Proceedings of the 3rd INACELT
(International Conference on English Language Teaching)
ISSN: 2656-4432 (online)
Institut Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN) Palangka Raya Indonesia, 14-16 November 2019
http://e-proceedings.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php/inacelt
Copyright © 2019 by INACELT
189
Engaging nurse students in a meaningful English learning: Step by
step of nursing simulation technique
Tenny Murtiningsih
tennymahatma@gmail.com
Ahmad Kailani
Universitas Muhammadiyah Banjarmasin
Abstract
English for Specific Purposes, which has been so called ESP, created to achieve specific
learning goals for specific students in a specific field. Therefore, an ESP instructor is
required to find specific teaching techniques in order to meet students’ learning needs.
This in-practice article reports the implementation of step by step of teaching nursing
English through a simulation technique. This study attempted to examine the impact of
this teaching technique on the improvement of students’ language skills. There have
been abundant resources of research findings in the field of English for Specific
Purposes. However, there is still little known study in field of nursing English,
particularly, the investigation of the impact of nursing simulation technique on nurse
students’ language learning achievement. To fill this void, the current study invited 58
nurse students to participate in this research. The simulation teaching technique was
introduced to a nursing English class. After that, students’ responses were documented
through questionnaires and interviews. The data indicated that there have been positive
attitude of the students toward this teaching technique even though time allocation and
students’ language proficiency remains problematic to the language learners. The
implication of this research may expand the research findings in the field of TESOL
Methodology, particularly, English for Nursing.
Keywords: nursing simulation, nurse students, ESP instructor, students’ language
proficiency
INTRODUCTION
The main purpose of learning a language is that students are able to use that
language for communication in the right context. Teachers’ task is to create a learning
atmosphere that may make students immersed and enjoy the learning process. This is a
core objective of the simulation technique in a foreign language classroom. In principle,
simulation is a learning activity driven by a presented problem where a real context is
used as the setting of the communication (Hyland, 1993). In other word, students are
given a task within a certain context and they have to perform it either with their peers
or in a group. This is not a freely designed simulation, but, the simulation should be
performed based on the settings and procedures that the teacher assign students to do.