Syntactic gains in short‐term study abroad

Abstract

This article reports the results of a study of the syntactic acquisition of nine participants in a short-term study abroad program that was designed to complete the second year of German. Data compared study abroad students' use of accusative and dative case prepositions and ditransitives, auxiliary selection in the past tense, and dative verbs with the use of those constructions by students who completed the second-year course sequence at the home institution. The study abroad students performed at about the same level as the on-campus students on all syntactic measures but produced many more ditransitive clauses.

Engineering engagement: Perceived L2 development and short‐term service learning abroad

“…For example, Martinsen () investigated a 6‐week program in Argentina and reported no direct correlation between the amount of time participants spent with native speakers and improved oral skills, attributing the results to the repetitive nature of the interactions in which many L2 learners engaged. Instead, previous studies have found that it is substantive nature of interactions (e.g., those that go beyond repetitive daily conversations and simple transactional language), rather than the frequency of interactions, that has been shown to predict gains in L2 skills (Arnett, ; DeKeyser, ; Freed, ; Isabelli‐García, ; Kinginger, ; Lafford & Collentine, ; Llanes Baró & Serrano, ; Martinsen, ; Morales‐Front & Sanz, ; Serrano et al, 2016). Specifically, several studies have shown that study abroad experiences may not explicitly facilitate the kinds of interaction that support progress toward higher levels of proficiency (DeKeyser, , ; Grey, Cox, Serafini, & Sanz, ; Magnan & Back, ; Marijuan & Sanz, ).…”

The Effects of Study Abroad in the German‐Speaking World: A Research Review

“…In a study that focused on the development of grammatical accuracy, Arnett () also reported some data with relevance to lexical production and vocabulary growth. When she compared open‐ended (written) story retellings from a group of SA students with retellings from study‐at home students in pre‐ and posttests, she found that the SA students used more words in the retellings than the on‐campus students and that the SA students progressed more in lexical fluency development than the on‐campus students.…”

“…Some scholars even believe that language fluency in SA may be developed at the cost of accuracy (Collentine, ; Neuse, ). To investigate this issue, Arnett () compared two groups of intermediate learners of German in their development of aspects of grammatical accuracy using (written) picture retelling tasks at the beginning and at the end of two second year‐courses of German. One group participated in a twelve‐week SA program in Germany whereas a control group took a sixth‐quarter course on campus at home.…”

“…Even if SA participants are shown to make substantial progress in areas such as speaking, it is often unclear whether these gains are comparable to or qualitatively different from learning outcomes, achieved by students in more or less intensive programs in the home country. With the exception of Arnett () and Bachner and Zeutschel (1974), none of the cited researchers included the testing or surveying of a control group that would have allowed for a comparison of changes in SA students with changes in study‐at‐home students.…”

Going global: Internationally mobile young people as caring citizens in higher education

“…In a world of international mobilities, citizenship in the context of global education tends to be framed in relation to the accumulation of economic and cultural capital, with little regard given to how students themselves make sense of their citizenship or practice political agency (Allen, 2010;Arnett, 2013;Bennett et al, 2013;Covert, 2014;Root & Ngampornchai, 2013;Sample, 2013). The purpose of this article is to incorporate theories of care into the study of youth citizenship as produced through global education.…”