Collocational Competence Level of Medical English among Iranian Medical Students

Collocational competence is considered to be an important factor of fluency in a language. In Iran, medical texts are mainly in English and medical students have to pass 6 credits of medical English. In these courses a large number of medical terms should be covered in addition to medical English. We compared medical English collocational competence level of the students before and after passing English for the students of Medicine 1 and 2 (ESM). Three groups of medical students who had passed only General English (GE), both GE and ESM1, and GE, ESM 1 and 2 were compared with each other. Total collocational competence level of the students was low which indicated that ESM courses did not have positive effect on their collocational competence level. Moreover, their overall receptive collocational competence level was higher than their productive competence. It was concluded that improving medical collocational competence level requires more exposure time, explicit emphasis on medical collocations in classrooms and offering medical English as a separate course from medical terminology