This assignment required me to write a research paper on a topic that is connected to language. In this exploratory essay I explored the topic of nursing students/ language and tried to present the information clearly to my readers throughout the essay.
The Exploratory essay was a fairly new genre of writing to me. Throughout my high school career, I’ve never learned how to write an informative topic essay with no personal opinion on the topic. Specifically, the main point of this essay was to present the different viewpoints and ideas that are related to the topic without acknowledging a personal stance.
The Exploratory Essay required a long writing process of outlining, finding proper evidence, drafting, peer review, and more. Revising was a very important factor in taking out opinions.
Outline Of The Exploratory Essay With Feedback
Exploratory Essay Outline FIQWS
Adam Chouman
Topic: Why is language and academic literacy important for undergrad nursing students and future clinical experiences in a higher field?
Introduction
Thesis Statement: Language and academic literacy run the mindset of nurses through clinical experiences due to the amount of critical thinking and communication skills that are required to effectivity connect with patients and pass on essential health literacy to prevent further diseases and more.
Brief Background Paragraph: What is nursing and why does it connect to language and literacy. What is the necessary degree and knowledge needed to be good at nursing?
Body paragraph 1: International students with low English proficiency are disadvantaged in academic literacy which makes them ineffective during clinical experiences.
Subpoint: In addition, those who practice different cultural and linguistic backgrounds will find it hard to transition into professional medical language
Quotes:
- Inadequate oral language proficiency can be problematic in the clinical setting, as it increases the risk for miscommunication (O’Neill,2011). Verbal communication accounts for a substantial proportion of information exchange between healthcare professionals and as such has been identified as a major contributor to patient safety. (Salmonson, 55)
- International students with low-level English proficiency have been found to experience poorer academic performance outcomes and higher failure rates than domestic students who are proficient in English (Jefferies).
Body Paragraph 2: Nurses must have competent health literacy in order to communicate information about disease and health directly to patients to further there understanding.
Quotes:
- Additionally, educators provide students with instruction on how trends in communicable and non-communicable diseases (e.g., tuberculosis, childhood obesity, etc.) influence health education, the field from which patient education arises (Redman 2001).
- Example: “. They also found students lacked knowledge and skills in cessation interventions, which was exacerbated by their beliefs that smoking was a patient’s right and they had no right to prevent it.”
Body Paragraph 3: Being tested for literacy assistance would help nurses better communicate and analyze a specific case in the nursing field.
Quotes:
- “A large proportion of nurses’ clients are at risk of mistakes in self-care because they have insufficient understanding of the complex information provided by health care professionals (Sugarman and Paasche-Orlow, 2006).”
- “ According to Gimenez (2008), in the USA it may be more beneficial for students to be assessed for literacy assistance at their level of writing proficiency rather than the year level of study.”
These quotes prove many points:
- Professionals must study nursing clients to see what they are struggling with in order to help them achieve more literacy and be stronger nurses in their field.
- Test upcoming nurses on the literacy in their level to see if they have improved or adequate language to communicate across the nursing field.
Body Paragraph 4: Tweaking the teaching practices to allow more students to have literacy /language proficiency in order to dominate in a field of nursing.
Quotes:
- “ Studies in the UK setting have shown that providing one-on-one writing support to any student who requires it leads to higher attainment of learning outcomes (Gopee and Deane 2013).”
- “Nursing students are also accountable for the protection of clients’safety. To do so, they need experiential learning to expand their awareness of the ethical implications of health literacy. It is recognized that, in nursing practice, clinical supervisors must not only teach novice students using exemplary strategies but must engage students in clinical opportunities to enhance their knowledge (Little, 2006).”
Meaning:
- Better teaching practices in education will allow students in the field to have better communication and learning outcomes which would lead to stronger critical analysis during clinical experiences.
- Not having good literacy means that the patient and nurse don’t have coordination and not on the same page which could cause many health risks if the patient doesn’t understand disease/implications.
Body Paragraph 5: Must have proper speech and speak clearly to disadvantage patients to help them understand health
Quote:
1. “This student learns how nurses’ inattention to patients’ coping with the meaning of an illness disengages them from learning and influences their understandings of health information.”(Sheckel, 799)
Conclusion:
- How international students could develop more health literacy in a more productive way to move into a higher socioeconomic status.
