Japanese medical student attitudes towards English accents and the implications these attitudes have on teaching medical English conversation

Abstract

The central questions this paper seeks to address are:

1) What are the attitudes of first year medical students in a Japanese medical school towards the varieties of English that exist in the world? More specifically, do these students consider mother tongue varieties of English to be disproportionately superior to other varieties of English?

2) What implications do those attitudes have on the teaching of English within the context of a medical English conversation class in a Japanese medical school?