Speaker
Description
Empathy is considered essential to both language learning and healthcare. It follows that empathy should be a core component of EMP (English for Medical Purposes) education, yet this is not the case. Most EMP textbooks remain focused on medical terminology and expressions. The author will present findings from a study that attempted to measure the effect of empathy-building activities on the empathy levels of medical students. A control-intervention design was adopted in this study involving 86 third-year medical students. In the intervention group, students reflected upon one English-language haiku with a medical theme each week for the 15-week semester; the control group did not engage in this activity. It was predicted that this reflection would increase students' empathic skill of perspective-taking. All students completed the Multidimensional Empathy Scale (MES) at the start and end of the term. Students in the intervention group showed significant gains in perspective-taking; these gains were not observed in the control group. Students' reflections on the haiku tasks will be discussed. Following this, further activities that can be introduced in an EMP classroom to boost learner empathy will be shown.