The Research On Application Of Communicative Approach In Teaching English For Nursing Purpose

ENP, English for Nursing Purpose is a sub-branch of EMP (English for Medical Purposes), which is a type of special English used by nurses who communicate with English-speaking patients. With the integration of global economy and the internationalization of ENP education, importance is attached to the language competence of the nurses. In China, ENP course was set up in2004, and in recent years, some scholars and teachers have made some preliminary researches in ENP teaching. Nevertheless, there is a lack of empirical study of ENP teaching.Based on the theories of Communicative Approach, an empirical study is made in this thesis on the teaching of English for Nursing Purpose for the5-year nursing majors. Through the present research, this thesis attempts to answer the following questions:1) What attitudes do students hold towards ENP?2) What kind of ability has been improved through studying ENP and what problems are there in studying ENP?3) Which one is better in promoting students’ communicative competence, the traditional way or CA?4) What problems are there when CA is applied in teaching ENP? And what can be done to overcome them?Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis,96freshmen majoring in Foreign Nursing in Hubei University of Traditional Chinese Medicine are the subjects of the experiment, who are divided into experimental group and controlled group,48students for each in teaching ENP. Experimental group is guided by CA whereas the controlled group adopts the traditional way. At the end of the semester, a comparison will be made through a questionnaire and an oral test. It is found that from the questionnaire the overwhelming majority of students are enthusiastic in studying ENP, but after a semester study, participants from the experimental class reap more benefits and get a lot of improvement especially in oral proficiency, and meanwhile their satisfaction degree towards the teacher is greater. The data from the test is analyzed by the software SPSS, showing that in the aspect of pronunciation and language fluency, students from experimental class do much better than those from the controlled class while in the aspect of grammar, it is exactly the reverse. However, as for the final score, there is no significant difference.Based on the research findings, some pedagogical implications as to how to improve students communicative competence, how to change the teacher’s role when CA is working as a guideline are proposed. First, in teaching practice, ENP teachers should not overemphasize communicative competence, instead, they should pay more attention to the training of students basic skills in language; second, teachers should also help students change their roles and expand their horizons and scope of knowledge; at last, it is imperative to specialize ENP teachers, only in this way, can ENP teaching get sustainable development.