Living Latin in Teaching Medical terminology: University Classroom Experience

Studies in health sciences mostly have a scholastic character. The main objective of the course Introduction to Latin Medical Terminology requires the students to acquire the main skill – connecting nouns, adjectives (participles), and other types of words. The traditional group of methods provides these skills using write-read-only methods. These traditional methods are sufficient for the training of the required skills.

 “Is it possible to build a normal sentence in Latin?” is one of the initial questions asked by 1^st-year health sciences students when starting the Introduction to Latin Medical Terminology course in a medical school. This question builds a problem: what is studied in medical universities around the world – language or merely a terminology system? 

The maingoal of this research is to create an innovative interactive learning environment when teaching Medical Latin by using spoken language phrases in an intercultural university classroom. The objectives are the following:

1. To highlight the manifestation of the educational functions of the Latin language in the course on Medical Latin terminology.
2. To explore the major topics of the course on Medical Latin terminology where some spoken language methods could be used.
3. To share the experience of using concrete examples of teaching material in the Medical Latin classes for students with different language backgrounds.

Theoretical framework of this research is based on: i) the concept of modern education oriented towards students’ learning – education that is focused on a student with personally relevant and interesting tasks, personally important topics, and an interactive learning process (Rocca, 2010; Petty, 2007; Petty, 2008; Šiaučiukėnienė, Visockienė, Talijūnienė, 2006 et al.); ii) the theories of transition from traditional to modern methods of language learning: until the 19^th century, the write-read-only methods were important – studying grammar and translating from one language to another very precisely seemed to be the only suitable forms of learning Medical terminology, but since the 20^th century, a natural method with the speaking aspect and the construction of sentences started a new approach of a direct method with the meaning at the center of education (Leonavičienė, Salienė, 2013); iii) the concept of the educational functions of the Latin language emphasizes the  total complex of gnoseological, communicative, and expressive functions for educational possibilities of the Latin language (Brunevičiūtė,  199

The problem is that during the study process, when working with students of different language backgrounds (native speakers of English, German, Spanish, or Hebrew), sometimes a better option would be to include elements that inspire students to “think in Latin”. In this way, some communicational methods of learning make medical terminology constructions more relevant and understandable from the point of view of languages and communication. As a starting point of using “speaking” in Latin, we took two studies conducted at the Department of Languages and Education. The study The Attitude of First-Year Medical Students Towards Teaching/Learning the Basics of Professional Medical Terminology in Latin (Butrimė, Grigonienė, Šarkauskienė, 2016) highlighted that up to 16% of students stated that they would like more creativity, as it was too boring for them simply to study the rules, and they wanted revisions of the same topics and additional material, which could fill the inner picture of what medical terms are made from. The study Reflection on Changes in the Latin Language Teaching Methodology: the Teacher’s Approach (Butrimė, Morkevičienė, 2016) concluded that games, crosswords, building short dialogues, etc., was a good approach, but only after paying serious attention to theory and grammar. We chose the results of a test that included writing diagnoses composed of a few words and combining of Greek and Latin roots into a single compound term. This requires two main skills – connecting the nominative and the genitive case of a noun and connecting a noun and an adjective. The first group of terms contained “noun+noun” terms. There were two usual problems in understanding the structure and using this kind of terms. First, the only way to express genitive case in English is the preposition “of” and the ending “’s”. In Latin, each noun has a genitive case given in a dictionary. The other difficulty in understanding grammar was connecting nouns and adjectives. In many non-Indo-European languages, there is no need to adjust the endings for a noun and a leading adjective, but this is required in Latin. Thus, “spoken” games can also be used to explain the connection of a noun and an adjective to form a spoken phrase, and then the “noun+adjective” medical term.

After using a short game to build a simple sentence in Latin, the grammar of the medical term can be explained more easily because students understand it as an everyday speech construction. The most important advantage of using Latin as a living language is that the medical terms are being treated like everyday language constructions. another advantage is that this approach makes the Latin classes attractive and interesting. The atmosphere in the classroom is also of importance, and this method may help to establish a positive atmosphere among students, especially since the first topic “noun+noun terms” is given at the beginning of the course (weeks 3 and 4). This also reduces stress among first-year students and can be easily combined with other types of games, such as puzzles, crosswords, etc. We noticed a change in the test results (the main topic was compound medical terms with Greek combining forms) after the introduction of the “spoken” methods to the course. In the academic year 2016-2017, the mean score (the best mark being 10, and the worst mark – 1) was 8.1. Next year, in 2017-2018, after the introduction of the new methods, the average score increased to 8.7. This improvement is not huge, but generally, it shows a positive trend and the validity of adding more “spoken” methods to the course on Latin professional medical terminology. Not all of the teaching methods described above can be used as basic methods. The grammar basics should be explained using the “traditional” methods, but after the primary understanding of main grammar topics is achieved, showing the learned material as a part of the “spoken” language could be useful.

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