What effect does short term Study Abroad (SA) have on learners’ vocabulary knowledge?

Abstract

This thesis describes a study which tracks longitudinal changes in vocabulary knowledge during a short-term Study Abroad (SA) experience. A test of productive vocabulary knowledge, Lex30 (Meara & Fitzpatrick, 2000), requiring the production of word association responses, is used to elicit vocabulary from 38 Japanese L1 learners of English at four test times at equal intervals before and after an SA experience.Finally, I would like to thank my family, and in particular my wife, Tomoko Caton, who has provided endless support, both practical and moral.