Common parlance English in an Indian medical undergraduate institution: teaching-learning methods for improvement

Abstract

Background: Author’s experience/ Capstone Project (T2TM, Harvard University) approval.

Methods: Harrison’s Textbook of Internal Medicine was the vocabulary source. COCA corpus was purchased for ranking ‘usage frequency’ of words. Background (MCQ.1) versus summative (MCQ.2) assessment has already been published – ‘teaching learning methods’ applied meanwhile is elaborated hereby. After MCQ.1, in sensitisation, 5 glossary options were explained/ offered. Monthly improvement of 1000 COCA ranks were aimed through 5 monthly interim tests (MCQ.T.1-5). MCQ.2 was taken after 6 months. All 7 tests were followed by feedback enucleation. Finally, dictionaries were rated by the participants through 7 questions. Data normality (Shapiro Wilk test) without outliers (Tukey’s fence/ QQ plot) was affirmed. Repeated measure ANOVA was applied. After 6 months, 5000 ranks betterment was expected in MCQ.2 apropos MCQ.1 – in outcome, there was no underfitting/ overfitting (no significant bias/ variance).

Results: Sphericity (Mauchly’s test) was 0.85 – so adjusted F-tests (Greenhouse Geisser [e_GG = 0.8497]/ Huynh Feldt [e_GG = 0.8888] correction) were used. Effect size (h²) was 0.0035 (observed) and 0.0201 (partial). Despite monthly increase of usage frequency rank by 1000, participants’ ‘scores’ were not significantly different in the 5 monthly MCQ.Ts. Dictionary market was not congruent with post-awareness choices.

Conclusions: By such a 6-month training, improvement of at least 5000 COCA ranks can be achieved. Dictionaries require in-depth awareness before purchase. Dictionaries D.4 and D.5 could think of lowering the prices.