2024/10/24 by Anne Marie Devlin, Annarita Magliacane, Michał B. Paradowski · 1 voice · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning #Multilingual Education and Policy #Second Language Learning and Teaching
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/lang.12691
openalex publication_date 2024/10/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
The past three decades have witnessed a surge both in the number of students engaged in international mobility with the hope of improving linguistic abilities—whether as a main or auxiliary goal—and in research interest in the effect of such sojourns on second language (L2) learning. Both students and many researchers expect the affordances of immersion in a target-language-speaking environment to lead to superior progress in comparison with remaining in situ in the home country. Yet the growing body of literature has shown vastly differentiated results among programs, sojourners, and skills. One of the factors responsible for this varied picture has been the influence of students’ social experiences, nontrivially shaping the trajectories of L2 development during study abroad (SA; Kinginger, 2011). This special issue brings together researchers in the field of SA and L2 acquisition with the aim of casting new light not only on the linguistic outcomes of SA, but also on the social and language practices in which learners engage during their sojourns that help (or not) to shape the transformation of their linguistic repertoires. Of particular interest in research in this context is the interrelation of social engagement and instruction. We bring together new research focusing on a range of both traditionally popular languages (English, Spanish) and less commonly taught ones (Arabic, Chinese), highlighting ways in which innovative conceptualizations, multimethod paradigms, and new analytical tools can provide novel, more informed insights into the development of both global linguistic competence and specific aspects of L2 knowledge during a SA sojourn. This special issue is organized around six papers with individual yet complementary foci, SA contexts, linguistic targets, methods, and analytical tools. The overarching focus is the impact of social contact on language learning trajectories. This is influenced by a shift from a more traditional “taken-for-granted” conceptualization of the SA learning context—one in which the setting is perceived “as a monolithic physical location where all students have equal access to all aspects of the language at all times” (Devlin, 2019, pp. 123–124; see also Coleman, 2015, p. 37)—toward a more nuanced approach accounting for the dynamic nature of microcontexts shaped by learner interactions. Building on studies that have foregrounded the importance of exploring the latter (Dewey, 2017; Dewey et al., 2013; Freed et al., 2004; Mitchell et al., 2017; Paradowski, Jarynowski, Czopek, & Jelińska, 2021; Paradowski, Jarynowski, Jelińska, & Czopek, 2021; Paradowski et al., 2022; Tracy-Ventura et al., 2016), we add further insight into the role these micro-contexts and interactions play in L2 development by approaching the concept through multiple lenses. We explore a range of innovative data collection methods, for example a name-interpreter questionnaire with self-fill pie charts, specifically designed to move beyond a focus on the traditional microlevel of individual students’ egocentric networks (Paradowski et al.); guided interactions with members of the host community to highlight the differential qualitative nature of feedback obtained through social interaction (Shively); or the use of computerized oral tests whereby the participants orally respond to socially situated responses (Wang and Halenko). Apart from the diversity in data collection methods, the collection of papers also showcases state-of-the-art analytical tools helping to investigate the impact of differential contact on L2 development, such as computational social network analysis (Paradowski et al.), generalized additive mixed models (Köylü et al.), or latent profile analysis (Heinzmann et al.). A secondary focus of the special issue is the oft-overlooked role of instruction in SA. For many students, formal instruction is an integral aspect of the SA experience. Several contributions to this special issue, such as that by Chen and Howard, investigate this specifically, whereas others bring to the fore the need for student guidance in navigating “socio-cultural conventions and their effects on communication” (Shardakova, 2005, p. 446)—notably Shively’s paper focusing on pragmatics. This highlights how learners’ linguistic needs in “the wild” (Eskildsen & Theodórsdóttir, 2017, p. 143) can be met through instructional input either before or during the sojourn. We also present a study on the complex relationship between SA duration and linguistic gains in Köylü et al.’s examination of how a newly developed series of linear mixed-effects models facilitate the understanding of the relationship between time, formulaicity, and lexical complexity indices. third-level students of language in an institutional context embarking on a stay abroad within the context of their studies to a university in the target speech community … and then returning to the institutional context after this limited time-frame and continuing to study the language in question in an institutional context. (Barron, 2019, p. 44) Although this definition undoubtedly still resonates, over the past several years “the overall thrust of internationalization in higher education” (Tullock & Ortega, 2017, p. 7) has led to significant changes in how the SA language-oriented landscape is being conceptualized in an increasingly globalized and diverse world. The changes have occurred particularly in relation to our growing understanding of the profiles of students who engage in mobility, and in what is meant by traditionally used terms such as “target language community.” It is now acknowledged that internationally mobile students often embark on their sojourn as already plurilingual individuals, and not necessarily for the specific purpose of language learning. Nevertheless, many engage in language-learning-related practices during their sojourn that give rise to transformations in their linguistic repertoires. Furthermore, it is becoming clear that such practices do not take place in a monolingual or monocultural target