This study investigated the development of L2 Chinese formulaic competence in a study abroad context. Participants were 31 American students studying Chinese in a university in China (intermediate-level). They completed a computerized speaking test consisting of 24 formulae-use situations twice during their semester-long study abroad in China. The learners produced a formulaic expression according to each situation, and their production was evaluated on appropriateness (rated on a four-point scale by native speakers) and planning time. In addition, a survey was administered to gather information about the learners' perceived frequency of encounter with formulae-use situations. The learners showed significant gains on appropriateness and fluency. Reported frequency of encounter with target formulae-use situations did not correlate with the gains in formulae production, except for the learners with lower pretest score. Qualitative analysis revealed four patterns of change: (1) change toward target formulae, (2) change toward target-like slot-and-frame patterns, (3) change toward non-target formulae; and (4) stabilized non-target formulae use.

This study investigated the effects of intercultural competence and amount of social contact in the development of pragmatic knowledge. All these variables were time-varying variables and measured twice over a 3-month study abroad. Participants were 109 American college students studying Chinese in a semester study-abroad program in Beijing. Using Kelley & Meyers's (1995) instrument, intercultural competence-defined as one's potential to succeed in intercultural adjustment-was measured by 4 factors: emotional resilience, flexibility/openness, perceptual acuity, and personal autonomy. A survey was used to assess the amount of time spent on a variety of social activities in Chinese. Pragmatic knowledge was measured with a spoken task, which assessed participants' ability to produce speech acts (k = 24). Latent Growth Curve Modeling showed that cross-cultural adaptability and social contact, when combined, explained 26% of pragmatic gains. Cross-cultural adaptability had no significant direct effect to speech acts gains: It had indirect effects through social contact. with the growing need to develop L2 learners' competence to engage in intercultural interaction. A successful intercultural speaker possesses two competences: communicative and intercultural (Byram, 2012). The former involves the ability to communicate appropriately and effectively in intercultural interactions, while the latter refers to a set of personality traits and attitudes that help individuals engage with cultural differences. These two competences, together, assist individuals to participate in intercultural communication.This study seeks to illuminate the relationship between communicative competence and intercultural competence in second language (L2) Chinese. According to Byram's model,

This paper synthesizes cross-sectional studies of the effect of proficiency on second language (L2) pragmatics to answer the synthesis question: Does proficiency affect adult learners' pragmatic competence? Findings have revealed an overall positive proficiency effect on pragmatic competence, and in most cases higher proficiency learners have higher pragmatic competence. However, increased proficiency does not guarantee a native-like pragmatic performance because proficiency effect varies depending on the nature of target pragmatic features such as types of speech acts (degrees of directness and conventionality) (e.g., Cook & Liddicoat, 2002;Félix-Brasdefer, 2007), modalities of pragmatic performance (comprehension and production) (e.g., Bradovi-

This article aims to further probe this complex relationship between the study abroad context and pragmatic development by synthesizing existing research studies under the guidance of two questions: 1) What pragmatic features have been examined in the study abroad context, and how have they been measured? and 2) Do adult L2 learners improve their pragmatic competence in the study abroad context over time?

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This study is the first to examine contributions of proficiency subskills to pragmatic development. We used the latent growth curve modeling to reveal the causal relationships between proficiency subskills and pragmatic competence in 109 American learners of Chinese across two data points over three months abroad in China. Proficiency was measured by a standardized Chinese proficiency test with separate scores for listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Pragmatic competence was measured by a computerized oral discourse completion task assessing speech acts. Findings showed that pragmatic competence accrued along with increased proficiency. Changes of proficiency explained 54.1% of the variance in changes of pragmatic competence. Listening and speaking contributed more to pragmatic development than reading and writing did, indicating that when pragmatic competence is measured by an online spoken task, speaking and listening have stronger impacts.

This study investigated the effects of different levels of linguistic proficiency on the development of multiple speech acts during study abroad. Participants were 109 American learners of Chinese recruited from a study abroad program in China. They were divided into a higher proficiency (HP) group and a lower proficiency (LP) group based on their scores on a standardized Chinese proficiency test. The participants completed a computerized oral Discourse Completion Test (DCT) that assessed the production of compliment response, refusal, and request as pre- and posttests. The learners’ oral productions were analyzed according to measures of appropriateness rating and speech rate. Linguistic analysis was performed to examine changes in strategy preference and distribution across the three speech acts. Results revealed a complex relationship between proficiency, speech act type, pragmatic performance measure (e.g., appropriateness, speech rate), and ways that pragmatic changes are evaluated (e.g., developmental trajectory, amount of gain).