| Summary: | 碩士 === 南台科技大學 === 應用英語系 === 93 === Along with the rapid change of medical technology and promotion of nursing education, junior college and university graduates of nursing have gradually replaced high school graduates and become the main source of medical staff at hospitals. Thus, the nurses with high professional knowledge are called for. Nowadays, nurses are gradually expected more to read professional journals and attend international conferences so as to improve their medical-related knowledge. Therefore, the English needs for junior college and university graduates in nursing career are definitely worth investigating.
This study aimed to figure out the English needs of junior college and university graduates from the viewpoints of nursing supervisors. Apart from investigating the roles general English plays in nursing career, the researcher tried to find out the English abilities of nursing school graduates and the English skills they should be equipped with. Nursing supervisors’ opinions about English course designs were also explored.
The subjects of this study consisted of 169 nursing supervisors from different hospitals in southern Taiwan, which included Chiayi, Tainan, and Kaohsiung. In total, there were 81 nursing supervisors from local hospitals and 88 from regional hospitals. One set of questionnaire was designed to explore the subjects’ opinions. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS10.0) was used to deal with the scores of collected data of the questionnaires. Chi-square and descriptive statistics, including frequency, percentage and rank were used to analyze the collected data.
The major findings of this study were described as follows:
1. General English played a very important role in nursing career and there was no significant difference between local hospitals and regional hospitals.
2. The English abilities of junior college and university graduates were insufficient. Besides, either in EGP or ENP, the English abilities of university graduates were superior to those of junior college graduates, and each English ability reached a significant difference between these two groups.
3. Either for junior college or university graduates, their ENP abilities were better than their EGP abilities and some of the items showed great differences.
4. Either in EGP or ENP, the English needs in linguistic competence and communicative competence mostly revealed no great differences between junior college and university graduates. However, the English needs in self-actualization mostly reached a significant level between these two groups. That is, university graduates were expected to possess more competence in self-actualization.
5. The English needs in EGP and ENP mostly revealed no significant differences between local hospitals and regional hospitals.
6. Regarding the suggestions on English course designs, most of the items showed no significant discrepancies between junior colleges or universities except the item “Necessity of ENP Courses”. That is, ENP courses were very necessary to nursing schools. And they were in greater demand in universities than in junior colleges.
7. As regards the priority of EGP and ENP courses, listening and speaking ability were regarded as the top two priorities, followed by reading and writing ability respectively.
8. In terms of the course features, the ranking order from top to bottom was ENP, EGP, Academic English and English about Literature.
Finally, some implications based on the findings of this study had been offered.
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