Documenting L2 input and interaction during study abroad: Approaches, instruments and challenges

Abstract

A major rationale for study abroad (SA) from the perspective of second language acquisition is the presumed opportunity available to sojourners for naturalistic second language (L2) “immersion”. However, such opportunities are affected by variations in the linguistic, institutional and social affordances of SA, in different settings. They are also affected by the varying agency and motivation of sojourners in seeking second language (L2) engagement. For example, many sojourners prioritize mastering informal L2 speech, while others prioritize academic and professional registers including writing. Most will operate multilingually, using their home language, a local language, and/or English as lingua franca for different purposes, and the types of input they seek out, and language practices they enter into, vary accordingly. Consequently, while researchers have developed varied approaches to documenting L2 engagement, and have tried to relate these to measures of L2 development, these efforts have so far seen somewhat mixed success. This article reviews different approaches to documenting SA input and interaction; first, that of participant self-report, using questionnaires, interviews, journals, or language logs. Particular attention is paid to the popular Language Contact Profile (LCP), and to approaches drawing on Social Network Analysis. The limitations of all forms of self-report are acknowledged. The article also examines the contribution of direct observation and recording of L2 input and interaction during SA. This is a significant alternative approach for the study of acquisition, but one which poses theoretical, ethical and practical challenges. Researchers have increasingly enlisted participants as research collaborators who create small corpora through self-recording with L2 interlocutors. Analyses in this tradition have so far prioritized interactional, pragmatic and sociocultural development, in learner corpora, over other dimensions of second language acquisition (SLA). The theoretical and practical challenges of corpus creation in SA settings and their wider use to promote understandings of informal L2 learning are discussed.

Practice in study abroad contexts

“…Additional explanations for these linguistic development findings during SA come from studies that focus on the ways in which experienced L2 learners use the target language while abroad (McManus, 2019;Mitchell, 2021;Shiri, 2015). For instance, one characteristic of these more experienced learners who live abroad for extended periods of time is that they tend to be more motivated and more willing to seek out, establish and/or maintain meaningful and regular interactions with other speakers in the host country (McManus, 2019;Mitchell et al, 2017Mitchell et al, , 2020, a finding that can be interpreted in terms of learners' greater experience with the host culture and declarative knowledge of the target language.…”

“…To date, SA research has mostly focused on how production skills (e.g., in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency, including global proficiency) develop as a result of SA, typically using assessments of L2 skills before and after SA. However, more SA research is beginning to explore the language practices of SA learners while they are abroad to understand how these behaviors might help explain linguistic development (Mitchell, 2021;Sanz & Morales-Front, 2018). One way to theorize linguistic development during SA is to connect what is known about linguistic development with L2 theory, such as the learning processesdeclarative-procedural-automatization-postulated by Skill Acquisition Theory (SAT; DeKeyser, 2017; for a recent example, see McManus et al, 2021).…”

Can variation in input explain variation in typical spoken target-language features during study abroad?

“…However, in order to have a complete idea of the input situation, it is also necessary to examine the characteristics of the input to which the learners are exposed, since language use does not always correspond to our intuitions (e.g., Tracy-Ventura & Cuesta Medina, 2018;Wulff et al, 2009). What is needed are corpora of naturalistic language use that can be considered as representative for the kind of input to which the learners are exposed (Mitchell, 2021;Thomas & Ädel, 2021).…”

“…In the context of SA, the input situation has commonly been captured using indirect measures such as language-use questionnaires, diaries and interviews (Mitchell, 2021). However, these rely mainly on self-reported data and provide only an estimate of learners' L2 engagement.…”

“…Social-networks questionnaires also try to capture the level of access to L2 input and interaction but similarly cannot provide a detailed picture of input quality. This could be found in direct measures such as recordings of interactions, found in some small-scale, qualitative case studies (Mitchell, 2021). Examples include studies of interactions with sojourners' host families (e.g., Kinginger et al, 2016;McMeekin, 2017), language exchanges (Bryfonski & Sanz, 2018;Fernández, 2016;Fernández-García & Martínez-Arbelaiz, 2014), service encounters (Ning, 2020;Shively, 2018) and relatively unstructured leisure talk (Behrent, 2007;Hasegawa, 2019;Kinginger & Wu, 2018).…”