Wang Lina, Gao Xuesong Andy, Zhang Fan, Sun Fang, Wan Guangsheng
Foreign Languages Faculty, Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Shanghai, China.
School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
PLoS One. 2024 Aug 8;19(8):e0308353. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0308353. eCollection 2024.
As the number of foreign patients and the frequency of international academic exchanges increase, English proficiency has become increasingly essential for Chinese nurses in the treatment and nursing processes, clinical academic exchanges, and ongoing education. However, the overall English proficiency of Chinese nurses is generally inadequate, greatly depending on the English that they acquire during their nursing education. This study aims to explore the challenges encountered by Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) nursing students in the process of learning Nursing English, along with the effective self-regulated learning strategies they adopt to overcome these challenges. Data were collected from nine Chinese EFL nursing students through their reflective journals and thematic analysis was applied. Data analysis revealed the variety of challenges EFL nursing students encountered, including language-related challenges, which are linguistic difficulties that relate to Nursing English learning itself, such as Nursing English vocabulary and terminology, English-to-English translation, limited listening comprehension, and the gap between textbook knowledge and its practical application; learner-related challenges, which are difficulties that affect students' emotional, affective, and mental state, primarily caused by uncertainty about the significance of Nursing English, the unexpected difficulty of Nursing English, and failing quizzes; and context-related challenges, which are difficulties relate to social, cultural, and educational context, such as insufficient learning resources, a lack of language environment, and peer pressure. To surmount these challenges, the participants adopted diverse self-regulated learning strategies, including setting goals, previewing in advance and reviewing in time, utilizing word roots, prefixes, and suffixes to facilitate vocabulary learning, repeating, practicing with sounds and writing systems, translating, highlighting and using imagery to overcome language-related challenges; believing in the usefulness and significance of Nursing English, keeping a growth mindset, enjoying Nursing English learning and teacher support and maintaining grit in learning Nursing English to overcome learner-related challenges; and integrating resources, creating supportive language environments and seeking assistance from teachers and cooperating with peers to overcome context-related challenges. Based on these findings, implications are drawn for Nursing English teachers, material designers, curriculum developers, and program designers. We suggest incorporating explicit strategy instruction into regular Nursing English education to enhance nursing students' self-regulated learning.
随着外国患者数量的增加以及国际学术交流频率的提高，英语能力对于中国护士在治疗与护理过程、临床学术交流及继续教育中变得愈发重要。然而，中国护士的整体英语水平普遍不足，在很大程度上依赖于她们在护理教育期间所学的英语。本研究旨在探讨中国非英语专业护理学生在学习护理英语过程中所遇到的挑战，以及他们为克服这些挑战所采用的有效的自我调节学习策略。通过反思日志从九名中国非英语专业护理学生那里收集了数据，并应用了主题分析法。数据分析揭示了非英语专业护理学生所遇到的各种挑战，包括与语言相关的挑战，即与护理英语学习本身相关的语言困难，如护理英语词汇和术语、英英翻译、有限的听力理解，以及课本知识与其实际应用之间的差距；与学习者相关的挑战，即影响学生情绪、情感和心理状态的困难，主要是由护理英语重要性的不确定性、护理英语意外的难度以及测验不及格导致的；以及与情境相关的挑战，即与社会、文化和教育情境相关的困难，如学习资源不足、缺乏语言环境和同伴压力。为了克服这些挑战，参与者采用了多种自我调节学习策略，包括设定目标、提前预习和及时复习、利用词根、前缀和后缀来促进词汇学习、重复、通过发音和书写系统练习、翻译、突出显示和运用意象来克服与语言相关的挑战；相信护理英语的有用性和重要性、保持成长型思维、享受护理英语学习和教师支持并在学习护理英语时保持坚毅以克服与学习者相关的挑战；以及整合资源、创造支持性语言环境并向教师寻求帮助以及与同伴合作以克服与情境相关的挑战。基于这些发现，对护理英语教师、教材设计者、课程开发者和项目设计者提出了建议。我们建议将明确的策略指导纳入常规的护理英语教育中，以增强护理学生的自我调节学习能力。
