Teaching in English for the Undergraduates: A challenge for effective learning?

Abstract

During the spring term in 2010, I taught parts of the Community Dentistry for the first time (six lectures, two classes) referring to Epidemiology lectures under the undergraduate curriculum of the School of Dentistry. Each class was presented mainly in English but students were free to ask and present their assignments in Danish; each lecture was supported by a Danish colleague working as an associate professor in the department. After cessation of lectures there was criticism by the students that the content was not in line with those during the previous years. After declaring that the content was exactly the same, students criticized that the lectures were in English and they could not understand. Therefore, I decided to assess the
attitudes of students to learning in English medium by self-reported questionnaires during the lectures in autumn 2011. I would concentrate on basic principles of pedagogical teaching and try to make lectures more effective and interesting by activating student participation. This project aims to assess the attitudes of dental undergraduate students towards learning dental
lectures in English at the School of Dentistry, University of Copenhagen. As a sub-goal, some approaches to increase student active learning and participation are discussed.