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The short- and long-term effects of a short study abroad experience: The case of children
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System 40 (2012) 179e190
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The short- and long-term effects of a short study abroad experience: The case of children* ` ngels Llanes A Department of English and Linguistics, Universitat de Lleida, Pl/Vı´ctor Siurana, 1, Lleida 25003, Spain Received 6 October 2011; revised 8 May 2012; accepted 9 May 2012
Abstract This study examines to what extent L2 gains obtained during a study abroad (SA) experience are durable. Participants were 16 Catalan/Spanish bilingual children, learning English as an L2, who were distributed into two groups depending on their learning context (SA vs. at home [AH]). Participants completed a pre-test before the SA participants’ departure to the L2 country, a post-test on their return from the L2 country (2 months after the pre-test), and a delayed post-test 12 months after the post-test. Results indicate that SA participants scored significantly higher in the post-test and that their results were even higher (although not significantly so) in the delayed post-test for most of the measures. Moreover, size effects in the post-test were large for all the oral measures and small for the written ones, and several size effects were still large or moderate in the delayed post-test. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Study abroad; Learning context; Age; Long-term effects; ESL; EFL; Oral skills; Written skills
1. Introduction There are several contexts in which a second language (L2) can be learned: the naturalistic setting, the foreign language (FL) instructed setting, the immersion setting and the study abroad (SA) setting. The naturalistic setting takes place when the L2 learner immigrates to the L2 country for an indefinite period of time, whereas the FL instructed setting takes place in the participants’ home country, where the L2 is taught only for a few hours a week. The immersion setting also takes place in the participants’ home country, but unlike the FL setting, the L2 is the vehicular language in the learners’ home institution. Finally, learning in the SA context takes place in the L2 country, but for a definite period of time that usually lasts from two weeks to one year. Moreover, in the SA setting, participants often enroll in L2 lessons, whereas in the naturalistic setting in principle participants attend classes only if immigration occurs at an age when schooling is compulsory. Therefore, these four learning contexts differ mainly in the amount and type of exposure to the L2. During the last two decades several studies have reported the effects of SA experiences on either a) the participants’ L2 development, b) the participants’ perceptions and attitudes toward the L2 learning and the SA experience, or c) the participants’ intercultural development. Among the studies that have attempted to document the impact of SA *
The study benefited from grant FFI2010-18006 and 2009SGR137. E-mail address: [email protected].
0346-251X/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.system.2012.05.003
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experiences on the participants’ L2 development, research has been carried out with respect to several L2 domains, but it has mostly focused on participants of a specific age range: undergraduates. The present study is unique because it examines the short- and long-term effects of a study abroad experience on the L2 development on children, a population previously ignored with respect to the SA context. Among the skills that have been analyzed in the SA literature, oral fluency is the skill that has been examined the most since it is believed to be one of the most sensitive skills to learning context. The effects of the SA setting on oral skills have been investigated from different perspectives. Lennon (1990) exhaustively examined the oral fluency of participants who had spent six months studying abroad and concluded that SA is beneficial for the improvement of the participants’ oral fluency. Further evidence of the benefits of SA on the participants’ oral skills comes from Llanes and Mun˜oz (2009), Yager (1998) and Martinsen (2010), who examined the effects of short SA experiences (three-four weeks, seven weeks and six weeks, respectively) on the participants’ oral skills. These three studies concluded that short SA experiences are beneficial for the improvement of oral skills. Freed (1995) also examined the effects of an SA experience on the participants’ oral skills and she did so by having several native speaker (NSs) judges rate their speech. The judges perceived participants who had engaged in an SA experience to “speak more and at a significantly faster rate” (p. 141). However, not all the studies that have analyzed the effects of learning context on L2 oral skills have found an advantage for the SA context. Freed, Segalowitz and Dewey (2004), for example, compared the oral performance of participants in three different settings (SA, at home [AH] and immersion [IM]). Unexpectedly, Freed and her colleagues found that participants in the IM setting experienced the greatest gains, followed by participants in SA and AH settings, respectively. Likewise, a study by Serrano et al. (2011) compared the L2 performance of students learning the L2 in three different contexts (SA, AH in an intensive program and AH in a semi-intensive program). The authors found that whereas the SA context was superior to the AH semi-intensive context in terms of fluency and lexical complexity, it was not superior to the AH intensive one in any of the measures examined since participants in both groups experienced similar gains. Another aspect of the participants’ oral skills that has also been examined is L2 pronunciation, although not to the same extent as fluency, and the results are rather pessimistic. Dı´az-Campos (2004) examined the participants’ perception and production of utterances in the L2 and found no improvement regarding these two aspects of pronunciation. Likewise, Mora (2008) did not find any effect on the participants’ auditory discrimination after they had spent three months abroad, but he did so after formal instruction in English in the participants’ home university. Another L2 domain that has been investigated with respect to learning context is L2 vocabulary, and it has also been examined from different perspectives. For example, Ife et al. (2000) and Milton and Meara (1995) examined the effects of SA experiences on L2 vocabulary acquisition, but without providing a control group for comparison purposes. Another study that focuses exclusively on the effects of learning context on L2 vocabulary acquisition by an SA group is that by Llanes and Mun˜oz (2009), who specifically examined the effects of short SA on vocabulary acquisition. Despite the fact that the above studies do not report comparisons with other learning contexts, they all conclude that spending some time studying abroad is beneficial for the improvement of L2 vocabulary. The positive effects of SA experiences on L2 vocabulary have been confirmed by studies that have compared the SA context with other learning contexts, with the exception of Collentine’s (2004) study. Collentine (2004) compared the lexical abilities of undergraduates who were learning Spanish (L2) AH and abroad and found that both groups of participants experienced similar gains. In contrast, Dewey (2008) examined the receptive vocabulary of learners of Japanese as an L2 in three learning contexts (SA, AH and IM) and found that participants in the SA group scored higher than participants in the IM group, who in turn scored higher than participants in the AH group. Further evidence of the superiority of the SA context over other learning contexts comes from Foster (2009), who compared the L2 lexical production of two groups of students who were learning English AH and abroad. Foster also gathered data from NSs of English as a baseline for comparison. Apart from examining the L2 vocabulary, Foster also compared the kind of words and expressions these participants used. She found that the SA group was in between the AH and the NSs group in terms of lexical production, but that it was closer to the NSs group than to the AH group since AH participants used simple and general words, whereas participants in the SA group and the NSs group used more narrowly defined lexical choices. Few studies have attempted to examine the impact of SA on the development of participants’ L2 listening skills, yet the results available indicate positive effects. Cubillos, Chieffo and Fan (2008), for example, analyzed the listening comprehension of two groups of participants, one group that studied abroad for five weeks and another group that remained in their AH campus in the USA. The authors found that students with a higher listening comprehension score on the pre-test experienced significant gains during their SA compared to the AH students. Likewise, Llanes and Mun˜oz (2009) examined the impact of a short study abroad experience (three-four weeks) and found that participants improved their listening score significantly on the post-test.
