The effects of language and communication training on nursing students’ self-perceived communicative competence

Abstract

Nursing students are typically unable to identify and label their language-learning needs accurately, which can impact on their learning behaviour and learning outcomes. Gathering information about learners’ perceptions of their communicative competence, as indicators of their learning needs, can guide pedagogic decisions made during training as well as being used to evaluate the effects of training. This study focuses on changes in nursing students’ perceptions of their communicative competence from before to after training. A pre- and post- training questionnaire on self-perceived communicative competence is used to investigate changes in nursing students (n=27) self-perceptions during an English language-training programme. The results show that the participants’ self-perceived communicative competence increases significantly from before to after training. However, while the Culture and Rapport components of overall communicative competence show significant increase from before to after training, the Comprehension component does not. These results indicate the effects of the training on the changes in learners’ perceptions of their communicative competence, which holds implications for the design and implementation of training, particularly in terms of awareness raising activities that can help language learners become competence accommodators.