Sara Farahbakhsh - Department of English, Kerman Institute of Higher Education, Kerman, Iran
Mina Farahbakhsh - Department of English, Kerman Institute of Higher Education, Kerman, Iran

The purpose of the present study was to investigate English needs of Iranian nursing students as afundamental step to provide the syllabus and material designers with necessary information. This study had atotal of 40 participants (37 nurses and 3 supervisors) working at two state hospitals in Kerman, Iran. Anadapted version of a questionnaire by Saragih (2014) used in a similar study was utilized and to meet thepurpose of the study, some necessary adjustments were made to the questionnaire. This questionnaire wasparticularly aimed at gathering the nurses’ views on (1) the importance of English language in nursingcareers (2) Basic skills needed in the nursing English course and the nurses’ problems, and (3) suggestionsfor the development of English language curriculum. The collected data was descriptively analyzed andpresented in the form of frequency and percentage. The results revealed that English was perceived as veryimportant topic for nurses both in their academic studies and future careers. According to the findings of selfevaluationof English proficiency items, “reading” skill achieved the lowest score and nurses rated "reading"as their most useful skill in their career. Moreover, findings revealed that majority of the nurses wanted tolearn more about “drugs” and “diseases” in English. They also preferred to learn English with a partner andalso a teacher in the class atmosphere. The study concluded that revisions of the current ESP programs seemnecessary to offer more effective English courses to nurses at Iranian universities.

ESP materials, Needs analysis