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The effects of the SA learning context on L2 areas such as reading remain to be discussed here since results are unclear. Regarding reading skills, Dewey (2004) compared the L2 reading development of participants studying in two different contexts, SA and IM. The author only found one difference between participants in the two groups, which was that participants in the SA group felt more confident. Kinginger (2008) also examined the L2 reading development of a group of 23 north-American undergraduates learning French (L2) in France. However, Kinginger found that participants scored significantly higher in the post-test, although this improvement in reading was lower than improvement in other domains such as listening. The development of L2 writing skills in an SA context has also been explored, but the results are controversial because some studies have found positive effects, whereas others have not. Sasaki (2004, 2009), for example, focused on the written production of L2 learners of English in two different contexts over a 3.5-year-period: one group was in an SA context and the other was in an AH university in Japan. Among all the variables investigated, Sasaki (2004) found that quantitative measures such as L2 proficiency, composition quality and writing fluency were improved in both groups of participants, whereas qualitative variables such as writing strategies and writing styles tended to be developed more by SA participants than their AH counterparts. These results were confirmed by Sasaki (2009), who carried out a very similar investigation but with a larger number of participants and found that participants who spent time abroad improved their writing skills more than those who did not. Further evidence of the positive consequences of SA experience on L2 writing abilities comes from Pe´rez-Vidal and Juan-Garau (2009), who analyzed a set of objective measures of a group of participants who studied abroad for three months, and found that the participants’ scores for most of the measures increased significantly in the post-test. However, Pe´rez-Vidal and Juan-Garau’s (2009) participants were administered a delayed post-test 15 months after their return from the L2 country and the researchers found that the participants’ scores had declined, although not significantly so. Other scholars such as Freed et al. (2003) and Llanes and Mun˜oz (in press), did not find clear evidence of improvement of the participants’ writing skills. Freed et al. (2003) explored the L2 writing skills of two groups of participants learning Spanish as an L2: AH and participating in SA. Freed and her associates asked a panel of judges (NSs of Spanish) to rate the participants’ compositions and, in general, the judges perceived AH participants to be more fluent than SA ones. In line with Freed et al. (2003) is the study by Llanes and Mun˜oz (in press), who examined the L2 oral and written development of four groups of participants of different ages learning the L2 in different contexts. Whereas Llanes and Mun˜oz found quite positive effects of the SA context on oral skills for almost all of the SA groups, they found few significant values regarding the written measures, which were hardly ever significant and if so, they tended to favor the AH context more than the SA one, especially in the case of adults. What must be pointed out is that all these studies mentioned above have examined the effects of SA almost exclusively on adults (undergraduate students), and in very few cases they have examined adolescents. Only one previous study (Llanes and Mun˜oz, in press) has investigated the impact of SA on children and the results seem to favor children who engaged in an SA program, as they outscored adults in the SA program in several measures. Furthermore, child SA participants experienced greater gains than their AH peers on most of the measures examined, whereas SA adults only outscored their AH counterparts on one measure (oral syllables per minute). In contrast, the group of AH adults experienced greater gains than their SA counterparts on several of the written measures. Despite the efforts of the above-mentioned studies to document the effects of SA practices, very few studies have examined the long-term effects of SA experiences; most of them follow an experimental design that consists of a pre-test administered some time before the participants’ departure to the L2 country and a post-test administered some time after the participants’ return from the host country. Very few studies include a delayed post-test in order to document the long-term gains (or lack thereof) of SA, and the results are inconclusive. Some positive evidence of the long-term effects of SA experiences comes from Regan (2005). This author examined the ’ne’ (no, not) deletion in French by a group of five Irish undergraduates, advanced learners of French (L2), who spent an academic year in France. Regan found that participants deleted the particle ‘ne’significantly and successfully (as NSs do) between the pre- and the post-test, and that the ‘ne’deletion rates achieved after their year abroad were still maintained one year after their return from France. However, Howard’s (2009) and Pe´rez-Vidal and Juan-Garau’s (2009) studies do not yield positive findings. Howard (2009), for instance, documented the gains in L2 past tense morphology development of one Irish undergraduate, an advanced learner of French as an L2 (however, the author stated that his results were reflected across several learners) and found that after spending one year studying abroad, the participant used the past tense more accurately. Nevertheless, Howard’s participant completed a delayed post-test a year after her return from the L2 country and the author found that her accuracy of usage of the past tense had decreased. Finally, Pe´rez-Vidal and Juan-Garau (2009) add further evidence to the lack of positive effects of SA in the long run. The authors
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examined the development of the L2 writing skills of a group of participants who spent three months abroad and found that they improved significantly in most of the measures that they analyzed, but the participants’ writing abilities had receded in the delayed-post-test. Given the lack of empirical evidence of the short- and long-term effects of SA experiences on young learners (despite its educational and economic implications) and the fact that this issue is controversial due to the contradictory findings reported by previous studies, the aim of the present study is to shed some light on these areas. The present study will concentrate on the L2 oral and written gains experienced by two groups of children based on some general measures of performance. Therefore, this study is not only relevant for throwing light on an inconclusive issue, but also because it does so with an entirely different population from the one examined in the literature reported on above: whereas all the studies that include a delayed post-test have examined the long-term effects of SA on undergraduates with an advanced L2 level, the current study will focus on the long-term effects of SA on children with a lower L2 proficiency level. The fact that children are examined in this study is particularly interesting because, as previous research on age suggests, older learners tend to outscore younger learners in the short-term both in a naturalistic setting and in an FL instructed setting (Garcı´a-Mayo and Garcı´a-Lecumberri, 2003; Krashen et al., 1979; Mun˜oz, 2006), but in the long run younger learners usually surpass older learners (Krashen et al., 1979). Regarding an SA setting, the only previous study that has examined age effects suggests that two or three months abroad are enough for children abroad to surpass adults abroad in their oral skills (Llanes and Mun˜oz, in press). However, to my knowledge, the long-term effects of SA experiences on young learners are completely unknown. 2. Method 2.1. Research questions The present investigation tries to answer the following research question and subquestions: 1 Do participants who engage in an SA program experience greater L2 gains (measured in terms of fluency, lexical and syntactic complexity, and accuracy) than AH participants? 1a If so, to what extent are these L2 gains long-lasting? 1b What is the strength of these L2 gains both immediately after SA and a year after the participants’ return from the host country?
2.2. Participants The participants of the present study were 16 Catalan/Spanish bilinguals (14 males and 2 females), aged 11, who were learning English as an L2. Out of these 16 participants, nine engaged in a 2-month study abroad program in Ireland, whereas the other seven remained in their AH school in Barcelona. Participants came from two single-sex private schools in Barcelona, and in the case of the male participants, they were an intact class. All of the class members (in the case of both males and females) were offered the possibility to engage in a 2-month SA program in Ireland, and it was their parents who made the decision of enrolling their children in the SA program. The participants that went to Ireland were placed in regular Irish schools with no other Catalan/Spanish speakers in the class (each learner was in a separate school), and spent an average of 5 h per day in the classroom environment. They all lived with Irish families with no other foreigners living with them. Regarding AH participants, they attended English classes 4 h per week and they received science classes in English 2 h per week1 during the time elapsed between the pre- and the post-test. Therefore, they were exposed to English an average of 6 h per week,2 and this was exactly the same exposure that SA participants had before departing to the L2 country. However, after the post-test was carried out, participants did not receive science classes in English anymore; 1 Although in Spain it is not compulsory to offer content and language integrated learning (CLIL), that is to say, the teaching of a subject other than the L2 through the L2, English-medium CLIL is becoming increasingly widespread. The subject chosen to be taught through the L2 varies from school to school depending on their needs. 2 The type of instruction these participants received could be framed within the communicative method.
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they only attended English classes 4 h per week. Despite the fact that all the participants in the present study had studied English for five years, their L2 proficiency level was rather elementary.
2.3. Procedure and instruments The data of the pre-test were gathered one week before the SA participants’ departure to the L2 country, and the post-test was carried out the week after the participants’ return from the host country. The participants completed a delayed post-test 12 months after the post-test was carried out. Due to time constraints and at the request of the schools, the participants completed the written test the day before the oral test at the pre-, postand delayed post-tests. The instrumentation consisted of a written test, an oral test and a questionnaire. Written data were gathered by means of a composition entitled “My life: past, present and future expectations”. Participants were allotted 15 min to fulfill this task and a minimum of seven lines was required. This topic was chosen because it had previously been used successfully with children (Mun˜oz, 2006). The day after having completed the written task, participants were interviewed in English. The semi-structured interview consisted of some biographical questions as well as questions about their experience as L2 learners. The interview led to a picture-elicited narrative task, in which participants were asked to explain a story that consisted of six pictures (Heaton, 1966). This task had also been previously used with children with satisfactory results (Mun˜oz, 2006; Tavakoli and Foster, 2008). Participants were given 1 min to have a look at the story and plan their utterances. The data obtained through this task were analyzed and accounted for the participants’ oral production (see Section 2.4 below). Finally, participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire, which was an adaptation of the Language Contact Profile [LCP] (Freed et al., 2004). The questionnaire asked a series of biographical questions, along with questions regarding the amount and type of participants’ L2 practice and exposure. In the case of SA participants, it also asked some questions regarding their living arrangements in the SA context. Since the LCP was designed for adults, it was simplified in order to suit children as well. This questionnaire was administered in Catalan/Spanish after the pictureelicited narrative task and the researcher helped the students to fill it out in order to make sure that they understood the questions and to help them calculate the averages of L2 contact.
