Challenges facing Taiwanese nursing undergraduates in reading English nursing journal articles

This thesis aims to: (a) identify and categorize the reading problems that Taiwanese nursing undergraduates experience while reading English nursing journal articles; (b) examine the ways in which this reading practice is shaped by and integrated into the students' tertiary experiences; and (c) explore the factors perceived by the students to be influencing their reading performance and their engagement in this practice. This research was conducted through a sociocultural framework. Data were collected in three phases. The purpose of Phase I was to select participants purposively for data collection in the second and third phases. Overall, 161 nursing undergraduates were randomly recruited from two departments and categorized into six groups based on their performances in three tests: an English vocabulary levels test, a nursing background knowledge test, and an English nursing journal article reading comprehension test. One participant was then selected purposively from each group to undertake the reading activities in the second phase and the in-depth interviews in the third phase. The purpose of Phase II was to identify the six case-participants' reading problems occurring in their pre-, during-, and post-reading activities. The purpose of Phase III was to explore the contextual factors perceived by the students as affecting their reading performance and engagement in reading English nursing journal articles. The findings in Phase I not only showed that there was a significant difference in the test performance between participants from different educational systems and from different year levels, but also supported that both background knowledge and English proficiency have an effect on the participants' comprehension of discipline-based articles although the former exerts less effect than the latter (Krekeler, 2006). The findings in Phase II showed that the six case-participants' reader characteristics could be categorized into four types which need to improve in different abilities and knowledge. The findings in Phase III showed that nine factors were perceived by the case-participants to be affecting their reading performance and engagement. The overall findings of this study generated four main issues, including the implementation of the policy of reading English nursing journal articles, the importance of vocabulary size and discipline-based knowledge in this reading practice, and the need to contextualize English for Academic Purposes (EAP) practice in various different ways to suit the diverse learning needs of students with disparity. The findings of this research provide pedagogical implications for the EAP practice in the undergraduate program in Taiwan. These implications suggest how EAP practice can be contextualized for students' diversity in order to bridge the gap between what the students know and can do at the present point in time and what they ideally need to be able to do in an EAP context. The findings of this research also have implications for other countries which have introduced English as the medium of instruction or as the vehicle for academic enquiry in higher education. Meanwhile, the implications will help to inform policy decisions about English for specific academic purposes in Taiwan. Finally, the findings have also contributed to the debates in applied linguistics about the role of language proficiency and background knowledge in academic reading ability and to debates between cognitive and sociocultural perspectives of reading comprehension.