International Journal of Linguistics & Communication

Investigating English Learning Needs of ISTM Kinshasa General Duty Nursing Students
Flory MANDINA MUANA MUNDELE

Abstract
The study aims at finding out the real English learning needs of ISTM Kinshasa general duty student nurses. This article is not going to design a class syllabus, but being aware of the real learners‟ needs is an asset for the selection of appropriate course content. To acquire an overall picture of students‟ needs, a qualitative approach with the use of triangulated sources of data was found the most appropriate for this study. Thus, four sources of data were selected as target population for the study: general duty nursing students, current nurses, experienced content teachers, and the head of nursing section. A questionnaire was given to a sample of 257 third−year general duty nursing students, selected at random out of 720 students. Another questionnaire was given to twenty current nurses, selected also randomly. An unstructured interview was conducted with five experienced nursing content teachers again selected randomly and with the head of nursing section. After processing data, to avoid redundancy, responses from only ten nurses and two content teachers were considered for the analysis. After grouping findings according to the principle of affinities, the summary of the main topics to include in the English course content for general duty nursing are the following: Identification of people, departments, equipment and objects in a hospital; contextualized key medical terms for professional communication; and basic general English knowledge. This result is relevant for anyone desiring to design an English class syllabus not only for ISTM Kinshasa general duty nursing students, but also for any other nursing students where the transferability with slight changes can be possible.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/ijlc.v9n2a3