2.4. Measures The measures to account for written development were chosen from amongst the most reliable measures according to Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998), with the exception of measures regarding fluency. The same measures used to account for written development were used to account for oral development so that comparisons between oral and written data could be made. Written fluency was computed by means of the ratio words per T-unit (Wds/TU), whereas oral fluency was computed by means of pruned syllables per minute (SPM) as words per minute has proved to be inexact for oral data (Griffiths, 1991). Since this calculation was pruned, false starts, repetitions, unfinished sentences and words in a language other than the L2 were eliminated from the count. Lexical complexity was explored using Guiraud’s Index of Lexical Richness (GUI), which was calculated by dividing the total number of types by the square root of the total number of tokens. Syntactic complexity was examined through the ratio of clauses per T-unit (CL/TU), and accuracy was computed by the measure error-free T-units per T-unit (EFTU/TU). For an improvement to have taken place, a higher score was expected in the post- and delayed post-test for all these measures. The data were transcribed and coded using CLAN (MacWhinney, 2000). To compute the inter- rater reliability, a researcher coded a random 15% of the transcriptions. Next, the coding by this researcher was compared to the coding by the author of this article, who coded all of the data. The percentage of coincidence between the two researchers was 92.4%. In order to calculate intra-rater reliability, the author of the present study coded 15% of the data that she had previously coded several months after the first coding had taken place, and then she compared both codifications. The intra-rater reliability reached 95.4%.
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3. Results Given the low number of participants in each group, non-parametric tests were used. First of all, a ManneWhitney U Test was run in order to test whether there were significant differences between the two groups of participants in the pre-test; no significant differences were found (see Appendix A). In order to answer the research question, which asked whether participants who engaged in an SA program experience greater L2 gains than participants who remain in their AH school, a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was performed for each group of participants with the scores they obtained in the pre- and post-test. Regarding the SA group, as can be seen in Table 1, it was found that they increased significantly in all of the oral measures examined from the pre- to the post-test (SPM: Z ¼ 2.666, p ¼ .008; GUI: Z ¼ 2.666, p ¼ .008; CL/TU: Z ¼ 2.310, p ¼ .021; EFTU/TU: Z ¼ 2.310, p ¼ .021), but that they did not improve significantly in any of the written measures. Next, the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was run for the group of AH participants and no significant values were observed for any of the oral nor the written measures between the pre- and the post-test (see Table 2). Therefore, the answer to the research question would be that SA participants did experience greater L2 gains than AH participants, but these gains were only significant for their oral skills, not their writing abilities. In order to answer subquestion 1a, which asked about the long-term effects of the L2 gains that emerged between the pre- and post-test, a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was run for each group of participants, but this time with the scores they obtained in the post-test and those they obtained in the delayed post-test. As can be seen in Table 3, only one significant value was found for the SA group, namely in oral EFTU/TU (Z ¼ 2.075, p ¼ .038), but in this case this significant value indicated that SA participants had decreased significantly in their oral production of error-free sentences. It can also be observed in Table 3 that SA participants scored higher (although not statistically so) in the delayed post-test in all the remaining measures except for oral EFTU/U, and written Wds/TU. Next, the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was run for the AH participants in order to see whether there was any significant difference between the post-test and the delayed post-test for this group of participants. Table 4 yields the results obtained through this test and it can be seen that, although this group of participants registered higher scores in the delayed post-test than in the post-test, none of these scores turned out to be statistically significant. Therefore, based on the results obtained through these statistical tests, the answer to subquestion 1a regarding the long-term effects of the L2 gains obtained during an SA experience seems to be positive, although it does not seem so at first glance. On the one hand, these results seem to indicate that these L2 gains that emerged as a result of the participants’ SA experience seem not to be long lasting since in general no statistically significant values were found in the delayed post-test. However, it can also be seen that most of the SA participants’ oral and written scores in the post-test are still higher than their scores in the delayed post-test and higher than those of their AH peers despite the drastic reduction of L2 contact and practice that they have experienced (see Appendix B). In order to further analyze subquestion 1a and answer subquestion 1b, which inquired about the strength of the L2 gains emerged during an SA experience at times 2 and 3, Cohen’s d was computed in order to calculate the effect size for each of the measures. According to Cohen’s (1988) d effect sizes (small if d is around 0.2e0.3, medium if it is around 0.5 and large if it is around 0.8), large effect sizes were found for all the oral measures in the post-test, whereas only small effect sizes were found for the written measures in the post-test. In the delayed post-test, two out of the four large effect sizes found in the post-test for the oral measures were still strong, namely SPM and Guiraud’s Index.
Table 1 Results of the Wilcoxon signed Rank Test for the SA participants in the post-test Measures
Mean Pre-test (SD)
Mean Post-test (SD)
Z
p
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
65.23 4.11 1.21 0.14 7.55 5.02 1.27 0.37
111.08 4.73 1.50 0.35 7.85 5.39 1.33 0.32
2.666 2.666 2.310 2.310 .415 1.125 .415 .770
.008* .008* .021* .021* .678 .260 .678 .441
*small effect size.
(21.00) (0.52) (0.18) (0.12) (3.05) (0.46) (0.18) (0.13)
(33.74) (0.44) (0.26) (0.14) (1.12) (0.91) (0.26) (0.13)
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Table 2 Results of the Wilcoxon signed Rank Test for the AH participants in the post-test. Measures
Mean Pre-test (SD)
Mean Post-test (SD)
Z
p
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
75.68 4.13 1.48 0.12 7.41 4.86 1.25 0.25
74.51 3.79 1.31 0.07 7.68 5.40 1.26 0.32
.000 1.859 1.014 .552 .000 1.183 .105 .507
1.00 .063 .310 .581 1.00 .237 .917 .612
(40.22) (0.49) (0.48) (0.18) (3.16) (0.76) (0.29) (0.13)
(43.38) (0.71) (0.26) (0.13) (2.31) (0.87) (0.27) (0.26)
However, oral CL/TU had a small effect in the delayed post-test, and oral EFTU/TU a medium effect. Regarding the effect sizes for the written measures in the delayed post-test, Guiraud’s Index and CL/TU still had a small effect, whereas Wds/TU and EFTU/TU had a moderate effect, as opposed to the small effect that was found for these two measures in the post-test (see Table 5). Therefore, the results obtained through Cohen’s d calculation show that for some oral measures the effects were still large one year after participants’ return from the host country despite the little contact participants had with the L2, whereas for some other measures the effect sizes were moderate or small, especially for the written measures.
4. Discussion and conclusion The research question that guided the present investigation asked whether SA participants experienced greater gains than AH participants, and the results of the present study indicate that SA participants indeed experienced greater L2 gains than AH participants. This finding is in line with previous research that has investigated the effects of learning context and has found that participating in SA is positive, regardless of whether this research has compared the SA context with another learning context (Freed et al., 2004; Llanes and Mun˜oz, in press; Pe´rez-Vidal and JuanGarau, 2009) or not (Freed, 1995; Lennon, 1990; Llanes and Mun˜oz, 2009; Serrano et al., 2012). However, it has also emerged from the present study that the L2 gains achieved during SA experiences seem to benefit oral skills rather than written skills, at least in the short term (Freed et al., 2003; Llanes and Mun˜oz, in press). A plausible explanation for this finding could be found in Anderson’s ACT* theory (Anderson, 1983, 1992, 1993), supported by DeKeyser (2007, 2010), which states that participants first need to have some declarative knowledge of the L2 rules; next, this knowledge is proceduralized by practicing it, and after massive hours of practice, they are able to automatize the L2, or certain aspects of it. This theory could explain the findings of the present study, whose participants engaged in the SA experience with some declarative knowledge thanks to the fact that they had all studied English for five years before departure. And the information obtained through the questionnaire (see Appendix B) shows that once abroad, these participants practiced the L2 for many hours, a fact which might have led them to automatize certain aspects of the L2. This theory of practice would also explain why none of the participants experienced significant positive gains from the post-test to the delayed post-test, because, as can be seen in Appendix Table 3 Results of the Wilcoxon signed Rank Test for the SA group in the delayed post-test. Measures
Mean Post-test (SD)
Mean Delayed P-t
Z
p
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
111.08 4.73 1.50 0.35 7.85 5.39 1.33 0.32
122.18 4.92 1.61 0.25 7.04 5.68 1.39 0.41
1.244 .533 .534 2.075 1.481 .652 .296 1.362
.214 .594 .594 .038* .139 .515 .767 .173
*small effect size.