- Why developing language and academic literacy is significant in the medical field.
- Explain how this improves society and health overall ( better communication)
Feedback Received From Peers and Professor
Your subpoints (you label them body paragraphs) are not all focused on your thesis statement. For subpoints, I see the following topics: international students, health literacy, literacy tests, teaching practices, proper speech.
Professor Rodwell
I agree with the inclination that your outlined points and your thesis don’t exactly pair well, but would personally advise your thesis is what needs to be restructured as I do think you already have strong points illustrated, just for a different thesis.
Kaseem Jagat
How Did The Exploratory Outline Discussion Improve My Growth and Certain Course Learning Outcomes?
This discussion relates to my growth because it allowed me to see the lack of correlation between the sub arguments and thesis statement in the outline. When looking back at this outline it seemed as there were so many key terms that did not all connect back to the thesis statement which made it confusing for the reader. Therefore, this helped me establish new reasons while organizing my outline a little better.
One key important CLO that correlates with my growth of writing proper essay outlines is “Engaging in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing processes.” Writing this outline was very important for my success in this essay because when peers review my essay, they can criticize something that I did not notice or see in my essay. Therefore, the same procedure follows when I peer-reviewed someone’s outline, I also found the same issue of having too much evidence and not much background and context. After this, I realized how to properly outline an exploratory essay such as laying emphasis on the thesis statement and the topic sentences. Having this knowledge helped me create an outline that laid the foundation for the draft / final exploratory essay.
Adichie Ted Talk Discussion Board Post
How Did This Discussion Board Help My Growth For The Exploratory Essay and Achieving Course Learning Outcomes?
The Adichie discussion really empowered the way I think because it allowed me to always view multiple sides of an argument or topic. When I first outlined my exploratory essay and wrote a thesis statement it seemed one sided. However, after watching the ted talk I was able to think about the multiple sides and how I could integrate that into my exploratory essay in order to create a thesis statement that could reinforce all sides of the topic/ argument.
The CLO that addressed my growth as a writer is “explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.” Exploring different texts was important to my growth of writing the exploratory essay because it showed that we must always look at both sides of a topic or story or else there will be misleading perceptions and ideas about individuals and groups. After analyzing the rhetorical situation that Adichie created I was able to look away from the negative impact of low language proficiency and instead, I focused on all the impacts of the standardized nursing language on nurses whether it is positive or negative. Therefore, through analyzing the genre of a ted talk and writing about it I was able to connect the importance of exploratory essay with multiple viewpoints/ sides.
Final Version Of Exploratory Essay
Adam Chouman
Ms. Rodwell
FIQWS 10103
10/06/2020
Is there a setback for international nursing students with different linguistic abilities when learning the standardized nursing language in nursing education?
Clinical field nurses communicate with patients through health assessments and other diagnostics in order to provide proper treatment and advice. This means that clinical nurses must always try to prevent health issues before they appear, seek proper health care, and educate patients to follow good health practices. In this time period, society regards nurses as frontline workers that are risking their lives to improve the health literacy of patients and the health of the society. In nursing education, students are usually taught the standardized nursing language which stands for important terms, phrases, and more that should be used across clinical settings. Through exploring expert journals and articles, this paper will focus on how language is integrated in nursing education and the effect that it has on future nursing. The standardization of nursing language is fundamental for international student nurses in the US to properly communicate to patients and staff.
International nursing students perceive the nursing language much differently than proficient speakers in English, which creates issues in the nursing environment. Most of the nursing workforce and healthcare workers come directly from immigrant families, international students, and people who practice different linguistic backgrounds. These nursing backgrounds and cultures could potentially dictate the communication between a nurse and a patient. Nursing education provides students into the field, which teaches them English proficiency in order to properly communicate with patients and staff. Nursing students “constantly learn an expected pattern of responses, a ‘‘routine’’… not knowing the appropriate conversational routines can lead to miscommunication” (O’Neill, 1121). This idea emphasizes that international students and second language individuals fail to know the routine of responding to the patients and carrying out proper language skills due to learning different communication procedures related to their own culture. The phrase “miscommunication” synthesizes the need to generalize one common language skillset in nursing education in order to be effective at conversational techniques that are related strictly to the nursing environment and proper communication. Language in nursing education is important for nursing students because many “International students with low-level English proficiency have been found to experience poorer academic performance outcomes (San Miguel, Townshend, & Waters, 2013)” (Jefferies,85). This issue demonstrates that nursing is a complicated language that requires a lot of thought and understanding. Without the ability to understand and speak the medical language, it will be hard to articulate the meaning and understanding of diagnostics and more. This further illustrates that in order to be a nurse competence in the English language is needed to further performance outcomes and increase communication. Furthermore, nursing students that aren’t at the same pace with proficient English speakers could be set back in getting nursing degrees due to taking a longer time to process the standard nursing language.
