Medicina: Methods, Models, Strategies

Needs Analysis and a Definition of the Problem Addressed by the Game

As a part of the needs-analysis study of international students’ language difficulties, a combination of information sources was used. We did a literature review of nursing journals documenting the language problems found among international ESL students in the health field. We also obtained a personal analysis of the commonalities among struggling students referred for one-on-one assessment. We also combined feedback from the clinical coach who deals with struggling students, feedback from clinical facilitators, and other sources of anecdotal evidence gathered at committee meetings and from students within English classes. This needs assessment was published in Müller (2011).

Among the international students, it was identified that a lack of specialist vocabulary knowledge was found to be a key underlying issue, and listening was found to be a focal skill deficiency. While most international students possess an advanced level of general English, it is specialized medical terminology (including medication names) and the colloquial language used by patients which pose the greatest problems. This is unsurprising because these classes of vocabulary can be considered low-frequency, which means that the student is not often exposed to these words, and there are few opportunities to engage with them before being assessed on their use.