Direct effects of participation in study abroad on linguistic proficiency have been notoriously difficult to differentiate from mere participant, time and study effects. This study examines English proficiency gains among 136 advanced-level German university students who applied for an ERASMUS exchange and either studied at a British university or continued to study at home. Participants completed C-tests of English language proficiency and comprehensive questionnaires at baseline, after three and nine months. After the first three months, those studying abroad had made significantly higher proficiency gains than the ERASMUS applicants who continued to study at home. During the subsequent six months, linguistic progress among the study abroad participants slowed and between-group differences were no longer significant. The results further substantiate hypotheses on significant linguistic benefits of participation in study abroad for advanced L2 learners, while also highlighting the need to facilitate sustained linguistic progress among exchange students, particularly during more extended stays.
Previous studies have highlighted the unique challenges that may threaten the well-being of teachers in CLIL/ EMI contexts, as well as unique opportunities that may positively impact their well-being (Moate, 2011; Pappa et al., 2017; Talbot et al., 2021). Results from Talbot et al. (2021) suggest that, in the Austrian context, the well-being of secondary CLIL teachers may be more at risk than that of tertiary EMI teachers. As such, the present study aimed to investigate this notion further through a comparative survey examining the well-being and job satisfaction of secondary CLIL and tertiary EMI teachers in Austria. In total, 123 secondary CLIL teachers and 219 tertiary EMI teachers completed the questionnaire survey. Results show that CLIL teachers tended to score consistently lower on several key dimensions related to well-being than EMI teachers, while the differences in job satisfaction were far less pronounced. Thus, the findings of this study lend empirical support to the notion that CLIL teachers at Austrian secondary schools may be more at risk in terms of their well-being than their colleagues at tertiary level. The survey data also provides valuable insights into teacher beliefs associated with professional well-being. An important implication for practice is that those teachers who felt more adequately trained to teach CLIL/EMI classes tended to report significantly higher professional well-being than their colleagues at both the secondary and tertiary level.
Crossing borders features prominently as a theme in study abroad, not only in terms of students’ physical border crossings but also in their intercultural interactions with second language (L2) speakers whose background (linguistic and otherwise) they may perceive as markedly different from their own. Researchers have had a long-standing interest in study abroad participants’ interactions with other L2 speakers abroad for their perceived potential to enhance L2 development, L2 motivation and intercultural learning processes. The focus of existing studies in this area has been on the interactions of study abroad participants with host national students, while their interactions with other international students who are also L2 users abroad have received far less attention, despite the ever-growing international student populations at European universities. This study examined students’ views regarding the role that lingua franca (LF) interactions with other international students played in their L2 acquisition, their L2 motivational development and their intercultural learning during study abroad. The data were derived from an empirical study that involved 81 German ERASMUS students who were studying in the UK for up to one academic year. The students’ views were elicited at the end of their stay with open-ended questionnaire items, and their verbal responses were analyzed using thematic content analysis. The analysis of the students’ reflections revealed a number of functions in each of the three areas, highlighting the potential of international student interactions as a viable source of L2 acquisition, L2 self-motivation, and intercultural learning during study abroad.
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