Study On Teaching Methods Of English For Nurses

English for Nurses is one of the branches of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). With the globalization of world economic and internationalization of medical education, there is a shortage for nurses who can communicate with English-speaking patient. In China, English for Nurses was first established by the China Research Association of Medical Higher Education on Dec, 2004. In recent years, Lei Hui had summary of common useful expressions of the course; Su Huifen had some thoughts about the tendency of the course. However, there has been little in-depth research into this field.On the basis of a brief introduction of the learners' needs, learners' motivation, communicative approach, and grammar-translation method, this paper tries to explore a teaching method to improve the learners' communicative ability. By making a comparative study between two randomly chosen classes in the Health Technical School of Jianghan University, Class A is the test group and Class B is the control group, both classes are with the same teaching material, same teacher, but with different teaching method, Class A applies communicative approach, while class B applies grammar-translation method. Attention is focused on the relationship between teaching method and achievements. The findings indicate that the learners' satisfactions rate and grades are higher in test group, by the analysis of variance and statistical result; they show that the values have significant difference. This means that by applying communicative approach in the teaching of English for Nurses, can meet the learners' needs, motivate learning interests, and improve achievements. This paper supplies some tentative suggestions for the reform of teaching and to improve the teaching quality of this special course.