The primary focus of this study is to devise techniques, and strategies to expand medical staff and students’ vocabulary and help them guess the meaning of medical terms as context clues. In order to do so, primitively, we need to know how familiar medical staff is with the concept of medical terminology word building and etymology which form the basis of medical terminology word formation and meaning. Therefore, a qualitative questionnaire was designed and administrated in four medical centers in Arak, namely, Qods Hospital, Amir Al-Mo’menin Hospital, Vali-ye-Asr Hospital, and Arak Health Center. The results of the questionnaire indicated that a majority of the respondents are not familiar with word building and etymology underlying medical terms, although some of them have had prior English language education institutionally and/or at college level. Also, many of the respondents declared that they were not content with ESP medical courses at university. Therefore, in the present study we have tried to suggest ways to bridge the gap between medical staff and students and medical terminology word building and etymology. In the present study, we have analyzed English medical terminology as a morphological phenomenon using the Item and Arrangement (IA) model. Using this model, words containing prefixes and suffixes are dissected to get access to the root word or base and to see what processes words have undergone to take the current form. Once the root word or base has been exposed, the word can be assessed in terms of meaning. Also, the affixes attached to the root or base can be taught and learned systematically since they function as semantic and syntactic elements. This study finally aims to develop techniques and strategies that ESP medical course instructors can adopt to facilitate medical staff and students’ understanding and learning medical terminology and ultimately, implement those strategies to guess the meaning of words while reading medical texts.
