English education as seen by Japanese doctors, researchers and students

Effective English teaching will benefit Japanese medical students who will later become researchers and doctors. Analyzing the English required for students in an academic setting is important and can help English teachers focus their teaching to better meet the needs of their students. We devised a questionnaire to allow doctors and medical students to state their true feelings about English with a view to analyzing their English usage in their career and study and their expectations for English education. We observed that on many issues，students agreed with doctors and researchers，but there were areas of disagreement such as what should be taught for medical English education. The necessity of English proficiency combined with the relativelack of time for extensive English study，makes it incumbent on English teachers to strategically plan what to teach and then maximize time spent teaching. Our research showed that there are still gaps in the English education，but hopefu11y we can use the results to sharpen the focus of English education at Faculty of Medicine， Shimane university.