With this paper, we share some of the results of a post-doctoral research project investigating the epistemic beliefs of Romanian medical students and how these operate within the context of learning English for medical purposes. A battery of questionnaires (EBS, BALLI, SILL) were used in a survey on 160 1st year medical students at the end of the academic year 2011-2012. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, appropriate correlations and factor analyses, corroborated with observed classroom behaviour and performance over one academic year. The results invite discussion at several levels, e.g. methodological, cultural, curricular.