Throughout nursing education language is used to ensure that future nurses know how to properly communicate one language to their patients and make it understandable. For nurses, they take some responsibility for the health of the patients, and without proper communication skills, patients won’t understand if nursing students don’t comprehend the nursing language and material. For instance, “when a nurse has difficulty to understand, the patient may be left in a position of poorly comprehending the diagnosis” (Hull, 159). This emphasizes that nurses must comprehend and understand all related terms and systems used within the nursing language. A significant aspect of nursing is that they need to comprehend all of the aspects of diseases and more in order to properly educate patients. International students in nursing will study the standardized nursing language to educate patients on their diseases and health issues but it will take longer. Furthermore, if nursing education does not primarily focus on nursing language then patients of the health care system could potentially be impacted the most and be left behind in society due to not understanding the communication from nurses.
Nurses must switch around their communication skills in many circumstances when speaking to healthcare workers and patients. This demonstrates that nurses must comprehend all standardized nursing language and English proficiency. O’Neill is an expert who studies communication and language in many different fields. For example, O’Neill states “Health professionals use medical terminology…which nurses translate into laypersons language so that patients can understand” (O’Neill,1121). This demonstrates that many international nurses need to know how to switch up highly complicated vocab words into a simpler way in order for patients to understand. Therefore, when nursing students comprehend the common nursing language it is important for them to understand it because their perception of these phrases could make up for most of the communication in this field. Thus, this demonstrates that international nursing students learn a stronger linguistic ability to grasp and understand certain medical phrases. Without this skill set, it would be hard for international students to break down medical terms and that would result in mis confusion between the patients and nurses themselves.
The standard nursing language is special as it motives many international students to understand the environment and surroundings which directly leads to a proper form of ideas and communication. For instance, according to King, she believes “EAL nursing students … develop new practice framework convictions, overcome stereotypical views about patients with mental health illnesses, acquire positive attitudes toward older adults” (King, 528). This emphasizes that as nursing students further their knowledge on the language of nursing then they start to take away their own views and thinking about a patient. To add on, if this improves the general attitudes of the nurses that means language makes them more confident to speak and educate patients to understand a certain disease or illness. Furthermore, with confidence and proficiency in the nursing language it is better for nursing students to communicate across many platforms across the healthcare system in order to improve the health of society.
Additionally, tweaking the teaching practices will allow more students to have language proficiency in order to dominate in a field of nursing. In the “Nurse Education Today” Zanchetta overviews how undergraduate nursing students should integrate health literacy in future experiences. She believes that “Nursing students are also accountable for the protection of clients’ safety. To do so, they need experiential learning to expand their awareness of the ethical implications of health literacy” (Zanchetta,1027).This demonstrates that better teaching practices in education will allow students in the field to have better communication and learning outcomes which would lead to stronger critical analysis during clinical experiences. On the other hand, not having good literacy means that the patient and nurse do not have coordination and not on the same page which could cause many health risks if the patient doesn’t understand the disease/implications. Thus, language affects the whole field of nursing because nursing students must always recognize information that will make them more engaged in a clinical setting. Without proper health education for nursing students it will be hard for them to tackle diseases and health outcomes if they are illiterate and do not understand health because they influence their patients to make decisions on their health. Therefore, nurses in our society will determine the overall health of citizens by using literacy to properly speak and inform them about possible health consequences and more.
Finally, nursing students must have proper speech and speak clearly to disadvantaged patients to help them understand health. There are many instances in which social interaction and oral communication is off for nurses. However, for international nursing students to develop, they must communicate properly in order to establish a patient-friendly relationship. For instance, Shekel did a study on a student and found that “inattention to patients’ coping with the meaning of an illness disengages them from learning and influences their understanding of health information” (Shekel, 799). This demonstrates that students must demonstrate proper oral communication skills in order to make speech seem professional, especially in a clinical environment. This could help foster more relationships with health care professionals and could potentially create a stronger environment for International or second language nursing students in the US.
