The Necessity of Teaching ESP in the Nursing Career at PUCE Esmeraldas

Abstract

With the objective of assessing the necessity of teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in the career of Nursing at PUCE Esmeraldas, a pedagogical investigation was carried out in the first semester of 2018, with the qualitative paradigm, the sample was formed by 10 students from the sixth level of Nursing, who were part of a group of 25 of the same level. They were taught ESP during three units of the syllabus, with thirty hours in the whole semester. The descriptive and the inductive method were applied, with an unstructured interview and the technique of observation. The results showed that at the beginning of the semester students were not able to speak in English using the communicative functions and vocabulary related to ESP, but when they were taught each of the units which were connected to English for Specific Purposes, they were able to communicate with some fluency and accuracy, they talked about Emergencies in Pediatrics, such as burns, convulsions, poisoning by any substance, epilepsy, an acute asthma attack, vomiting and diarrhoea, hypothermia and hyperthermia and a forearm fracture,  they also talked about the importance of physical exercises to rehabilitate injured patients applying  the nursing care plan for each disease, for example an ankle sprains, any kind of fracture, a patient after a myocardial infarction, a cerebro vascular accident, an operation and so one. It can be concluded that in the teaching-learning process of ESP to Nursing students it is very relevant and significant to use some strategies as cooperative learning strategies, discussions, task-based language emphasizing on the necessary abilities and content they need, to have them use the accurate vocabulary and the necessary linguistic- professional abilities in the practice of their future profession.