OVERVIEW

The DIFAR considers the knowledge of English to be crucial for the education of students enrolled in their degree courses. Therefore it organises free Scientific English course (intermediate-advanced) with open attendance, held by a mother-tongue teacher. Even if students have a good grasp of English, attending the course is highly recommended.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Contents: Analysis of websites and their videos in relation to their intersemiotic, interactional, intercultural and interdisciplinary characteristics. Readings which refer to the theoretical features of text analysis; reflections on applicative methods of text analysis, including translation. Objectives: The capacity to express oneself in English at a B2 level of the CEFR in the various registers of spoken, written and multimodal discourse; metalinguistic analysis of multimodal English texts with reference to the phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical and pragmatic structures; methodological studies aimed at the practice of and reflection on translation, written and oral, from English to Italian in its non literary applications and in its multimedia applications.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course, entails reflection on the typical micro/macro structures and  micro/macro skills of English for medical and healthcare purposes. Students are required to acquire precision in the use of microstructures. The term microstructures refers to revision of what is learnt at school in relation to the morphosyntax of English. This includes the verb system and, in particular, the role of verbs and verb aspect in English medical discourse as well as the functions of adverbs, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions in affirmative, negative, interrogative, modal, subordinate, temporal, concessive, consecutive, conditional, adversative, dubitative, passive, impersonal, infinitival and hypothetical clauses. All this is preliminary step to proficiency vis-à-vis the commonest grammatical microstructures in scientific discourse namely: 1) the use of nouns to express abstract processes (nominalisation) and the effects abstract expression has on negative, demonstrative (use of the definite article) and interrogative clauses in scientific discourse; 2) the role of the verb and other parts of speech in expressing opinions, probabilities, possibilities and hypotheses (modality); 3) quantification and expression of statistical data; 4) expressing comparisons; 5) expressing sequences of events; 6) the use of acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations in medical discourse; 7) agency suppression and deletion (the latter in in keeping with the principle that “among its syntactic structures, scientific discourse privileges those which allow the agent to be sidelined or removed altogether”). In their turn these features of English are only an intermediate step  towards mastery or more advanced skills such as describing graphs, presenting case studies, summarizing scientific articles, comparing data  and so on. All this plays an intrinsic role in your future professions.

PREREQUISITES

School level English, at least a B1.5 CEFR level.

TEACHING METHODS

1. Frontal lessons, interactive.
2. Online lessons/assignments using AulaWEB

The frontal lessons (either in class or using TEAMS) are a mixture of lecture and discussion and are taught in English. Online resources will be used to enhance instruction and details of the latter will be given during the course. Lesson highlights, links and practice texts/tests will be available on AulaWeb.

Since perfect congruity between the topics of the course and the students' previous knowledge of English is not possible, students will be the crafstmen of their learning, in order to guarantee, ultimately, the disciplinary coherence by means of responsible and autonomous self-study. As a matter of fact, the course book which belongs to the The Medical Alphabet series, differentiates the topics in an analitical and clear manner thus allowing reading and consultations to be carried out not necessarily in alphabetical order. What is learnt reading scientific texts in English cannot but strengthen what is learnt in Italian and vice-versa. By comparing various sources, their differences and similarities, a lot can be learnt. 

Any Student with documented Specific Learning Disorders (SLD), or with any special needs, shall reach out to the Lecturer(s) and to the dedicated SLD Representative in the Department ( Prof. Luca Raiteri, Luca.Raiteri@unige.it ) before class begins, in order to liaise and arrange the specific learning methods and ensure proper achievement of the learning aims and outcomes. VERY IMPORTANT: any request for compensatory tools and adaptations in the exam MUST be done within 10 working days before the date of the exam according to the instructions that can be found at https://unige.it/disabilita-dsa/comunicazioni

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

Together with the revision of the morpho-syntactic features, the course aims at introducing themes relating to the many activities that are carried out in national and international specialist biomedical and pharmacological contexts, with particular reference to communication and management systems. Thus, besides what has already been stated concerning linguistic microstructures and interactional microskills, the course will cover various professional aspects of the pharmaceutical and biomedical career in Anglosaxon societies with a comparative study of both the Italian situation and that of the various English speaking countries.  

Reading implies the need to understand the deepest levels of a text which includes its more or less explicit implications, references and inferences. All this is not so easy to manage in a foreign language and in some cases will be rather complex. For this reason, the course book – The Medical Alphabet Vol. 2 – can be defined as mixed, since it refers to a vast medical and pharmaceutical filmography which is a great help in the professionalising journey and aims at giving students a specialist linguistic competence, in spoken and written English. Constant self-instigated re-reading and revision of what has been learnt during lessons is the key to moving ahead in the best possible way. Reading two or three pages of English every day and watching a short film or carrying out one of the prescribed exercises every two to three days makes it possible to acquire lifelong knowledge and skills.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Course book: Anna Loiacono (2018). The Medical Alphabet Volume 2. An English Textbook on Healthcare in the Digital Age. Matarrese Editore. Andria.

Bibiliography

Baldry, Anthony. Multimodal Web Genres: Exploring Scientific English. Como & Pavia: Ibis, 2011.

Baldry, Anthony, & Thibault, Paul. Multimodal Transcription and Text Analysis. A Multimodal Toolkit and Coursebook. London, Equinox, [2006] 2010.

Anna Loiacono (2013). The Medical Alphabet Volume 1. An English textbook in healthcare. Matarrese editore. Andria.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

DEIRDRE KANTZ (President)

RAFFAELLA BOGGIA

TIZIANA BONIFACINO (Substitute)

ANNA CARBONE (Substitute)

PAOLA FOSSA (Substitute)

MICHELE TONELLI (Substitute)

LESSONS

LESSONS START

English lessons are held in the second semester of the academic year.

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

The final exam takes place at the end of the second semester and consists of an oral exam worth 3 CFU for first-year students in CHEMISTRY AND PHARMACEUTICAL TECHNOLOGY 11674 (LM-13) - GENOA and 5 CFU for third-year students in PHARMACY 8452 (LM-13) - GENOA.

The oral exam consists of two parts: one part entirely in English with the course instructor and one part involving translation from English to Italian with one of the exam commission members. The student's ability to express themselves in English and the application of the main aspects of the textual models acquired and used during the course will be assessed through:

a) an in-depth exploration of a topic from the adopted textbook or discussed during the course, chosen by the student;

b) the reading and translation of a scientific passage chosen by the commission members.

The 5 CFU oral exam is longer in duration compared to the 3 CFU exam.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The course test is designed to evaluate the students' understanding of the materials/contents presented during the lessons and of the course book.

Exam schedule