DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING THE GENDER AND NUMBER OF ROMANIAN NOUN IN THE EMI CONTEXT

Abstract

In higher education, English-medium instruction (EMI) programs have expanded notably, especially in medical departments (general or dental medicine). This trend has deeply influenced the educational landscape, calling for the integration of medical content with linguistic instruction. The problem arises when students tend to prioritize medical terminology over morphological aspects despite the fact that morphological competence is essential for interaction with patients, particularly in accurate medical history-taking. This, however, presents a major challenge: the morphological complexity of the Romanian noun, which includes gender, number, case, as well as definite articles attached enclitically (unlike other Romance languages, in which the definite article is proclitic). This might be a problem not only for the students whose native languages belong to Germanic, Semitic, and other non-Romance languages, but also for students who speak other Romance languages. This is why the present article aims to analyze the difficulties students in the General Medicine in English programme face in learning the Romanian noun, using a contrastive approach (the contrastive triangle of native language – English – Romanian), multimodal and digital strategies, as well as a functional approach.