Motivational Challenges for Gulf Arab Students Studying Medicine in English

  • Diane Malcolm
Chapter
Part of the International Perspectives on English Language Teaching book series (INPELT)

Abstract

The Arab Gulf region, comprising the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain — is among the regions of the world where tertiary institutions have proliferated in the past few decades, as their governments have attempted to provide higher education opportunities for burgeoning numbers of young, increasingly educated and globalised nationals. Private colleges and universities offering a wide choice of majors to GCC high school graduates have also spread. In most of these new institutions, the principal language of instruction in technical and scientific fields is English (Zughoul, 2003), yet the level of English required to be an effective college student in these settings is often far beyond what most public-school graduates from GCC schools have achieved. As a result, most colleges in the region include compulsory English language and academic skills training in a foundation or preparatory programme as a pre-requisite to acceptance to the degree courses. Medicine is among the most prestigious and desirable of the professions in the GCC, so acceptance into a medical college is an aspiration for many of its brightest students and a source of pride for their families and communities. In GCC countries, students typically enter medical college directly from high school, study for six years then intern for a year before becoming fully qualified MDs.

Keywords

Saudi Arabia Proficiency Level Gulf Cooperation Council English Skill Gulf Cooperation Council Country 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Diane Malcolm 2013

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  • Diane Malcolm

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