A Study of the Vocabulary Needs Of Medical and Paramedical Students in Taiwan Beryl Chinghwa Lee Senior Lecturer of General Education Center of China Medical University Ph. D. student of English Department of Taiwan Normal University To keep up with the progress of globalization, the tertiary education in Taiwan has been dedicated to the promotion of university students’ English proficiency. The increasingly important role of English language is particularly marked in medical fields since medical technology development has been advancing by leaps and bounds. Thus, in Taiwan there is an increasing tendency for the higher education teachers to adopt English-medium textbooks and articles as teaching materials to facilitate medical and paramedical students’ English language learning. However, vocabulary, one of the most crucial linguistic components, has been reported to form the biggest barriers for most learners in academic studies. The present study, therefore, is intended to investigate the vocabulary size and needs of medical and paramedical students in Taiwan. The participants include 216 medical students including majors in western medicine, Chinese medicine, and dentistry as well as 231 paramedical students composed of majors in oral hygiene, public health, sports medicine and so on. Schmitt’s validated Vocabulary Levels Test (version B), which consists word levels of 2000, 3000, academic word list, 5000 and 10000 word, is employed to collect data. The research questions include: （1） What are the vocabulary sizes and needs of the first-year medical and paramedical students in Taiwan? （2） Is the vocabulary size of the medical students significantly different from that of the paramedical students? （3） Do the subjects’ vocabulary size correlate with their English proficiency??