(33.74) (0.44) (0.26) (0.14) (1.12) (0.91) (0.26) (0.13)
(43.52) (0.78) (0.49) (0.14) (2.15) (1.40) (0.37) (0.16)
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Table 4 Results of the Wilcoxon signed Rank Test for the AH group in the delayed post-test. Measures
Mean Post-test (SD)
Mean Delayed P-t
Z
p
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
74.51 3.79 1.31 0.07 7.68 5.40 1.26 0.32
92.99 4.35 1.46 0.19 9.25 5.83 1.35 0.33
.000 1.690 1.521 1.363 .845 .338 .845 .169
1.00 .091 .128 .173 .398 .735 .398 .866
(43.38) (0.71) (0.26) (0.13) (2.31) (0.87) (0.27) (0.26)
(26.97) (0.63) (0.24) (0.13) (4.01) (2.16) (0.38) (0.17)
B, the amount of L2 practice and contact that participants experienced once they returned from their SA experience was drastically reduced. Another possible explanation for these findings could lie in Long’s (1981) Interaction Hypothesis, which posits that language learners need to be active learners when receiving language input and that only listening to new language structures will not lead to successful language learning. Long’s Interaction Hypothesis requires input and output for there to be an interaction. The fact that SA participants not only practiced the L2 more than AH learners, but they also did so in a wider variety of contexts and with a larger number of interlocutors, and were exposed to higher-quality input than their AH peers (see Appendix B), suggests that SA participants interacted in the L2 more often than AH participants. In the same vein, the lack of interaction and consequently of output in the L2 during the time elapsed between the post-test and the delayed post-test also seems to indicate that the factors explained in Long’s hypothesis may have played a role. The fact that SA participants interacted in the L2 more than AH participants during their SA indicates that Swain’s (1985) Comprehensible Output Hypothesis may also have played a role in the greater L2 acquisition by SA participants given that this hypothesis highlights the importance of pushed output; according to Swain (1985), when participants are forced to produce output, they may modify a previous utterance or try out new forms. This would, in turn, explain the lack of significant gains between the post-test and the delayed post-test. The fact that oral skills were improved more than writing skills during SA could be explained by the type of practice participants experienced (Appendix B shows that participants reported to have spent more time practicing their oral skills than their written ones). However, this finding could also be explained by the fact that two months abroad are not sufficient for gains in L2 writing development to occur, whereas they seem to be enough for oral gains to emerge. This would be in line with Serrano et al. (2012), who investigated the oral and written L2 development by a group of undergraduates studying abroad for a year and found that whereas gains in oral skills occurred during their first semester, gains in L2 writing skills did not appear until the second semester abroad. The two subquestions asked about the duration and strength of the L2 gains experienced by L2 learners, and the results of the present study regarding these subquestions seem to be positive. Although practically none of the variables turned out to be statistically significant from the post-test to the delayed post-test, SA participants still registered higher scores in the delayed post-test in most of the variables examined (with the exception of oral accuracy and written fluency) despite the greatly reduced L2 practice and contact post-SA. In addition to that, two of the four
Table 5 Cohen’s d values in the post-test and in the delayed post-test. Measures
Cohen’s d Post-test
Cohen’s d Delayed P-t
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
0.94*** 1.59*** 0.73*** 2.07*** 0.09* 0.01* 0.26* 0*
0.80*** 0.80*** 0.38* 0.44** 0.68** 0.08* 0.10* 0.48**
*small effect size, **medium effect size, ***large effect size.
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oral variables that had a large effect in the post-test still showed large effect sizes in the delayed post-test (fluency and lexical complexity), and two of the written variables that had a small effect size in the post-test, were found to have a moderate effect size in the delayed post-test (fluency and accuracy); only two oral variables lost some strength from the post- to the delayed post-test (complexity and accuracy). Given the limited practice and exposure to the L2 after the SA, these findings might suggest that the L2 gains obtained in an SA experience are indeed long lasting. Therefore, the present study is the first attempt, to my knowledge, to add evidence to the long lasting effects of L2 gains emerged during an SA experience on children, and it confirms Regan’s (2005) findings. The fact that Pe´rez-Vidal and Juan-Garau (2009) and Howard (2009) did not find positive long-term effects of SA experiences could be due to the type of measures examined, as well as to the type of population under study. The results of the present investigation shed light on two important issues. First, the comparative analyses indicate that engaging in a relatively short SA program (eight weeks) is highly beneficial for the improvement of the participants’ L2, especially their oral skills. This finding is relevant because, despite the fact that short SA experiences (
Appendix A. Results of the ManneWhitney U Test in the pre-test
Measures
U
Z
p
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
28.000 29.000 18.000 28.000 31.000 26.000 25.000 17.000
0.370 0.265 1.429 0.387 0.053 0.582 0.690 1.537
0.758 0.837 0.174 0.758 1.00 0.606 0.536 0.142
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Appendix B. Amount and type of L2 contact.
L2 contact by SA participants in the post-test and the delayed post-test. Post-test Speaking Listening Reading Writing Instruction in English
29.69 32.4 8.92 12.15 25
h/w h/w h/w h/w h/w
Delayed post-test (10.13) (9.15) (8.78) (8.27) (0.00)
0.20 5.5 1.34 5.58 4
h/w h/w h/w h/w h/w
(0.12) (2.35) (0.87) (0.25) (0.00)
*Standard deviations in parentheses.
L2 contact by AH participants in the post-test and the delayed post-test. Post-test Speaking Listening Reading Writing Instruction in English
5 6.25 2.67 3.67 6
h/w h/w h/w h/w h/w
Delayed post-test (3.43) (4.97) (2.74) (3.02) (0.00)
0.20 6.37 1.78 6.13 4
h/w h/w h/w h/w h/w
(0.12) (2.37) (1.02) (0.97) (0.00)
*Standard deviations in parentheses.
Further L2 contact information: time spent interacting with NSs and non-native speakers (NNSs), context that fostered the most interaction in the L2 (options: family, school or friends), and family member with which they interacted the most (only of SA participants) Post-test
Interaction NSs Interaction NNSs Context most L2 interaction
Family member most L2 interaction
Delayed post-test SA group
AH group
SA and AH groups
28.13 h/w (9.33) 1.56 h/w (0.63) Family 87.5% Friends 6.25% School 6.25% Siblings 100%
0 h/w 0 h/w 5 h/w (3.43) School 100%
0 h/w 0 h/w 1.75 h/w (1.72) School 100%
e
e
Appendix C. Oral data from an SA participant in the pre-, post- and delayed post-test. Note that all the names have been changed for anonymity reasons. Pre-test: the boy the boy and the girl is, it’s it’s putting the food in a cest to do a picnic, and the dog and the dog puts in the in the cest picnic and the mother is is with a map learning where, how ai ostres where where are going, and and goes to the street and and says bye bye to her mother and goes to the mountain, and with two cows and a very good day, and after, the boys find the dog in the picnic cest and look the picnic cest and the dog eats all the things. Time of speech: 64 s. Post-test: this is a an story of one boy and one girl and they want to go to picnic with the mother and there are making the with jam sandwich for eat in the picnic and here is the mother showing where where are they going and there is the dog hmm and he’s wants to go inside the cest of the picnic and here they are in the street saying goodbye to the mother and the boy with the cest in the hand here is a very sunny day with cows in a in a mountain with houses there and a and grass and after here when they are going to begin to eat the dog appear inside and when they they see wh what is inside they see the eat the dog ate all. Time of speech: 58 s. Delayed post-test: One boy and one girl are making some sandwich with jam for going to a for going picnic and when the mother is going is showing the boys hmm which place a in the map where that they have to go hmm they
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leave there the picnic hmm the bag of the picnic and in a bag and the dogs enters in in the second picture you can see the boys walking with the bag of the picnic and the mother saying bye bye and the two boys are in the mountain you see two cows here there’s a house and there’s a sunny day and the boys say oh look this is a great place for do the picnic come on begin and then when they sit down and open the bag of the picnic and they go are going to take a sandwich oh surprise the dog is inside and he eat all the sandwich and hmm sandwiches and he gets out of the picnic then and goes to run very happy and the boys what are we going to eat now? Time of speech: 68 s.
