HYERAN KIM (CHUNG-ANG UNIVERSITY)
JINSOL LEE (Chung-Ang University)

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ESP CURRICULUM FOR NURSING STUDENTS THROUGH TASK-BASED LANGUAGE APPROACH : CURRICULUM AND SYLLABUS DESIGN

Alongside the opening of the healthcare market and the overseas expansion of domestic university hospitals, the number of medical tourists visiting Korea has been on the rise. With the increasing trend of globalization in the healthcare service sector in Korea, effective communication skills are considered an essential core competency for nurses, along with their specialized medical knowledge. However, the lack of communication skills and cultural understanding resulted in patients' frustration and failure to build rapport between the healthcare team and foreign patients (Yoo, 2018). This study aims to develop an ESP (English for Specific Purposes) curriculum that serves the urgent needs of nursing students at a university in Korea. Adopting a task-based language teaching approach and following Brown’s (1995) language curriculum development procedure, this study covers a task-based needs analysis, goals and objectives, testing plans, and sample materials for the English program. A needs analysis was conducted by employing multiple sources and methods for triangulation. Specifically, surveys and interviews were administered to nursing students, in-service nurses, and professors from both the college of nursing and the English language department. Based on the results of the needs analysis, goals and objectives were set for the program, focusing on English conversational skills for effective communication with foreign patients and pragmatic adequacy of language use in the field. This was followed by planning testing and developing materials, as recommended in a backward design approach. This study will provide insights into the process of developing a task-based ESP curriculum relevant to the needs of prospective nurses in health professions.

Hyeran Kim received her M.Ed degree in Bilingual, ESL, and Multicultural Education from the Univerisity of Massachusetts in the US. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree in the Department of English Education at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea. Her research interests include ESP, task-based language teaching, and integrative reading and writing instruction for EFL students.

Jinsol Lee is a doctoral student in the Department of English Education at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Korea. Her major research interests include task-based language teaching (TBLT), teacher education, and second language acquisition.