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Placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills
International students who speak English as an additional language report experiencing communication issues while completing their studies and work-integrated learning placements in a range of Anglophone countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. To...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer Netherlands
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9387418/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35980516 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10459-022-10155-1 |
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author | Grieve, Averil Ta, Binh Ross, Bella |
author_facet | Grieve, Averil Ta, Binh Ross, Bella |
author_sort | Grieve, Averil |
collection | PubMed |
description | International students who speak English as an additional language report experiencing communication issues while completing their studies and work-integrated learning placements in a range of Anglophone countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. To address this issue, accreditation and registration bodies for a number of health professions, such as social work and nursing, have advocated for increasing the test score requirements for university English language entry. However, from a sociolinguistic perspective, decisions concerning ways to address communication challenges need to take into account the unique communication skills required for functioning in specific workplace settings. It is therefore essential to identify the types of communication issues occurring during work-integrated learning opportunities (e.g. placement) and to then assess whether these should be addressed by raising general English proficiency or providing structured learning opportunities for profession-specific communication development within the course content. The present study uses sociolinguistic theory to examine placement educators’ perspectives on international students’ communication issues using the context of social work placement. It draws on the thematic analysis of interviews with 15 placement educators in Australia. One major finding is that international students’ general proficiency or ability to use specific linguistic tools (pragmalinguistic competence) is not a key area of concern for educators. The main challenge seems to involve the students’ understanding of sociocultural norms underlying workplace communication (sociopragmatic competence). This finding suggests that, rather than increasing English language entry requirements, universities need to provide international students opportunities to develop their sociopragmatic competence both before and during placement. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at supporting international students who speak English as an additional language to develop their workplace communication during their studies. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9387418 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Springer Netherlands |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93874182022-08-18 Placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills Grieve, Averil Ta, Binh Ross, Bella Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract Article International students who speak English as an additional language report experiencing communication issues while completing their studies and work-integrated learning placements in a range of Anglophone countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. To address this issue, accreditation and registration bodies for a number of health professions, such as social work and nursing, have advocated for increasing the test score requirements for university English language entry. However, from a sociolinguistic perspective, decisions concerning ways to address communication challenges need to take into account the unique communication skills required for functioning in specific workplace settings. It is therefore essential to identify the types of communication issues occurring during work-integrated learning opportunities (e.g. placement) and to then assess whether these should be addressed by raising general English proficiency or providing structured learning opportunities for profession-specific communication development within the course content. The present study uses sociolinguistic theory to examine placement educators’ perspectives on international students’ communication issues using the context of social work placement. It draws on the thematic analysis of interviews with 15 placement educators in Australia. One major finding is that international students’ general proficiency or ability to use specific linguistic tools (pragmalinguistic competence) is not a key area of concern for educators. The main challenge seems to involve the students’ understanding of sociocultural norms underlying workplace communication (sociopragmatic competence). This finding suggests that, rather than increasing English language entry requirements, universities need to provide international students opportunities to develop their sociopragmatic competence both before and during placement. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at supporting international students who speak English as an additional language to develop their workplace communication during their studies. Springer Netherlands 2022-08-18 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9387418/ /pubmed/35980516 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10459-022-10155-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Grieve, Averil Ta, Binh Ross, Bella Placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills |
title | Placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills |
title_full | Placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills |
title_fullStr | Placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills |
title_full_unstemmed | Placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills |
title_short | Placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills |
title_sort | placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9387418/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35980516 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10459-022-10155-1 |
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