Appendix D. Written essays from an SA participant (the same as in Appendix B) in the pre-, post- and delayed post-test. Note that all the names have been changed for anonymity reasons. Pre-test: Hello my name is Jonathan. I born the first of January of nineteen ninety-six in the General Hospital of Catalonia. My father is Jose of Barcelona and my mother is Rosa of Rubı´. I have two sisters Montse and Sara. I the big brother. I go to the school called School and I do sixth. I live in Sant Cugat. I go the school on my bicycle. I wants to study buseness in ESADE and a doctor. My fathers want I work in a bank because are director of banks but I want to be a business and a doctor. Post-test: I was borned the first of January nineteen ninety-six. My parents names are Jose and Rosa. I have two siblings, two girls, and my mother is pregnant and the baby is a boy. I have a lot of hobbies wrestling soccer, bikes, dogs and climbing. At the moment I’m studying in six class. I went to Ireland. I did a lot of friends there. When I come older I want to be a doctor or a bussnes man, but I have a lot of diferent ideas for my future. Delayed post-test: I was born in Sant Cugat. I am thirteen years old. My parents are called Jose and Rosa. I have three brothers, two sisters Sara and Montse and one brother Arnau. I go School and I study there. I play football in a club called Junior FC. I am the striker. In the futur I want to study medicine like House, yes to be like House. It’s a stupid thing yes, but he is a great doctor and he safe’s a lot of lifes every day. I want to win a log of money to help the poor people because the politics say always we help the poor countries, but that is not real. References Anderson, J., 1983. The Architecture of Cognition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Anderson, J., 1992. Automaticity and the ACT* theory. American Journal of Psychology 105 (2), 165e180. Anderson, J., 1993. Rules of the Mind. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale. Cohen, J., 1988. Statistical Power of Analysis for the Behavioural Sciences. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale. Collentine, J., 2004. The effects of learning contexts on morphosyntactic and lexical development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26, 227e248. Cubillos, J.H., Chieffo, L., Fan, C., 2008. The impact of short-term study abroad programs on L2 listening comprehension skills. Foreign Language Annals 41 (1), 157e185. DeKeyser, R., 2007. Practice in a Second Language. Perspectives from Applied Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology. Cambridge University Press, New York. DeKeyser, R., 2010. Monitoring processes in Spanish as a second language during a study abroad program. The Foreign Language Annals 43 (1), 80e92. Dewey, D.P., 2004. A comparison of reading development by learners of Japanese in intensive and domestic immersion and study abroad contexts. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26, 303e327.
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Dewey, D.P., 2008. Japanese vocabulary acquisition by learners in three contexts. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad XV, 127e148. Dı´az-Campos, M., 2004. Context of learning in the acquisition of Spanish second language phonology. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26, 249e273. Foster, P., 2009. Lexical diversity and native-like selection: the bonus of studying abroad. In: Richards, B., Daller, M., Malvern, D., Meara, P., Milton, J., Treffers-Daller, J. (Eds.), Vocabulary Studies in First and Second Language Acquisition. Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, pp. 91e106. Freed, B.F., 1995. What makes us think that students who study abroad become fluent? In: Freed, B. (Ed.), Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 123e148. Freed, B.F., Dewey, D.P., Segalowitz, N., Halter, R., 2004. The language contact profile. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26, 349e356. Freed, B.F., Segalowitz, N., Dewey, D.P., 2004. Context of learning and second language fluency in French: comparing regular classroom, study abroad, and intensive domestic immersion programs. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26, 275e301. Freed, B.F., So, S., Lazar, N.A., 2003. Language learning abroad: how do gains in written fluency: compare with gains in oral fluency in French as a second language? ADFL Bulletin 34 (3), 34e40. Garcı´a-Mayo, M.P., Garcı´a-Lecumberri, M.L., 2003. Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon. Griffiths, R., 1991. Pausological research in an L2 context: a rationale, and review of selected studies. Applied Linguistics 12 (4), 345e364. Heaton, J., 1966. Composition through Pictures. Longman, Essex. Howard, M., 2009. Short-versus long-term effects of naturalistic exposure on the advanced instructed learner’s L2 development: a case-study. In: Labeau, E., Myles, F. (Eds.), The Advanced Learner Variety: The Case of French. Peter Lang, Oxford, pp. 93e123. Ife, A., Vives, G., Meara, P., 2000. The impact of study abroad on the vocabulary development of different proficiency groups. Spanish Applied Linguistics 4 (1), 55e84. International Institute of Education. Open Doors. http://www.iie.org/en/Who-WeAre/News-and-Events/Press-Center/Press-Releases/2010/201011-15-OpenDoors-US-Study-Abroad. (Accessed 02/11/2011). Kinginger, C., 2008. Language Learning in Study Abroad: Case Studies of Americans in France. In: Modern Language Monograph, vol. 1. Blackwell, Oxford. Krashen, S.D., Long, M.H., Scarcella, R.C., 1979. Age, rate and eventual attainment in second language acquisition. TESOL Quarterly 13 (4), 573e582. Lennon, P., 1990. Investigating fluency in EFL: a quantitative approach. Language Learning 40, 387e417. ` ., Mun˜oz, C., 2009. A short stay abroad: does it make a difference? System 37 (3), 353e365. Llanes, A ` ., Mun˜oz, C. Age effects in a study abroad context: children and adults studying English abroad and at home. Language Learning, in Llanes, A press. Long, M.H., 1981. Input, interaction and second language acquisition. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 379, 259e278. MacWhinney, B., 2000. The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk, 3rd ed. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. Martinsen, R., 2010. Short-term study abroad: prediction changes in oral skills. The Foreign Language Annals 43 (3), 504e530. Milton, I., Meara, P., 1995. How periods abroad affect vocabulary growth in a foreign language. ITI Review of Applied Linguistics 107 (8), 17e34. Mora, J.C., 2008. Learning context effects on the acquisition of a second language phonology. In: Pe´rez-Vidal, C., Juan-Garau, M., Bel, A. (Eds.), A Portrait of the Young in the New Multilingual Spain. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, pp. 241e263. Mun˜oz, C., 2006. Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon. Pe´rez-Vidal, C., Juan-Garau, M., 2009. The effect of study abroad on written performance. Eurosla Yearbook 9, 269e295. Regan, V., 2005. From speech community back to classroom: what variation analysis can tell us about the role of context in the acquisition of French as a foreign language. In: Dewaele, J.M. (Ed.), Focus on French as a Foreign Language. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, pp. 191e209. Sasaki, M., 2004. A multiple-data analysis of the 3.5-year development of EFL student writers. Language Learning 54 (3), 525e582. Sasaki, M., 2009. Changes in English as a foreign language students’ writing over 3.5 years: a sociocognitive account. In: Mancho´n, R. (Ed.), Writing in Foreign Language Contexts: Learning, Teaching, and Research. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, pp. 49e76. ` ., Tragant, E., 2011. Analyzing the effect of context of second language learning: domestic intensive and semi-intensive Serrano, R., Llanes, A Courses vs. Study abroad in Europe. System 39 (2), 133e143. ` ., 2012. A longitudinal analysis of the effects of one year abroad. The Canadian Modern Language Review. Serrano, R., Tragant, E., Llanes, A Swain, M., 1985. Bilingual education for the English-speaking Canadian. In: Atlantis, J., Staczek, J. (Eds.), Perspectives on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Georgetown University Press, Washington, D. C, pp. 385e398. Tavakoli, P., Foster, P., 2008. Task design and second language performance. The effect of narrative type on learner output. Language Learning 58 (2), 439e473. Wolfe-Quintero, K., Inagaki, S., Kim, H.Y., 1998. Second Language Development in Writing: Measure of Fluency, Accuracy and Complexity. Technical Report 17. University of Hawai’I Press, Manoa, Hawai’i. Yager, K., 1998. Learning Spanish in Mexico: the effect of informal contact and student attitudes on language gain. Hispania 81 (4), 898e913.
