On knowing what you do (not) know

Overseas educated nurses’ (OENs) professional identity becomes threatened when limited communicative competence in the local language of their host country results in communication problems. While training is essential for increasing OENs’ communicative competence, their own perceptions of their competence should not be neglected. This article focuses on the impact of an English-language training programme on the self-perceived communicative competence of OENs (n = 68) in the United Kingdom. The effects of the training on their actual and self-perceived communicative competence, comprising competence in Task Focus (TF) and Rapport Building (RB), was examined using quantitative analysis based on pre- and post-training questionnaire and test data. It was found that there was a significant increase in the OENs’ self-perceived communicative competence from pre- to post-training. Further, Actual Task Focus (ATF) and Perceived Task Focus (PTF) competence correlated before and after training, whereas Actual Rapport Building (ARB) competence and Perceived Rapport Building (PRB) competence were not correlated before training, but did correlate after training. The pre-training lack of correlation seems to be due to an overestimation of competence. In sum, participants formed more accurate perceptions of their ARB competence through training. The results hold implications for developing OENs’ accommodative competence.