the clinical practice. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine English language competency for nurses at a teaching hospital in the north of Taiwan.

The descriptive design was used in the study. The study took place from May. 10,May 15, 2007. Totally, 138 nurses were recruited. The instruments used included nurses' demographic data and English language competency scale. The English language competency scale, which included the vocabulary (Grade 1 to 6), grammar, structure, blank, reading with 9catogries scored from 0 to 1, which used true and false choice. The score of each category was 5 and total cores were 45.

The results showed that: 1) the subjects most were college degree (34.8%), N3 and N4 nursing ladder (26.8%), and more are interesting in English (50.7%). In addition, most of the subjects need to help, which followed by the vocabulary (72.5%), listening (61.6%), speaking (56.5%), reading (43.5%), grammar (36.2%), and writing (26.1%). 2) the total cores of English language competency were 35.1. The higher

rank of Mean was followed by vocabulary Grade 1(4.83), vocabulary grade 2 (4.49), and grammar (4.04). 3) there was significant difference between interesting in English and the mean English language competency. The results of this study should be provided to nurses as a reference to enhance the English language competency.