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The short- and long-term effects of a short study abroad experience: The case of children* ` ngels Llanes A Department of English and Linguistics, Universitat de Lleida, Pl/Vı´ctor Siurana, 1, Lleida 25003, Spain Received 6 October 2011; revised 8 May 2012; accepted 9 May 2012
Abstract This study examines to what extent L2 gains obtained during a study abroad (SA) experience are durable. Participants were 16 Catalan/Spanish bilingual children, learning English as an L2, who were distributed into two groups depending on their learning context (SA vs. at home [AH]). Participants completed a pre-test before the SA participants’ departure to the L2 country, a post-test on their return from the L2 country (2 months after the pre-test), and a delayed post-test 12 months after the post-test. Results indicate that SA participants scored significantly higher in the post-test and that their results were even higher (although not significantly so) in the delayed post-test for most of the measures. Moreover, size effects in the post-test were large for all the oral measures and small for the written ones, and several size effects were still large or moderate in the delayed post-test. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Study abroad; Learning context; Age; Long-term effects; ESL; EFL; Oral skills; Written skills
1. Introduction There are several contexts in which a second language (L2) can be learned: the naturalistic setting, the foreign language (FL) instructed setting, the immersion setting and the study abroad (SA) setting. The naturalistic setting takes place when the L2 learner immigrates to the L2 country for an indefinite period of time, whereas the FL instructed setting takes place in the participants’ home country, where the L2 is taught only for a few hours a week. The immersion setting also takes place in the participants’ home country, but unlike the FL setting, the L2 is the vehicular language in the learners’ home institution. Finally, learning in the SA context takes place in the L2 country, but for a definite period of time that usually lasts from two weeks to one year. Moreover, in the SA setting, participants often enroll in L2 lessons, whereas in the naturalistic setting in principle participants attend classes only if immigration occurs at an age when schooling is compulsory. Therefore, these four learning contexts differ mainly in the amount and type of exposure to the L2. During the last two decades several studies have reported the effects of SA experiences on either a) the participants’ L2 development, b) the participants’ perceptions and attitudes toward the L2 learning and the SA experience, or c) the participants’ intercultural development. Among the studies that have attempted to document the impact of SA *
The study benefited from grant FFI2010-18006 and 2009SGR137. E-mail address: [email protected].
0346-251X/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.system.2012.05.003
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experiences on the participants’ L2 development, research has been carried out with respect to several L2 domains, but it has mostly focused on participants of a specific age range: undergraduates. The present study is unique because it examines the short- and long-term effects of a study abroad experience on the L2 development on children, a population previously ignored with respect to the SA context. Among the skills that have been analyzed in the SA literature, oral fluency is the skill that has been examined the most since it is believed to be one of the most sensitive skills to learning context. The effects of the SA setting on oral skills have been investigated from different perspectives. Lennon (1990) exhaustively examined the oral fluency of participants who had spent six months studying abroad and concluded that SA is beneficial for the improvement of the participants’ oral fluency. Further evidence of the benefits of SA on the participants’ oral skills comes from Llanes and Mun˜oz (2009), Yager (1998) and Martinsen (2010), who examined the effects of short SA experiences (three-four weeks, seven weeks and six weeks, respectively) on the participants’ oral skills. These three studies concluded that short SA experiences are beneficial for the improvement of oral skills. Freed (1995) also examined the effects of an SA experience on the participants’ oral skills and she did so by having several native speaker (NSs) judges rate their speech. The judges perceived participants who had engaged in an SA experience to “speak more and at a significantly faster rate” (p. 141). However, not all the studies that have analyzed the effects of learning context on L2 oral skills have found an advantage for the SA context. Freed, Segalowitz and Dewey (2004), for example, compared the oral performance of participants in three different settings (SA, at home [AH] and immersion [IM]). Unexpectedly, Freed and her colleagues found that participants in the IM setting experienced the greatest gains, followed by participants in SA and AH settings, respectively. Likewise, a study by Serrano et al. (2011) compared the L2 performance of students learning the L2 in three different contexts (SA, AH in an intensive program and AH in a semi-intensive program). The authors found that whereas the SA context was superior to the AH semi-intensive context in terms of fluency and lexical complexity, it was not superior to the AH intensive one in any of the measures examined since participants in both groups experienced similar gains. Another aspect of the participants’ oral skills that has also been examined is L2 pronunciation, although not to the same extent as fluency, and the results are rather pessimistic. Dı´az-Campos (2004) examined the participants’ perception and production of utterances in the L2 and found no improvement regarding these two aspects of pronunciation. Likewise, Mora (2008) did not find any effect on the participants’ auditory discrimination after they had spent three months abroad, but he did so after formal instruction in English in the participants’ home university. Another L2 domain that has been investigated with respect to learning context is L2 vocabulary, and it has also been examined from different perspectives. For example, Ife et al. (2000) and Milton and Meara (1995) examined the effects of SA experiences on L2 vocabulary acquisition, but without providing a control group for comparison purposes. Another study that focuses exclusively on the effects of learning context on L2 vocabulary acquisition by an SA group is that by Llanes and Mun˜oz (2009), who specifically examined the effects of short SA on vocabulary acquisition. Despite the fact that the above studies do not report comparisons with other learning contexts, they all conclude that spending some time studying abroad is beneficial for the improvement of L2 vocabulary. The positive effects of SA experiences on L2 vocabulary have been confirmed by studies that have compared the SA context with other learning contexts, with the exception of Collentine’s (2004) study. Collentine (2004) compared the lexical abilities of undergraduates who were learning Spanish (L2) AH and abroad and found that both groups of participants experienced similar gains. In contrast, Dewey (2008) examined the receptive vocabulary of learners of Japanese as an L2 in three learning contexts (SA, AH and IM) and found that participants in the SA group scored higher than participants in the IM group, who in turn scored higher than participants in the AH group. Further evidence of the superiority of the SA context over other learning contexts comes from Foster (2009), who compared the L2 lexical production of two groups of students who were learning English AH and abroad. Foster also gathered data from NSs of English as a baseline for comparison. Apart from examining the L2 vocabulary, Foster also compared the kind of words and expressions these participants used. She found that the SA group was in between the AH and the NSs group in terms of lexical production, but that it was closer to the NSs group than to the AH group since AH participants used simple and general words, whereas participants in the SA group and the NSs group used more narrowly defined lexical choices. Few studies have attempted to examine the impact of SA on the development of participants’ L2 listening skills, yet the results available indicate positive effects. Cubillos, Chieffo and Fan (2008), for example, analyzed the listening comprehension of two groups of participants, one group that studied abroad for five weeks and another group that remained in their AH campus in the USA. The authors found that students with a higher listening comprehension score on the pre-test experienced significant gains during their SA compared to the AH students. Likewise, Llanes and Mun˜oz (2009) examined the impact of a short study abroad experience (three-four weeks) and found that participants improved their listening score significantly on the post-test.
