Achieving English language proficiency, while key to successful adaptation to a new country for internationally educated nurses (IENs), has presented more difficulties for them and for educators than previously recognized. Professional communication within a culturally diverse client population and maintaining collaborative relationships between nurses and other team members were perceived as new challenges for IENs. Learning an additional language is a long-term, multistage process that must also incorporate social and cultural aspects of the local society and the profession. This article provides a descriptive review of current research literature pertaining to English language challenges, with a focus on oral language, experienced by IENs. Educational strategies for teaching technical language skills as well as the socio-pragmatics of professional communication within nursing programs are emphasized. Bridging education programs must not only develop students'academic language proficiency but also their ability to enter the workforce with the kind of communication skills that are increasingly highlighted by employers as essential attributes. The results of this review are intended to facilitate a clearer understanding of the English language and communication challenges experienced by IENs and identify the implications for designing effective educational programs.

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This study examines the co-construction of five successful gatekeeping encounters. Drawing from a database of employment interviews, the emically derived concept of trustworthiness is identified as a key determiner in the success or failure of job candidates. Three critical, potentially problematic moves are identified: supplying inappropriate references, demanding too high a salary, and failing to account for gaps in one's work history. What distinguishes the successful from the failed interviews is not the frequency of these potentially damaging occurrences but the compensatory characteristics of those encounters in which trust (and subsequent success) is established. The successful candidates vary widely in terms of second language ability (in the case of nonnative speakers of English) and work experience. What they share, however, is the ability to present themselves positively, to establish rapport0solidarity with their interlocutor, and to demonstrate flexibility regarding job requirements and preferences. Both linguistic and nonlinguistic features are examined. (Comembership, crosscultural communication, cross-talk, employment interviews, gatekeeping encounters, institutional discourse, intercultural communication, interlanguage pragmatics, rapport)* I N T R O D U C T I O N Gatekeeping encounters, as defined by Schiffrin (1994:146), "are asymmetric speech situations during which a person who represents a social institution seeks to gain information about the lives, beliefs, and practices of people outside of that institution in order to warrant the granting of an institutional privilege." Numerous studies of institutional discourse and intercultural pragmatics have taken as their setting gatekeeping situations, including academic counseling

While current literacy theories acknowledge the sociocultural and sociopolitical dimensions of literacy learning and teaching, that is, multiliteracies, there exists a gap between theoretical approaches underpinning literacy teaching and assessment. In this dialogue, we re-enact this divergence by collectively defining multiliteracies and deconstructing assessment practices, while speculating on opportunities for reconstruction. Constructing this dialogue across multiple areas of expertise exemplifies multiliteracies because we use critical speaking, listening, writing, reading, and representing, to make sense of our new understandings, and showcase our knowledge construction. Our goal is to explore ways to translate the theories of multiliteracies into assessment practices that make visible children's cognitive-psychological, psycholinguistic, sociocultural, and sociopolitical processes with all kinds of texts.

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