary approach of teaching English terminologies. Since language competence is linked with career options, status, and so forth, the presence of specific terminological barriers among the students from different faculties also has to be acknowledged. This demands interdisciplinary approaches in teaching process. Specific terminology is the standard vocabulary used in the professional field. Professionals can conduct communication successfully by using terminologies easily and accurately. The research involved gathering date on learners views on their learning needs and expectations, on encountered difficulties in learning English terminologies at university, the degree of importance of proficiency in professional areas of language, and collecting and analysing learners. Empirical research questions relate to:


Kutalia Maka, The University of Georgia
The paper deals with interdisciplinary approach of teaching English terminologies.Since language competence is linked with career options, status, and so forth, the presence of specific terminological barriers among the students from different faculties also has to be acknowledged.This demands interdisciplinary approaches in teaching process.Specific terminology is the standard vocabulary used in the professional field.Professionals can conduct communication successfully by using terminologies easily and accurately.
The research involved gathering date on learners views on their learning needs and expectations, on encountered difficulties in learning English terminologies at university, the degree of importance of proficiency in professional areas of language, and collecting and analysing learners.

Empirical research questions relate to:
1.The importance of interdisciplinary approach in the process of teaching English medical terminology

How to use an interdisciplinary approach
This paper tries to explore the learning of English medical terminology by Georgian students which have evolved into a required course for most careers in the allied health field, such as nursing, physical therapy, and clinical laboratory service.
Teaching English Medical Terminology is very important because of the fact that medical research has a global character.In the last 5 years, the world has been faced several times with fast spreading diseases such as "bird flu" and H1N1 virus to have the possibility to exchange professional information.The medical professionals should know some English terminology.
This article focuses on the frequent use of medical terminology within the interdisciplinary approach and identifying difficulties related to the process of teaching them."Medical terminology is the study of words used to communicate facts and ideas particular to medicine and is chiefly concerned with the present use and meaning of such words" (Davies' Medical Terminology: a guide to current usage by John Loveday, 1991) Over the past few decades, many changes in medical education particularly at the undergraduate level were introduced.Increasingly, innovative curricula, methods and educational tools were developed due to the cooperation of medical professionals with pedagogues, sociologists, psychologists, information specialists and those in many other related professions.However, they brought to medical education various concepts, definitions and vocabularies not previously known to medical professionals.
With continued increase of international contacts in various fields, much attention has been attached to the design of ESP/ English for medical purpose (EMP) courses that can prepare students for professional communication with colleagues of other countries.However in the practice of teaching English medical terminology, questions have been raised by teachers and educators again and again, such as: Where should teachers start?What can be done about students' poor motivation?How teaching materials should be selected?Does the interdisciplinary approach make it easier to teach terminologies?Designing a course that can best serve students' interests and needs is a challenge for many teachers of EMP in Georgia.Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to suggest a framework for an EMP approach that will help teachers to solve some of the problems they may come across in teaching English medical terminology.
In brief, this research attempts to clarify the difficulties found most and least frequently by the learners and the role of interdisciplinary approach of teaching terminologies for medical purpose.

Method and Materials
Participants in the current study were 100 intermediate and upper intermediate students at the Medical University and at the University of Georgia.The questionnaires were based on Medical Terminology and the role of the interdisciplinary approach.The categories of medical terminology were arranged according to their medical books they are studying during the semesters.Our goal was to help them learn the tools of word analysis that will make the understanding of the complex terminologies easier.Medical terms are very much like puzzles.This empirical research illustrates the use of such a questionnaire as a tool to: A .To define the importance of teaching medical terminology with the help of the interdisciplinary approach B. To explore the problems students are facing while studying English terminologies.C. If interdisciplinary approach makes methods of teaching terminologies easier.In order to explore the problems empirical research was done included the following questions: 1. How many terminologies are recommended for studying during one lecture?Why? 2. Is it possible to communicate with a doctor without a basic knowledge of med-ical terminology?3. Does professional knowledge help you to catch the meaning of the English medical terminology?4. Is it possible to get the meaning of the English terminologies without taking the special course of English for medical purpose? 5. Can you catch the meanings of this terminology with the help of interdisciplinary approach in the given passages?And define the difficulties a. Smoking -------The tobacco industry constantly and aggressively seeks new users to replace the ones who quit and the current users -up to half-who will die prematurely from, heart attack, stroke or other tobacco-related disease.b.Healthcare in the USA -----Being a highly -industrialized nation, finding a doctor in the United States is not difficult at all.There are hundreds of medical practitioners to be found in every state.d.Epidemiology ------The science of epidemiology was first developed to discover and understand possible causes of disease like smallpox, typhoid and polio among humans.6. Can you catch the meanings of medical terminology without context and define their difficulties?a. contagious diseases b. health care utilization c. top statistic d. drug innovation 7. Is it possible to get the meaning of the medical terminology based on their definitions?a.The branch of medical science dealing with the transmission and control of disease.b.Social insurance for the ill and injured 8. Does the interdisciplinary approach make it easy to study English terminologies?

Results and Discussion
We defined four types of groups according to the students' answers.Questions dealt with the difficulties of teaching terminologies and revealed the role of terminologies in enriching the vocabulary and motivation of learning the language.Some questions are dealt with the way of working and discussing the importance of terminologies while learning the language.Some interesting conclusions can be drawn:  70% percent of students see the problem in the form of working, they prefer studying the terminologies based on the context  while 90% percent out of the inquired students consider the interdisciplinary approach as one of the easiest way of teaching special terminologies. 85% present of students have come to the conclusion that the professional knowledge helps them to catch the meaning of the English terminologies easier. 95% percent of students consider the knowledge of terminologies as one of the most significant aspects in the professional fields.

Conclusion
Our empirical research has shown the great importance of medical terminology to conduct professional communications.
With the help of Interdisciplinary approach it makes easy to catch the meanings of unknown terminologies.Medical terminology covers the specific words and phrases you will need to learn to function effectively and understand the "language" of health care.Whether you deal with the clinical side or the administrative side, everyone involved in health care uses various terms to describe procedures and office practices.Many of the terms used in health care are "built up," which means they are formed from word parts.
An important achievement is when students are able to make intelligent guesses about the meaning of special terminologies with the help of interdisciplinary approach.The results of the experiment indicate that the knowledge of English medical terminology is foundational in learning medical English to provide optimal care for patients in their future career