Communicative intercultural competence in Medical Postgraduate Education in Cuba

Abstract

This article describes the results of the investigation “Developing Communicative Intercultural Competence in Medical Postgraduate Education in Cuba through English”, a master´s degree thesis whose aim was to design a postgraduate course of English for Specific Purposes which would focus on the development of the communicative competence of doctors going to health missions in English-speaking countries or where English is spoken as a lingua franca.This course is based on Developmental Pedagogy, the Communicative Approach and Task-Based Learning. It emphasizes cultural and important intercultural issues to be kept in mind during doctor-patient interviews, doctor-doctor relationships and doctor-family exchanges in a professional context so as to make it possible to establish cultural differences and similarities between the students´ culture and the foreign country´s culture.This is an exploratory investigation with a fundamentally quantitative focus using resources of the qualitative one. This design is a curricular document with all its didactic components, aimed at the development of intercultural communicative competence that responds to the current needs of the participants.