the effect of ict-based teaching method on medical students' esp learning

Background: in recent years, explosion of knowledge and internet access seriously challenged the traditional language of teaching and learning methodologies. most teachers and experts recognize the need for a teaching method using information & communication technology (ict) facilities. purpose: to assess and compare the students' english for specialized purpose (e.s.p.) learning in two approaches of traditional text-based and internet–based articles. methods: this quasi-experimental study was conducted on 60 second-year students of medicine having esp course. they were assigned into two groups based on their average scores: one group attended a class of which materials were chosen from the latest published medical articles in internet and the other attended a traditional text-based class. care was taken to select texts of the same level of legibility. the language proficiency of the students was measured by english language battery test (elba test). results: the students achieved better results with internet-based medical english articles, compared to the traditional text-based method. the students were mostly satisfied with the former method (77.2%); 72.3% were willing to continue with that method, and some 75% of them achieved good scores in final exam. conclusion: instruction based on ict specialized articles is a more effective method for teaching esp to the students of medicine linguistically and methodologically.