Learning a foreign language is not easy for many students, particularly for nursing students who need to complete their internships in the hospital. However, motivation always drives them to the foreign language classrooms. The purpose of this study was to understand the motivations and reasons behind why these nursing students decided to study Mandarin Chinese as part of their personal development and enhancement beyond the curriculum. One main question and one sub-research question were written, why would nursing students decide to take Chinese as the tool for foreign language and culture development? What and why are the reasons and motivations for nursing students to take Chinese beyond their curriculum? The qualitative case study method was employed in order to investigate 36 nursing university students in the United Kingdom. The results of this study concluded that nursing students tend to study Chinese due to personal development and career goals. School leaders, department heads, government leaders, policymakers, human resources professionals, vocational trainers, and researchers may take this study as the opportunity to reform their current human resource and education plans to offer foreign language courses to university students, members of the public, learners, and interested parties for both personal development and career enhancements.
Keywords: British university student; Chinese; Chinese as a foreign language; United Kingdom; learning Chinese; nursing student; social cognitive career theory.