<p>English is my second language.
To be a successful med school applicant, student, and finally doctor, you'd need to be a great, or at least good, communicator.
My written English is fine, but my conversational or spoken English is horrible. I often can't clearly and fully express myself in person, and this creates some frustrating or even serious misunderstandings among people I talk with. I can construct English sentences that make sense and have no grammatical flaws, but this requires some processing time; in other words, I can't do that immediately. When talking in person, you don't have as much processing time as in writing, so I'm forced to say sentences, often grammatically wrong, that don't really correspond to what I actually mean. This is probably why I communicate much better in writing than in person.
My poor conversational skills prevent me from partaking in or carrying out some activities that require excellent communication skills. (eg. working as your university's peer tutor, establishing your own club and maintaining it, etc.)
If I don't do anything about it now, then I would bomb all the med school interviews 3 years later.
Tips on developing your conversational skills and becoming a great in-person communicator would be appreciated.</p>
<p>You need to stretch yourself. You're absolutely correct that communication skills are important. One of my current interns is from a foreign country, and while his english is very good, he has a little bit of the same sort of trouble you have. He was a dermatologist in his former country so he knows the medicine, but I've seen a couple of patients get upset with him when he interviews - he often misses subtle context, and he has difficulty in phrasing things in multiple ways to adjust to a certain type of patient or put things in a way they can understand. </p>
<p>A couple ideas -</p>
<p>Depending on what your first language is, see if that department at your school has a "conversation buddy" program. When I've seen these before, an native english speaker and a native foreign speaker are paired up with the idea of improving each other's speaking skills. Such a program may be set up by the foreign language department or the office responsible for helping international students acclimate to campus life. You'd get to help someone learn your language better and they'd return the favor. If your school doesn't have such a program, this might be a good "club" to start. You could talk with professors in the department about helping you set up such a program and they could be a good source for LOR's. It may not be a prof that speaks your language, but this could be a widely beneficial thing for a lot of people. And of course this is a program that can be used across many languages, so there's opportunity for a lot of membership growth.</p>
<p>It may sound ridiculous, but in all seriousness - speed dating. It might be something you build up towards, but I think that it's the type of rapid fire environment that would be a major stretch of your abilities, but if you got comfortable in that environment, you'd be doing pretty well.</p>