Issues with Medical Teaching Staff’s EFL Pronunciation and Fluency

Abstract

The medical setting generally depends on the English language as a medium for teaching. Medical teaching staff need to have no issues in their EFL pronunciation and oral fluency when delivering their courses in English. However, it was observed that pertaining pronunciation was not up to appropriate overall levels. Therefore, the study used a mixed method approach in order to achieve the aim of verifying this observation and relating aspects, if any. A four-scale Likert-type questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were used as instuments to collect data from five experienced teaching staff (ages 37-59) at the Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University, Egypt. Results revealed that the participants’ vast majority (n. 4) had good pronunciation levels, except in the area of word number production. The findings also revealed they (n.4) lacked knowledge and use of the supra-segmental features of pronunciation, such as word stress, intonation, rhythm, timing, and pause. Recommendations included staff attending general language and phonology courses, doing speaking and conversation activities, and practicing with native speakers.