Literary Reading Circles and Short Essay Activities for English Learning among Medical Students

Abstract

This chapter presents a study of the implementation of certain approaches (literary reading circles and essay activities) to general English as a foreign language (EFL) education for medical students at a Japanese university. The primary purposes of this study are to share the researcher’s teaching experience as a teacher integrating literary work into language education and to provide a platform for discussion of the effectiveness of the approaches implemented and the challenges they involve. In pursuit of these goals, this chapter first reviews research on the liberal arts education needs of medical students, the use of literature in language instruction, and the role of narrative in achieving learning in the areas of reading and writing in a second language. It then explores the participating students’ learning outcomes through the analysis of short essays and a questionnaire, and presents the pedagogical implications of the findings. English as a second language (ESL) and EFL practitioners considering ways to incorporate literature into their language education practice may refer to this study as an example.