Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2019

As in every conversation, negotiation for control and connection is at the heart of communication in the study abroad homestay. Finding a comfortable footing on the control-and-connection continua (i.e., closeness versus distance, and hierarchy versus equality) is both a product and a process of language learning in the homestay. Drawing on interviews of all parties and recordings of homestay interactions, we present the dialectical interplay of control and connection through analysis of conversational narratives recounted at Chinese homestay dinner tables. We recruit Wertsch’s (1998) notion of mediated action to show how stories, as cultural tools, were employed by the hosts and students to construct moral injunctions and to cultivate closeness through mutual caring (guānxīn), affective gratification (qièyì), and attentiveness (tiēxīn). Findings of the study challenge assumptions about homestay communication as a power struggle only and underscore the importance of teaching students to appreciate the value of interpersonal exchange in homestay settings.

The field of study abroad (SA) research has paid scant attention to the perspectives of people with whom SA students interact in the host community (e.g., Kinginger, 2012), particularly to the perspectives of peers. This paper analyzes interviews conducted with eight English-speaking peers of Japanese SA students sojourning in Western Canada. Using membership categorization analysis (MCA) (Housley & Fitzgerald, 2015), it examines how peers used category-based rationales to claim or resist responsibilities related to the SA students’ language development. Findings point to the relevance of two local identity categories: friends and exchange students. Exchange students were constructed as responsible for ‘asking for help’ while peers constructed their own role as ‘helping when asked’. Peers also treated correction as an ‘unfriendly’ practice. In addition to providing insight into peers’ understandings of their roles in students’ learning, the analyses demonstrate how interview questions can shape the participants responses in meaningful ways.

While English plays a prominent role in universities across the globe, study abroad research has rarely considered English learning in non-Anglophone countries. This article presents a narrative case study of the experience of a Japanese exchange student in Thailand whose primary purpose for study abroad was to improve his English. Grounded in the notion of Individual Networks of Practice (Zappa-Hollman & Duff, 2015), the qualitative analysis will focus on the participant’s evolving social networks and reported communication practices as mediated through available subject positions and varying degrees of investment. Particularly, findings reveal the dissonance between his investment in native speaker English and the reality of using English as a lingua franca, which decidedly influenced the student’s (non-)participation in certain social groups and practices. Casting fresh light on globalization and language learning, the study offers a unique contribution to the study abroad literature and suggests avenues for further research and education.

This study explored the attrition / maintenance of second language (L2) proficiency by examining longitudinally the oral skills of a group of L2 French and L2 Spanish participants (n = 33) four years after study abroad, and three years after completing an undergraduate degree in languages. Multiple regressions were conducted to determine the extent to which language contact / use and attained proficiency at the end of study abroad could predict changes in fluency and oral proficiency. Results demonstrated that those variables that improved significantly during study abroad (e.g., speech rate) were maintained four years later. The amount of target language contact / use played a role in maintenance of aspects of fluency such as speech rate and frequency of silent pauses, whereas proficiency attained at the end of study abroad played a role in the use of corrections. Both language contact / use and proficiency attained are important variables in the long-term maintenance of overall proficiency.

Some study abroad (SA) researchers use Facebook as a tool to reach participants or as the site or context of research. In Dressler and Dressler (2016), we examined the linguistic identity positioning of one sojourner in Facebook posts over two sojourns. In this paper, we determine the methodological affordances and challenges of the social media site as both a tool and context of research. We conclude that for the original study, using Facebook enabled us to download large amounts of observational data and study the identity positioning over time. Throughout the data collection, analysis, and writing, we encountered challenges regarding ownership of data, the dynamic nature of Facebook over the two time periods of the study, the use of photographs, and our focus on the textual aspects of posting. From this analysis, we provide recommendations for the use of Facebook in SA research moving forward.