Exploring the connection between language use and oral performance during study abroad: Results from the Daily Language Questionnaire 2

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo García‐Amaya
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-58
Author(s):  
Cynthia Slagter ◽  
Marcie J. Pyper

This article considers the conflict between students’ desire to improve their target language skills and their desire for belonging and community . The stud y, conducted over three years, examines student perceptions of barriers to target language gain during semester long study abroad. Participants completed surveys, took the Versant Language Test before and after their study abroad experience, and partici pated in a post program interview . Results suggest that students experience conflicting priorities in decisions governing native language versus target language use during study abroad. Although some persist in speaking the target language with their co national peers, they find it unsatisfying because they are unable to meet their social needs . Valuing relationships over linguistic improvements, students resort to speaking their native language among themselves during study abroad . The research ers suggest strategies for how to best prepare students to reconcile these tensions.


1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Wilkinson

The Valcourt program founded in 1990 with the aim of supplementing existing semester and academic-year programs available through Collegiate University and providing an opportunity for students with as little as two semesters of language instruction to study in France. In this article, perspectives from Molise and Ashley, who along with five other participants from Collegiate, agreed to serve as informants in a qualitative research project which sought to understand–from their point of view–the transition they were making from language learning in an American classroom to language use in Valcourt and back again. The resulting data show, among other things, how truly unique each participant’s perspective can be, even when backgrounds seem similar.


Author(s):  
Lorenzo García-Amaya

Abstract Though study abroad (SA) is becoming an increasingly popular educational avenue for second-language (L2) learners, there is little knowledge of what factors create a successful learning experience. One methodological approach is to consider the amount of time students use their L2 while abroad, and subsequently consider what factors (linguistic, personal, or social) might lead to increased or diminished L2 use. The current study examines data collected in 2010, in which 27 learners from an intensive overseas-immersion program in Spain completed the Language Contact Profile (LCP). Throughout the program, the learners were bound to a language commitment, pledging to speak, read, and write only in their L2. The results presented here, both quantitative and qualitative, suggest that the language pledge was largely followed, reflecting high levels of L2 use; the results also allude to some advantages and disadvantages of using the LCP to track language use.


2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan P. Dewey ◽  
R. Kirk Belnap ◽  
Rebecca Hillstrom

In this paper, we explore language use, social network development, and language acquisition by second learners of Arabic in Jordan and Morocco.  Students in these programs reported speaking, listening to, and writing as much English as Arabic during study abroad, but they reported reading more Arabic than English. While patterns indicated similar levels of use of English and Arabic in general, questions focusing on learners' use of language with more familiar friends and acquaintances indicated learners thought they used Arabic more than English with these native friends. Regarding English language use, learners felt that speaking English with natives often created opportunities to interact in Arabic as well.  Students’ Arab social networks tended to be small, but there was considerable variation in these networks.  The closer their friendships with natives, the more likely students were to report gains in Arabic. English proficiency of friends and acquaintances in one’s social network, degree of friendship, and time spent speaking with people outside of this network predicted language proficiency development.


2020 ◽  
pp. 825-851
Author(s):  
Ana Flávia Boeing Marcelino ◽  
Raquel Carolina de Souza Ferraz D'Ely

The teaching of Portuguese as a Host Language has faced many challenges since its establishment as part of the field of Portuguese as a Foreign Language, mainly for presenting specificities unknown to the teachers and researchers in the field (GROSSO, 2010; DEUSDARÁ; ARANTES; BRENNER, 2018). Among these challenges are the methods employed to analyze the oral performance of the Host Language speakers. With this in mind, this report aims at discussing the evaluation of the oral performance of adult immigrants, beginner students of Brazilian Portuguese as a Host Language, based on two descriptive scales of the measure of Outcome Achievement, a multifaceted measure that looks, mainly, at pragmatic aspects of language use in tasks whose main focus is the communicative outcome of the performance. Even though the proposal of criteria that compose the measure of Outcome Achievement is based on the interpretation of raters, which might bring incongruences to the evaluations, the measure presents an alternative to evaluating oral performance in contrast with other more traditional measures. In conclusion, the employment of the Outcome Achievement measure to analyze oral performance in tasks to teach Portuguese as a Host Language brings aspects that are inherent to this context of teaching, taking into account the immediate objectives of language use of the immigrant population.


Author(s):  
Klara Arvidsson

Abstract This study takes a Usage-Based approach to the learning of French multiword expressions (MWEs) in Study Abroad (SA). MWEs are conventionalized form-meaning mappings, for example du coup (‘and so’) and en fait (‘actually’), and are assumed to be learned through repeated exposure. Based on this assumption, the study adopted a pretest/posttest design to explore how quantity of out-of-class target-language (TL) contact predicted the development of MWE knowledge among 41 Swedish students during a semester in France. MWE knowledge was assessed by a modified cloze test based on transcriptions of informal language use (www.clapi.fr) and TL contact information was obtained through the Language Engagement Questionnaire (McManus, Mitchell, & Tracy-Ventura, 2014). Contrary to expectations, the findings showed that quantity of out-of-class TL contact did not predict gains in MWE knowledge and add further counterevidence for the role of sheer quantity of TL contact for linguistic development in SA.


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