International students that have strengths in languages other than English will benefit from excessive learning of the standardized nursing language which will improve the outcome of communication and thoroughness with their patients in a given environment. This is important because international nursing students in the United States have a different way of perceiving ideas in different environments which could cause some miscommunication between the patient and the nurse in the future. It could be challenging for international students to understand the material at first, but it requires them to overcome the linguistic difficulties in order to properly communicate and be productive in a clinical environment. A research point that could further this exploration is to investigate further literacy case studies that relate to the nursing field and to study how knowledge could really impact the field of nursing. However, there are still many moments where nursing language may not be fully applicable for nursing students. One question that was not explored through this exploration was whether deepened language skills is necessary for students planning to work in the lowest category of nursing jobs?
Work Cited
Hull, Melodie. “Medical Language Proficiency: A Discussion of Interprofessional Language Competencies and Potential for Patient Risk.” International Journal of Nursing Studies 54 (2016): 158-173, doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2015.02.015
Jefferies, Diana. “The Importance of Academic Literacy for Undergraduate Nursing Students And its Relationship to Future Professional Clinical Practice: A Systematic Review.” Nurse Education Today 60 (2018) 84–91, 86 60 (2017), doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2017.09.020
King, Krista, Caroline Porr, and Alice Gaudine. “Fostering Academic Success among English as an Additional Language Nursing Students Using Standardized Patients.” Clinical Simulation in Nursing 13.10 (2017): 524-530, doi:10.1016/j.ecns.2017.06.001
O’Neill, F. (2011). “From language classroom to clinical context: The role of language and culture in communication for nurses using English as a second language.” International Journal of Nursing Studies, 48(9), 1120-1128. doi:10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2011.02.008
Salamonson, Y., Glew, P., Everett, B., Woodmass, J. M., Lynch, J., & Ramjan, L. M. (2019). “Language support improves oral communication skills of undergraduate nursing students: A 6-month follow-up survey.” Nurse Education Today, 72, 54-60. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2018.08.027
Scheckel, M., Emery, N., & Nosek, C. (2010). “Addressing health literacy: The experiences of undergraduate nursing students.” Journal of Clinical Nursing, 19(5-6), 794-802. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2702.2009.02991.x
Zanchetta, M., Taher, Y., Fredericks, S., Waddell, J., Fine, C., & Sales, R. (2013). “Undergraduate nursing students integrating health literacy in clinical settings.” Nurse Education Today, 33(9), 1026-1033. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2012.05.008
How Did The Exploratory Essay Relate To My Growth and The Course Learning Outcomes?
The Exploratory essay was a very challenging essay that required me to focus heavily on my drafts and writing process. In my exploratory essay, I explored the impact of standardized nursing language on international nursing students. When writing my essay, I struggled with keeping my opinion out of the essay because I was leaning towards one side of an argument. However, after I took a second look at my thesis statement it needed to be reworked in order to eliminate the bias of trying to make an opinionated argument. Therefore, when eliminating my opinion, I realized that an exploratory essay is about exploring and teaching readers about the different ideas that exist within the topic. This allowed me to reorganize the exploratory essay into different paragraphs with main ideas that support the overall thesis statement.
The CLO that addressed my growth when writing the exploratory essay is “Locate research sources in the library’s database or archives.” This course learning outcome was important to my growth as a writer because an exploratory essay can’t be done unless there is proper research done on the topic. When doing research with the two terms standardized nursing language and international nursing students, I found many articles that were beneficial towards my exploration of the topic. One benefit was having evidence that was consistent with the topic throughout the essay. Without consistent evidence it would have caused a lot of confusion for the reader. Furthermore, the exploratory essay is about teaching an audience about a topic. With a variety of sources, I was able to different pieces of evidence that would help the interpretation of the audience.
Another part of CLO #7 that helped me address the growth was “using strategies such as summary, and interpretation.” This CLO was fulfilled because in this essay there was no synthesis or opinion on the topic. To add on, a lot of it had to do with explaining and teaching the connection between language and nursing. Summarizing is beneficial because it would allow the reader to understand the main points of a quotation or main idea. Reinterpreting it was another way to explore and teach the readers about the specific connection between the two topics.