language community (Trentman, 2021a, 2021b; see also Beaven & Conacher, 2021, for an overview), but in localities where multiple languages and cultures coexist. This represents a major paradigm shift from what Coleman (1997) reductively referred to as a move from L1land to L2land. Thus, in an attempt to understand SA in an era of internationalized education within globalized and diverse societies, it makes sense to position it within the field of international student mobility. “International student mobility” is an all-encompassing term that accounts for all students who leave their home country or institute and cross an international border for the purpose of engaging in (HE) study (see Tyne & Ruspini, 2021). As a result, it encompasses a wide spectrum of student mobility profiles, including both degree and credit mobility students: ones who cross borders to complete a full degree, and those who do so as partial fulfillment of their home institute degree. Within these classifications, there are students who travel from one linguistic community to another: for example, a Chinese student who moves to Japan to study dentistry through the medium of Japanese, or a U.S. student who spends a semester in Mexico with the aim of improving their Spanish. By contrast, there are students who engage in mobility in order to study in a lingua franca context, where the target language and/or the medium of instruction differs from the ambient language of the country. An example would be a Swiss student who moves to Sweden to study business through the medium of English. From these examples, it is clear that the act of educational mobility—along with the ensuing language practices—is no longer solely the purview of language majors. As previously mentioned, this shift in perspective can be attributed to the push for internationalization across the HE sector, leading to a continuous expansion in the volume of students engaging in international mobility. Despite recent disruptors such as the global pandemic, war, political instability, Brexit, academic boycotts, and competition from a postpandemic surge in virtual mobility and internationalization at home (Guidi et al., 2023), by 2025 the number of internationally mobile students is expected to exceed 15 million, almost trebling current figures (Roshid & Ibna Seraj, 2023). The explosion, the reasons for which are multifaceted, is largely driven by educational policy at the level of individual institutes and nations, and by supranational bodies such as the European Union, whose Erasmus+ program supports and funds HE mobility throughout the EU and a small number of partner countries. However, the main goals seem to be preparing students for multilingual and multicultural workplaces; providing leverage to academic institutes, with many “tout[ing] the number of students that study abroad each year as a badge of honor” (Isabelli-García & Isabelli, 2020, p. xx); improving universities’ standing in global rankings; and, in the case of the Erasmus+ program, creating a pan-national identity (see Devlin, 2020, for an overview). Additionally, it is worth highlighting a recent phenomenon that has been playing a significant role in reshaping the landscape of international student mobility, and consequently the SA context. This refers to the “unparalleled quantitative expansion [of English-medium instruction] in higher education” (Smit, 2023, p. 499). English-medium instruction has facilitated an expansion of the range of countries that can host internationally mobile students. Simultaneously, it has reshaped the landscape in which language learning and practices occur. This has subsequently led to a boom in English as a lingua franca study abroad (ELFSA) research (Borràs, 2023; Köylü, 2016, 2021; Köylü & Tracy-Ventura, 2022; Llanes, 2019; Llanes et al., 2016). When all these changes are considered together, it becomes clear that binary definitions such as L1land and L2land prevalent in traditional framings of the SA context are no longer adequate to describe current practices. Although SA, with its focus on language learning and development, still constitutes a research “field in its own right … [with] its own agenda” (Mitchell & Tyne, 2021, p. 277), it is undoubtedly shaped by the dynamics of the internationalization of HE. Furthermore, it can no longer be considered a niche phenomenon; rather, it constitutes a significant and growing player in the development of HE globally. In the previous section, we set about repositioning SA and highlighting its significance against the backdrop of an expanding and increasingly complex international educational landscape. In the following sections we provide an overview of previous research in the field of SA and language learning. We look at three prominent epistemological paradigms: outcome oriented, process oriented, and complexity oriented. The overview is intended to provide the reader with a broad-brush picture of the development of SA research. Individual papers in this special issue build on and explore the themes in greater depth. Since the seminal publication of Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context (Freed, 1995), SA has been recognized as a legitimate and distinct learning setting that has the potential to expose learners to cultural and language learning experiences that lead to learning gains substantially different from the traditional at-home classroom settings (Mitchell et al., 2020). Initially, SA research was held together by a focus on what Tullock and Ortega (2017, p. 8) refer to as “measurable SA outcomes”: that is, linguistic gains that can be quantified through the use of instruments such as pre- and postsojourn language assessment, elicited language and discourse completion tasks, acceptability judgment tasks, and free production. This line of research has produced a rich and diverse body of work incorporating tense and aspect (Howard, 2003), fluency (Freed et al., 2004), pragmatic functions (Bardovi-Harlig & Bastos, 2011), sociolinguistic competence (Barron, 2006), and sociopragmatic variation (Devlin, 2014; Magliacane, 2017), among others. The outcomes are predominantly referenced through comparison with learners in other learning contexts such as at-home ones, or by accounting for intra-SA such as of SA students, the of the SA individual and the of (Tullock & Ortega, 2017, p. 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