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The effects of the SA learning context on L2 areas such as reading remain to be discussed here since results are unclear. Regarding reading skills, Dewey (2004) compared the L2 reading development of participants studying in two different contexts, SA and IM. The author only found one difference between participants in the two groups, which was that participants in the SA group felt more confident. Kinginger (2008) also examined the L2 reading development of a group of 23 north-American undergraduates learning French (L2) in France. However, Kinginger found that participants scored significantly higher in the post-test, although this improvement in reading was lower than improvement in other domains such as listening. The development of L2 writing skills in an SA context has also been explored, but the results are controversial because some studies have found positive effects, whereas others have not. Sasaki (2004, 2009), for example, focused on the written production of L2 learners of English in two different contexts over a 3.5-year-period: one group was in an SA context and the other was in an AH university in Japan. Among all the variables investigated, Sasaki (2004) found that quantitative measures such as L2 proficiency, composition quality and writing fluency were improved in both groups of participants, whereas qualitative variables such as writing strategies and writing styles tended to be developed more by SA participants than their AH counterparts. These results were confirmed by Sasaki (2009), who carried out a very similar investigation but with a larger number of participants and found that participants who spent time abroad improved their writing skills more than those who did not. Further evidence of the positive consequences of SA experience on L2 writing abilities comes from Pe´rez-Vidal and Juan-Garau (2009), who analyzed a set of objective measures of a group of participants who studied abroad for three months, and found that the participants’ scores for most of the measures increased significantly in the post-test. However, Pe´rez-Vidal and Juan-Garau’s (2009) participants were administered a delayed post-test 15 months after their return from the L2 country and the researchers found that the participants’ scores had declined, although not significantly so. Other scholars such as Freed et al. (2003) and Llanes and Mun˜oz (in press), did not find clear evidence of improvement of the participants’ writing skills. Freed et al. (2003) explored the L2 writing skills of two groups of participants learning Spanish as an L2: AH and participating in SA. Freed and her associates asked a panel of judges (NSs of Spanish) to rate the participants’ compositions and, in general, the judges perceived AH participants to be more fluent than SA ones. In line with Freed et al. (2003) is the study by Llanes and Mun˜oz (in press), who examined the L2 oral and written development of four groups of participants of different ages learning the L2 in different contexts. Whereas Llanes and Mun˜oz found quite positive effects of the SA context on oral skills for almost all of the SA groups, they found few significant values regarding the written measures, which were hardly ever significant and if so, they tended to favor the AH context more than the SA one, especially in the case of adults. What must be pointed out is that all these studies mentioned above have examined the effects of SA almost exclusively on adults (undergraduate students), and in very few cases they have examined adolescents. Only one previous study (Llanes and Mun˜oz, in press) has investigated the impact of SA on children and the results seem to favor children who engaged in an SA program, as they outscored adults in the SA program in several measures. Furthermore, child SA participants experienced greater gains than their AH peers on most of the measures examined, whereas SA adults only outscored their AH counterparts on one measure (oral syllables per minute). In contrast, the group of AH adults experienced greater gains than their SA counterparts on several of the written measures. Despite the efforts of the above-mentioned studies to document the effects of SA practices, very few studies have examined the long-term effects of SA experiences; most of them follow an experimental design that consists of a pre-test administered some time before the participants’ departure to the L2 country and a post-test administered some time after the participants’ return from the host country. Very few studies include a delayed post-test in order to document the long-term gains (or lack thereof) of SA, and the results are inconclusive. Some positive evidence of the long-term effects of SA experiences comes from Regan (2005). This author examined the ’ne’ (no, not) deletion in French by a group of five Irish undergraduates, advanced learners of French (L2), who spent an academic year in France. Regan found that participants deleted the particle ‘ne’significantly and successfully (as NSs do) between the pre- and the post-test, and that the ‘ne’deletion rates achieved after their year abroad were still maintained one year after their return from France. However, Howard’s (2009) and Pe´rez-Vidal and Juan-Garau’s (2009) studies do not yield positive findings. Howard (2009), for instance, documented the gains in L2 past tense morphology development of one Irish undergraduate, an advanced learner of French as an L2 (however, the author stated that his results were reflected across several learners) and found that after spending one year studying abroad, the participant used the past tense more accurately. Nevertheless, Howard’s participant completed a delayed post-test a year after her return from the L2 country and the author found that her accuracy of usage of the past tense had decreased. Finally, Pe´rez-Vidal and Juan-Garau (2009) add further evidence to the lack of positive effects of SA in the long run. The authors
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examined the development of the L2 writing skills of a group of participants who spent three months abroad and found that they improved significantly in most of the measures that they analyzed, but the participants’ writing abilities had receded in the delayed-post-test. Given the lack of empirical evidence of the short- and long-term effects of SA experiences on young learners (despite its educational and economic implications) and the fact that this issue is controversial due to the contradictory findings reported by previous studies, the aim of the present study is to shed some light on these areas. The present study will concentrate on the L2 oral and written gains experienced by two groups of children based on some general measures of performance. Therefore, this study is not only relevant for throwing light on an inconclusive issue, but also because it does so with an entirely different population from the one examined in the literature reported on above: whereas all the studies that include a delayed post-test have examined the long-term effects of SA on undergraduates with an advanced L2 level, the current study will focus on the long-term effects of SA on children with a lower L2 proficiency level. The fact that children are examined in this study is particularly interesting because, as previous research on age suggests, older learners tend to outscore younger learners in the short-term both in a naturalistic setting and in an FL instructed setting (Garcı´a-Mayo and Garcı´a-Lecumberri, 2003; Krashen et al., 1979; Mun˜oz, 2006), but in the long run younger learners usually surpass older learners (Krashen et al., 1979). Regarding an SA setting, the only previous study that has examined age effects suggests that two or three months abroad are enough for children abroad to surpass adults abroad in their oral skills (Llanes and Mun˜oz, in press). However, to my knowledge, the long-term effects of SA experiences on young learners are completely unknown. 2. Method 2.1. Research questions The present investigation tries to answer the following research question and subquestions: 1 Do participants who engage in an SA program experience greater L2 gains (measured in terms of fluency, lexical and syntactic complexity, and accuracy) than AH participants? 1a If so, to what extent are these L2 gains long-lasting? 1b What is the strength of these L2 gains both immediately after SA and a year after the participants’ return from the host country?
2.2. Participants The participants of the present study were 16 Catalan/Spanish bilinguals (14 males and 2 females), aged 11, who were learning English as an L2. Out of these 16 participants, nine engaged in a 2-month study abroad program in Ireland, whereas the other seven remained in their AH school in Barcelona. Participants came from two single-sex private schools in Barcelona, and in the case of the male participants, they were an intact class. All of the class members (in the case of both males and females) were offered the possibility to engage in a 2-month SA program in Ireland, and it was their parents who made the decision of enrolling their children in the SA program. The participants that went to Ireland were placed in regular Irish schools with no other Catalan/Spanish speakers in the class (each learner was in a separate school), and spent an average of 5 h per day in the classroom environment. They all lived with Irish families with no other foreigners living with them. Regarding AH participants, they attended English classes 4 h per week and they received science classes in English 2 h per week1 during the time elapsed between the pre- and the post-test. Therefore, they were exposed to English an average of 6 h per week,2 and this was exactly the same exposure that SA participants had before departing to the L2 country. However, after the post-test was carried out, participants did not receive science classes in English anymore; 1 Although in Spain it is not compulsory to offer content and language integrated learning (CLIL), that is to say, the teaching of a subject other than the L2 through the L2, English-medium CLIL is becoming increasingly widespread. The subject chosen to be taught through the L2 varies from school to school depending on their needs. 2 The type of instruction these participants received could be framed within the communicative method.
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they only attended English classes 4 h per week. Despite the fact that all the participants in the present study had studied English for five years, their L2 proficiency level was rather elementary.
