English For Nursing, Elementary Level

Preface

            ENGLISH FOR NURSING is an English language text designed for student nurses  at an elementary level of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The text integrates the basic skills of reading speaking and writing in order to prepare nurse students to understand and communicate in nursing subjects at an elementary level. The project evolved from a study of the needs of student nurses in the Arab world. Although the book focuses on nursing, most of the skills taught are appropriate for any academic course of study.

Unit Organisation

The book attempts to emphasize and integrate the basic skills of reading, speaking and writing. The primary focus is placed on reading skills and vocabulary development in the context of academic nursing use. Grammar, arising from the reading passages, is restricted so as to aid consolidation of the above skills. The introduction of grammatical items is graded and sequenced, where appropriate, in accordance with the principles of elementary language acquisition.

The reading passages have been carefully selected to reflect an appropriate level of language and to cover a wide range of nursing topics from nursing curriculum and nursing journals. They are arranged in ten units; and each unit consists of a brief pre-reading exercise and an exercise on skimming or scanning. Following the reading passage itself, there are post-reading exercises that focus on important reading skills: getting the main idea, guessing meaning from context, understanding the reading structure, finding the topic sentence, recognizing contextual reference, understanding signal words, making notes, outlining, comparing and contrasting, cause and effect, classification, exemplification, making inferences, rephrasing understanding stems and affixes, and discussing questions that relate the reading passage to the student’s own life.

A wide range of speaking and writing activities are closely related to the reading passages and give students adequate practice in the production of language in the field of nursing.

            Suleiman Saleem Mazyad, Ph.D.

                                            June, 2005

                                             Riyadh.