CLASSIFIED ANALYSIS OF COMMON MISTAKES FOUND IN ENGLISH MEDICAL PAPER WRITTEN BY JAPANESE SCIENTISTS

2001 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 10610467
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 英語・英米文学
• Research Institution: Hamamatsu University School of Medicine
• Principal Investigator: HISHIDA Haruko Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Associate Professor, 医学部, 助教授 (90199000)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): OHKI Toshio Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Medicine, Professor, 医学部, 教授 (80070994)
• Project Period (FY): 1998 – 2000
• Keywords: English Medical Paper / common mistakes / Japanese scientists / Grammar / style

Research Abstract

This paper addresses expressions that should be improved or corrected, which we found in the manuscripts written and submitted to us by medical specialists for correction or improvement. Since we have not been trained in the field of medicine, the words and phrases we have dealt with here are not special medical terms, but ordinary ones that are frequently used in medical papers. We have categorized them into grammatical and stylistic items based on the categorization used in T. Matsutaira (1995), and then analyzed the mistaken words and phrases in each category, attempting to find out some reasons that caused the writers to write in the way they did. We have also attempted to discover some types of regularity underlying the mistakes and in many cases we have been successful in our attempt. These regularities will hopefully contribute to the avoidance of future mistakes that readers of this paper as well as the writers of the original manuscripts would otherwise make.