The Motivational Features Of Medical English Terms

With the advance of informational globalization, the exchange of information and technology in medical science is becoming increasingly popular. English for Medical Purposes (EMP), being unique in its structure, diverse in its terminology and practical in its knowledge, has grown into a so-called "Second Language" out of the linguistic domain.In order to meet the demands of communication in medical field, more and more medical colleges and institutions in China have realized the important role that medical English plays and thereby have opened up various courses of EMP.While the most challenging in medical English teaching and learning is known to be the resourceful vocabularies and terminologies, significantly different from those in general English, medical English however does embody its special features and knowledge that can be taught and learned. Put these into a scientific and systematic perspective, medical English thus can be studied in the light of its word-formation, meaning change and word origin as well.This paper purposes to explore the features of medical English terms (MET) within the framework of lexical motivation. By providing a large number of sample words, the paper is to address the topic from three subcategories of lexical motivation, that is, morphological motivation, semantic motivation and etymological motivation.It is hoped that a systematic study of MET features from the perspective of motivation will facilitate the learners'memory of the medical terms and thus improve the teaching efficiency of EMP.