2026 Volume 42 Issue 2 Pages 67-77
Abstract With the ongoing globalization of contemporary society, dental English education in Japan is gaining in importance. The Model Core Curriculum for Dental Education, issued by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), specifically includes the cultivation of dentists capable of contributing to international healthcare among its primary goals. Although English language questions were introduced to the National Dental Licensing Examination in 2010, there have been few reports examining the relationship between the content of these questions and the implementation status of dental English education curricula.
In this study, we analyzed the content, specialized knowledge, and level of English proficiency required for all 22 English questions administered in the National Dental Licensing Examination from 2010 to 2025. We also surveyed the dental English education curricula of 29 dental schools based on publicly available information and discussed future directions for education. The results showed that, although the number of English questions was extremely small―an annual average of 1.4 questions (0.4％) out of a total annual average of 361.3 questions―the majority of questions requiring English proficiency were scored at level 3 or higher, which requires contextual understanding, and a certain number of questions requiring specialized knowledge and an understanding of dental concepts were also identified. Therefore, the results suggest a trend in which English questions require not only knowledge of English vocabulary but also the ability to understand and interpret dental medicine content in English. Furthermore, 10 out of 29 universities (34.5％) provided English education related to specialized subjects from the third year onward. These findings indicate the need for connected English education, defined in this study as a continuous educational approach that systematically links English education with specialized subjects, clinical training, PBL/TBL, and literature reading from the third year onward.
