The motives and benefits of peer teaching for medical students in language classes

With the rapid expansion of internationalisation, the number of students enrolled at the English and German Programmes of the University of Pécs Medical School has increased dramatically. The authors decided to make use of the benefits this multicultural student population can provide in regard to teaching Medical English or German to Hungarian students and Medical Hungarian to international students. The Department of Languages for Biomedical Purposes have been recruiting Teaching Assistants (TAs) to provide a natural language learning environment and, in addition, create a new platform for our Hungarian and international students to become acquainted with other cultures, share experience and learn from each other. The present paper seeks to summarize the findings of a questionnaire study which aims at assessing the TAs’ motivations, expectations, and perceptions as well as the potential benefits of the classes, where Hungarian and international students work together. To the best of the authors’ knowledge there is a lack of qualitative studies to explore the experience of peer teaching in the language classroom of the medical schools. According to our results both the international and the Hungarian TAs believed that these classes had managed to break the invisible wall between the local and the international students, improve students’ teaching and communication skills and enhance their confidence in several fields. With the study we were also able to gain insights into what motivated student tutors to teach in language classes and what positive or negative experiences they had.