English professors, nursing students, and the HESI A2 Exam

As English professors, we never thought we would become immersed in the world of nursing and its associated Health Education Systems Inc.Admission Assessment (commonly known as HESI or, more formally, HESI A2) standardized test.That changed one day in 2017 when a former 1styear composition student stopped by my (Jennifer's) office, clutching a book, and asked, "Can you help me prepare for my nursing entrance exam?"When I demurred, explaining my expertise was in English, the student replied, "but it's all English."And so it began.That day, I learned that this exam has three English sections, in addition to science and math.My student wasn't concerned about the latter subjects.But Englishgrammar, in particular-was rapidly looking like a barrier to her goals.With two failed attempts under her belt and two attempts remaining, this hard-working young person was not prepared to give up.As I perused her prep book-direct from the test makers-my initial bemusement turned to, if I'm being honest, a bit of anger.Of the 10 practice questions, one had no correct answer choice (a deep dive on the associated website showed a correction, but it took a fathoms-deep dive to find it).Some of the questions seemed reasonable, but others seemed advanced for native speakers, let alone English-language learners (ELLs).At one point, I stepped out of the meeting with the student to show Heather, a colleague, for a sanity check.I wasn't crazy.The test was crazy hard for ELLs.That day, unbeknownst to me at the time, an unlikely partnership formed in the realm of test-prep. PARTNERSHIP IN ITS INFANCY Jennifer's perspectiveThat first year, the student and I stumbled our way through (or at least I stumbled), with me making practice questions and explaining concepts.Her third attempt showed improvement, but-even better-she now had the language (and comfort level) to tell me "the questions aren't like this one.They're more like this." Thank goodness for that!Each redirection helped me feel like I was stumbling a little less and that I could find a way to help her.With her experience taking the test and more practice test books, we worked our way through everything from homophones to predicate nominatives.I became more confident, and so did the student.Our first rule became "rule out two answers and have reasons."We met for