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English is used in communication worldwide by EFL students and their EFL instructors during science learning and teaching. EFL nursing students and instructors are not supposed to be different from the international setting. However, it was observed that this was not the case for both instructors and students enrolled in the two-grade Ismailia Technical Health Institute and the mother tongue, Arabic, not English, was used considerably. The aim of this study was to unveil the aspects of the problem, including time when Arabic was used, causes of the problem, exact percentages of English and Arabic used in communication, existing barriers to communication in English, and recommendations for intervention. The study involved two-year two majors, namely Medical Laboratories and General Nursing, covering the communication languages used in all subject areas. The study adopted a qualitative approach conducting two separate semi-structured interviews with the same set of questions for both students and their instructors. The findings indicated that the majority of instructors of the two-year two majors used Arabic because they quite mistakably assumed their students had a low proficiency level of English. The findings also revealed that the percentage of English used in communication was remarkably low (10% to 30%)). Recommendations offered by both students and instructors included adding a course for oral communication, and students saw that the time for the English subject be increased. They further suggested instructors should allow students time to express their views and engage them in discussions, debates, interactions, and motivate them to use the language. The students finally see that instructors should have better pronunciation and sentence structures and persistence to use the language. The study adopted the recommendations of both students and instructors and added to them.

Evaluation instigates learning and teaching and is central to them. All elements in the educational process have to be evaluated, including the evaluation of exams and related exam methods. This study aimed at evaluating the Egyptian GCSE English exam and exam method against GCSE curriculum goals and stakeholders’ (i.e. teachers’ and students’) perceptions of the exams. The study adopted a qualitative approach: a fixed alternative questionnaire and a semi-structured E-interview both administered to participant experts and practitioner teachers (n 50 and 5, respectively), and it also incorporated designing and using another questionnaire (in two versions) administered to GCSE graduates: 50 for the school year 2020-2021 and 100 for the 2021-2022. Results revealed that certain curriculum language skills and elements were absent, and the vast majority of them were under-represented and improperly addressed. Even, the curriculum novel content was covered inappropriately. It was then found out that the exams had few strengths and many weaknesses, regarding the question type, language skill and language element representation/coverage, exam nature and appropriateness for students, incompliance with curriculum and OBD. Other exam implications were covered. Plans and recommendations for intervention included inclusion of performance-based questions for three language skills and the translation element, coverage of grammar and vocabulary, inclusion of language functions and idioms, variation of question types appropriate for language skill/element, and commitment to the OBE approach in the exams as well as to research.

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