Self Reflection Essay- Exploratory
Adam Chouman
Ms. Rodwell
FIQWS 10103
10/06/2020
Exploratory Self Reflection Essay
This exploratory essay made me discover a new way of writing. It was much different from any other type of essay I wrote in the past because I had to disregard my opinion and let the research do its job. I formulated some new writing skills and techniques that will be useful in analyzing texts without opinion later in my writing career. The researching phase took a lot of time because I used it to narrow down my exploratory topic and make it more specific. When I started the research with the 2 terms language and nursing, I was overwhelmed with the number of results the CCNY library showed me. When reading some of the texts I looked specifically for key terms that were in my interest and relatable to language or literacy. Then I came up with the topic of language in nursing education and used those keywords to further develop my research. After reading a significant number of texts and getting quotes I formulated a thesis statement that connected the relationship between language and nursing education based on the text.
After peer review, I received some criticism about my essay being more argumentative and not really focused on one specific topic. Therefore, I read my essay from the reader’s stance and figured out that the thesis statement sounded like a fact that could be proved by anyone. However, this made me rearticulate my topic around so it could have more meaning and more ranged views from scholarly articles. After brainstorming through my outlines and sources I believe that the best-focused topic was the standardization of nursing language and international nursing students in the US because all of my evidence had different views and subpoints which led up to the thesis. With this exploratory essay, I focused and struggled to create an overarching thesis for all the subpoints and research which took lots of my time, but I learned some proper writing techniques in its progress.
When considering the rhetorical situation, I added some context to inform the reader about nursing in this era, and why it is important to look at the international nursing students studying in the United States. Without this background, the exploration seemed quite dry and did not seem to engage the reader with information that is necessary to know. With this exploratory essay, my audience was students and everybody who was to read this essay. I did not make the vocabulary that nuanced or specific so it could get straight to the point and be easily understood. With the first bland thesis, my audience seemed too specific, however, after digging deeper into texts after the library research zoom meeting, I was able to create a thesis and an exploration essay that was more for a larger audience and background.
In many of my essays in the past, I always incorporated my opinion. However, after reviewing the guidelines and the purpose of the exploratory essay while reviewing comments from my peers I noticed that most of my analysis was my opinion. I then took all my opinion out and analyzed the expert views in relation to the overall thesis statement. In terms of this being the first exploratory essay, I believe that I put a lot of hard work and dedication into this assignment. I would like to write an exploratory essay again but on a different topic in order to master and learn the true techniques of writing a research exploration paper. Overall, this exploratory essay helped me formulate a new writing style and a proper essay while encountering many difficulties on the way such as getting lost with ideas, formulation of a thesis, and a long research process.
How Did The Self Reflection Essay Address My Growth? What Course Learning Outcomes Did I Achieve?
This was the first self-reflection essay assigned in this course. I have never reflected on any writing assignment throughout high school; therefore, the writing quality was not perfect or concise. From this reflection essay, I had growth when explaining the rhetorical situation because I had a good understanding of what I did in my exploratory essay to appeal to the readers in terms of word choice, context, specific audience, and more. After writing this first self-reflection essay I realized that I could have improved because in some parts of my essay I just described the writing process without analyzing it in great detail. I also forgot to include some evidence from the essay. Therefore, these are 2 takeaways I could use when writing future self-reflection essays.
Part of Course Learning Outcome #4 that helped address my growth was “engage in social aspects of writing processes because when writing self-reflection essays, I tend to analyze my writing decisions in a way to allow the audience to understand my writing process. This represents the social aspects of writing because we are explaining to the audience how we wrote the essay and the potential factors/ decisions that impacted the whole exploration essay itself. By communicating it properly, the true meaning and analysis behind the writing decisions can be found.
Another Course Learning Outcome that relates to my growth as a writer is “analyzing and exploring rhetorical situations.” In the process of writing the self-reflection essay, I switched to an audience mindset and thought deeply about the rhetorical situation to analyze what I did to appeal to the audience. I also analyzed my own tone and word choice to test its effectiveness toward the main idea or audience of the exploratory essay.
