Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2020

The internationalization of higher education in South Korea has brought marked changes to the linguistic and cultural diversity of university campuses. This ethnographic case study examined language policies, language use, and intercultural interactions in two localized English-Medium-Instruction courses that incorporated both English and Korean as mediums of instruction. The results drawn from interviews with ten participants and observations of classroom interactions show that English was a primary medium for students’ academic literacy and Korean as an additional communication tool in the absence of any explicit Medium of Instruction policy. They also illustrate how the different statuses of the two languages limited students’ investment in learning Korean as a second language and created unequal intercultural interactions between speakers of different languages. The results illuminate how a neoliberal ideology adopted and enacted at a national and institutional level through internationalization translated into implicit policies and practices at different levels on campus.

This paper reports on the findings of a 15-year-old German girl’s motivational and linguistic experiences during her one-semester study abroad (SA) in New Zealand. Chiara primarily interacted in social settings with either locals (e.g. homestay) or other Germans (e.g. school breaks). This paper investigates the nature of her second language (L2) learning motivation in different social settings, as elicited in interviews, reports and blog entries; and the dynamics of her oral L2 development, as captured in six interviews. The findings show that Chiara’s L2 motivation was highly situational: she only made significant efforts in L2 use when she considered the specific social setting valuable for reaching non-linguistic goals and when it validated her sense of self. The linguistic findings, measured in language complexity, accuracy, lexis and fluency (CALF) demonstrated that Chiara improved her already highly functioning oral skills during SA – especially fluency and accuracy – despite inconsistent L2 interactions.

Three university students from Japan on a five-week study-abroad program in Australia participated in a case study that investigated the impact of L2 learning experiences on changes in their motivation, especially in relation to development of their ‘Motivational L2 Selves’ as introduced by Dörnyei (2009). The study collected both qualitative and quantitative data in three interviews and weekly learning logs during the program. The results from the learning logs showed an upward trend in the level of motivational intensity as the program proceeded, with the participants’ positive perception of environmental factors. The study confirmed that learner perception of the same motivational factor could vary, and perception can be affected by their prior learning experience and L1 culture. The study, however, failed to provide positive evidence that the study abroad program can help the elaboration of the L2 Self, although the learning experiences in the L2 context enhanced their instrumental motivation.

The case for pragmatics instruction in second language (L2) learning has been evidenced by empirical research, although investigations within the context of study abroad are more limited. The objective of this article is to detail the impact of a pedagogical intervention which included explicit teaching and ethnographic field work on the learning of Spanish compliments and compliment responses during a four-week study abroad program. Despite their restricted exposure to the target language community, the 20 participants in the study demonstrated approximation to native norms in their complimenting behavior. These results support the positive benefits of exploiting exposure to the TL community to aid pragmatics instruction in the classroom.

Studies on the impact of learning context in second language (L2) acquisition seldom look at ab-initio learners and their learning journey from the very beginning. Consequently, it is difficult to know for certain whether the findings of study-abroad vs. at-home research are applicable to this group of learners. The present study examines six ab-initio learners’ L2 developmental processes of three Chinese word order structures in two settings: China and Australia. The analysis of two longitudinal corpora showed no impact of the learning setting on the acquisition sequence. The impact, however, was found in learning efficiency. Measured by the number of hours of formal instruction, the three learners in Australia progressed faster than the three learners in China although the latter had received much more classroom instruction and were in an immersive environment. The findings suggest that learning an L2 at home is not inferior for early L2 grammatical development.