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LangLit 
An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal
 
 
Vol. 1 Issue - 1
 
 
77
 
 
 
Aug, 2014 
Medical English. In vocabulary practice these expressions may be employed as a basic frame 
with slots for various fillers, which may be trained in substitution drills. Examples with the 
slots filled are: 
The patient presented with the symptoms of hypertension. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
angina pectoris 
 
 
 
 
 
 
malnutrition 
This type of exercise should be combined with the translation of the substituted terms 
and providing their definitions by the students on the basis of their medical knowledge, e.g. 
Hypertension or high blood pressure is a condition in which blood pressure is elevated above 
the norm.
Another type of exercise used for teaching the associations between the words that 
occur in lexical chunks is matching the parts of them, e.g., 
What’s wrong
 
pain. 
What seems to
 
with him? 
He is in terrible 
 
be the trouble? 
Knowing the meaning of a word also involves knowing the word with which it tends 
to co-occur (or collocate). Collocations are pairs or groups of words which co-occur with 
very high frequency (DeCarrico, 2001). They are important in vocabulary learning because, 
as Nattinger (1988) says “the meaning of a word has a great deal to do with the words with 
which it commonly associates”. In Medical English the examples of collocations are: acute 
pain, give an injection, take temperature, make diagnosis. Not knowing collocations may 
lead to wrong word combinations that may not be understandable to native speakers, such as 
formed by Polish students *difficult condition (for serious condition), or *give a diagnosis 
(for make a diagnosis), which are usually caused by transmission of lexical associations from 
the native language into the English language. The activities designed for teaching 
collocations may include the following stages: after illustrating collocations in context by 
highlighting or underlining them in texts, word-matching and gap-filling activities can be 
helpful in consolidating the word co-occurrences. For example, the noun pain can be given 
with a list of adjectives with which it does and does not co-occur, and the students’ task is to 
circle the correct collocations and then check the answers in a dictionary or against a key. 
acute 
 
 
 
 
 
itching 
 
 
 
 
 
throbbing 
He complains of a/an high 
 
pain. 
 
 
 
 
 
burning 
 
 
 
 
 
limited 
 
 
 
 
 
shooting 
The task which may follow this exercise is to ask students to brainstorm other words 
they know which are related to the theme of “pain” and to draw a “spidergram” made of 
these words. 
Gap-filling activities are another type of word association practice. In such an activity 
the students are asked to choose all possible words from a list, which contains more words 
than are needed. 
examination, injection, therapy, injury, shooting, prescribe, major
1.
 
After physical ........, the doctor ordered some lab tests. 
2.
 
Dr Smith prescribed me a very effective .......... 

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