Importance of Technology in Teaching Special Terminology to Medical Students

Abstract

Teaching a second language involves the elicitation and acquisition of the general expressions that may be useful for students in everyday situations in which the target language is spoken. However, in the present context of strong scientific development, many learners are also faced with the need to become acquainted with terminology (i.e. technical and/or specialized vocabulary) representing complex and abstract concepts. This holds especially true for immersion programs, in which students must gain an understanding of curricular subjects such as medicine entirely in a second language. A methodology is proposed in this paper for retrieving domain lexicons from texts, which can contribute to the acquisition of specialized knowledge at later stages of education. The paper discusses the implementation of learning strategies using IT technologies for students with no prior experience in terminology extraction and management, and presents Kahoot as a tool suitable both for autonomous and in-class work.