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Linguistic and cultural communication skills are essential for nurses as they are at the fore front in public and private hospitals, physicians' offices, clinics and other outpatient care facilities. Indeed nurses provide the human touch for patients seeking medical advice at a particular medical centre before consulting a physician. Recently, the Ministry of Higher Education has released statistics on unemployment among nurses -about 8000 nursing graduates have not secured jobs. As such, a study was carried out to examine the reason for such a serious situation in Malaysia when other parts of the world are in dire need of nurses. A quantitative methodology was adopted to determine the reason for unemployment among nurses as well as to find ways to relocate these unemployed nurses to parts of the world where their service is needed. This study draws several conclusions about the unemployed nurses and ways to enhance their communication and English language skills to make them more 'marketable' as well as be able to execute their duties effectively at workplace. The results indicate a need for a special English language course-design for theses trained nurses.

The ability to speak well in English has always been a challenging task among students from the rural areas. There are various types of materials that have been developed to improve student’s fluency to speak English, and Reader’s Theatre (RT) is one of them. A study was conducted using Readers Theatre to help students improve their oral and reading skills in English in a stress free workshop. The workshop was a combination of language and arts activities that combined language skills of speaking and reading to improve students’ performance. The workshop was conducted among students over a period of three weeks. A survey was carried out on the student’s perceived learning experience to speak and read English whilst taking part in Reader’s Theatre. The findings of the study show that Reader’s Theatre was a good tool to boost high school students’ motivation to speak clearly and confidently in English when they collaborated and interacted with their peers. However, it was not the aim of the present study to check if students spoke or read more English materials outside classroom as a result of Reader’s Theatre workshop.

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