Since the Barcelona objective released on 16 March 2002, European Union met an ambitious goal: to promote learning of “at least two foreign languages from an early age” (European Commission 2019). Thus, bilingualism, multilingualism, and linguistic diversity became a part of European policy (Pokrivčáková 2013a; Pokrivčáková 2013b; Schunz 2012). Nevertheless, English language is still considered to be the global language, used as lingua franca. English is the language of international dialogue facilitating further educational and professional development, it is the language of international communication, science, academia, and the Internet (Dearden 2014). English is the first foreign language taught in Slovakia, and therefore majority of Slovak medical students chose the course of Medical English during their study. To develop communicative competence and performance in students, it is necessary to offer a very wide range of stimulating activities in English classes. Videos published on the Internet offer enormous potential for foreign or second language (L2) acquisition at every level according to Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) in almost all learning phases, covering a significant variety of authentic topics (Barnau, Džuganová, Malinovská 2018). Our study is particularly aimed at watching of YouTube professional medical videos with/without captions and their effect on English language skills, especially listening comprehension in medical students at Jessenius Faculty of Medicine in Martin, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia (JFM UC).

Medical language is the language used by medical experts in their professional communication and incorporates more than 2,500 years of a development influenced mostly by Greek and Latin medical traditions. Its specific features and characteristics are studied from various aspects. It is closely connected with the immense development of technology and science that brings new concepts to the language; medical vocabulary is an open and continually changing phenomenon and its units often acquire new meanings. Learning English medical language that has become a lingua franca during the last few decades creates certain obstacles for learners in the form of collocations, irregular forms, existence of synonyms, doublets, abbreviations, false friends, etc. To manage medical language at an appropriate level requires looking for the most convenient teaching and learning strategies. Good proficiency of English medical language opens new horizons to medical professionals and offers various options of its application in practice. As an international means of communication it slowly penetrates into national medical vocabularies worldwide.

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