2.3. Procedure and instruments The data of the pre-test were gathered one week before the SA participants’ departure to the L2 country, and the post-test was carried out the week after the participants’ return from the host country. The participants completed a delayed post-test 12 months after the post-test was carried out. Due to time constraints and at the request of the schools, the participants completed the written test the day before the oral test at the pre-, postand delayed post-tests. The instrumentation consisted of a written test, an oral test and a questionnaire. Written data were gathered by means of a composition entitled “My life: past, present and future expectations”. Participants were allotted 15 min to fulfill this task and a minimum of seven lines was required. This topic was chosen because it had previously been used successfully with children (Mun˜oz, 2006). The day after having completed the written task, participants were interviewed in English. The semi-structured interview consisted of some biographical questions as well as questions about their experience as L2 learners. The interview led to a picture-elicited narrative task, in which participants were asked to explain a story that consisted of six pictures (Heaton, 1966). This task had also been previously used with children with satisfactory results (Mun˜oz, 2006; Tavakoli and Foster, 2008). Participants were given 1 min to have a look at the story and plan their utterances. The data obtained through this task were analyzed and accounted for the participants’ oral production (see Section 2.4 below). Finally, participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire, which was an adaptation of the Language Contact Profile [LCP] (Freed et al., 2004). The questionnaire asked a series of biographical questions, along with questions regarding the amount and type of participants’ L2 practice and exposure. In the case of SA participants, it also asked some questions regarding their living arrangements in the SA context. Since the LCP was designed for adults, it was simplified in order to suit children as well. This questionnaire was administered in Catalan/Spanish after the pictureelicited narrative task and the researcher helped the students to fill it out in order to make sure that they understood the questions and to help them calculate the averages of L2 contact.
2.4. Measures The measures to account for written development were chosen from amongst the most reliable measures according to Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998), with the exception of measures regarding fluency. The same measures used to account for written development were used to account for oral development so that comparisons between oral and written data could be made. Written fluency was computed by means of the ratio words per T-unit (Wds/TU), whereas oral fluency was computed by means of pruned syllables per minute (SPM) as words per minute has proved to be inexact for oral data (Griffiths, 1991). Since this calculation was pruned, false starts, repetitions, unfinished sentences and words in a language other than the L2 were eliminated from the count. Lexical complexity was explored using Guiraud’s Index of Lexical Richness (GUI), which was calculated by dividing the total number of types by the square root of the total number of tokens. Syntactic complexity was examined through the ratio of clauses per T-unit (CL/TU), and accuracy was computed by the measure error-free T-units per T-unit (EFTU/TU). For an improvement to have taken place, a higher score was expected in the post- and delayed post-test for all these measures. The data were transcribed and coded using CLAN (MacWhinney, 2000). To compute the inter- rater reliability, a researcher coded a random 15% of the transcriptions. Next, the coding by this researcher was compared to the coding by the author of this article, who coded all of the data. The percentage of coincidence between the two researchers was 92.4%. In order to calculate intra-rater reliability, the author of the present study coded 15% of the data that she had previously coded several months after the first coding had taken place, and then she compared both codifications. The intra-rater reliability reached 95.4%.
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3. Results Given the low number of participants in each group, non-parametric tests were used. First of all, a ManneWhitney U Test was run in order to test whether there were significant differences between the two groups of participants in the pre-test; no significant differences were found (see Appendix A). In order to answer the research question, which asked whether participants who engaged in an SA program experience greater L2 gains than participants who remain in their AH school, a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was performed for each group of participants with the scores they obtained in the pre- and post-test. Regarding the SA group, as can be seen in Table 1, it was found that they increased significantly in all of the oral measures examined from the pre- to the post-test (SPM: Z ¼ 2.666, p ¼ .008; GUI: Z ¼ 2.666, p ¼ .008; CL/TU: Z ¼ 2.310, p ¼ .021; EFTU/TU: Z ¼ 2.310, p ¼ .021), but that they did not improve significantly in any of the written measures. Next, the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was run for the group of AH participants and no significant values were observed for any of the oral nor the written measures between the pre- and the post-test (see Table 2). Therefore, the answer to the research question would be that SA participants did experience greater L2 gains than AH participants, but these gains were only significant for their oral skills, not their writing abilities. In order to answer subquestion 1a, which asked about the long-term effects of the L2 gains that emerged between the pre- and post-test, a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was run for each group of participants, but this time with the scores they obtained in the post-test and those they obtained in the delayed post-test. As can be seen in Table 3, only one significant value was found for the SA group, namely in oral EFTU/TU (Z ¼ 2.075, p ¼ .038), but in this case this significant value indicated that SA participants had decreased significantly in their oral production of error-free sentences. It can also be observed in Table 3 that SA participants scored higher (although not statistically so) in the delayed post-test in all the remaining measures except for oral EFTU/U, and written Wds/TU. Next, the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was run for the AH participants in order to see whether there was any significant difference between the post-test and the delayed post-test for this group of participants. Table 4 yields the results obtained through this test and it can be seen that, although this group of participants registered higher scores in the delayed post-test than in the post-test, none of these scores turned out to be statistically significant. Therefore, based on the results obtained through these statistical tests, the answer to subquestion 1a regarding the long-term effects of the L2 gains obtained during an SA experience seems to be positive, although it does not seem so at first glance. On the one hand, these results seem to indicate that these L2 gains that emerged as a result of the participants’ SA experience seem not to be long lasting since in general no statistically significant values were found in the delayed post-test. However, it can also be seen that most of the SA participants’ oral and written scores in the post-test are still higher than their scores in the delayed post-test and higher than those of their AH peers despite the drastic reduction of L2 contact and practice that they have experienced (see Appendix B). In order to further analyze subquestion 1a and answer subquestion 1b, which inquired about the strength of the L2 gains emerged during an SA experience at times 2 and 3, Cohen’s d was computed in order to calculate the effect size for each of the measures. According to Cohen’s (1988) d effect sizes (small if d is around 0.2e0.3, medium if it is around 0.5 and large if it is around 0.8), large effect sizes were found for all the oral measures in the post-test, whereas only small effect sizes were found for the written measures in the post-test. In the delayed post-test, two out of the four large effect sizes found in the post-test for the oral measures were still strong, namely SPM and Guiraud’s Index.
Table 1 Results of the Wilcoxon signed Rank Test for the SA participants in the post-test Measures
Mean Pre-test (SD)
Mean Post-test (SD)
Z
p
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
65.23 4.11 1.21 0.14 7.55 5.02 1.27 0.37
111.08 4.73 1.50 0.35 7.85 5.39 1.33 0.32
2.666 2.666 2.310 2.310 .415 1.125 .415 .770
.008* .008* .021* .021* .678 .260 .678 .441
*small effect size.
(21.00) (0.52) (0.18) (0.12) (3.05) (0.46) (0.18) (0.13)
(33.74) (0.44) (0.26) (0.14) (1.12) (0.91) (0.26) (0.13)
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Table 2 Results of the Wilcoxon signed Rank Test for the AH participants in the post-test. Measures
Mean Pre-test (SD)
Mean Post-test (SD)
Z
p
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
75.68 4.13 1.48 0.12 7.41 4.86 1.25 0.25
74.51 3.79 1.31 0.07 7.68 5.40 1.26 0.32
.000 1.859 1.014 .552 .000 1.183 .105 .507
1.00 .063 .310 .581 1.00 .237 .917 .612
(40.22) (0.49) (0.48) (0.18) (3.16) (0.76) (0.29) (0.13)
(43.38) (0.71) (0.26) (0.13) (2.31) (0.87) (0.27) (0.26)
However, oral CL/TU had a small effect in the delayed post-test, and oral EFTU/TU a medium effect. Regarding the effect sizes for the written measures in the delayed post-test, Guiraud’s Index and CL/TU still had a small effect, whereas Wds/TU and EFTU/TU had a moderate effect, as opposed to the small effect that was found for these two measures in the post-test (see Table 5). Therefore, the results obtained through Cohen’s d calculation show that for some oral measures the effects were still large one year after participants’ return from the host country despite the little contact participants had with the L2, whereas for some other measures the effect sizes were moderate or small, especially for the written measures.
4. Discussion and conclusion The research question that guided the present investigation asked whether SA participants experienced greater gains than AH participants, and the results of the present study indicate that SA participants indeed experienced greater L2 gains than AH participants. This finding is in line with previous research that has investigated the effects of learning context and has found that participating in SA is positive, regardless of whether this research has compared the SA context with another learning context (Freed et al., 2004; Llanes and Mun˜oz, in press; Pe´rez-Vidal and JuanGarau, 2009) or not (Freed, 1995; Lennon, 1990; Llanes and Mun˜oz, 2009; Serrano et al., 2012). However, it has also emerged from the present study that the L2 gains achieved during SA experiences seem to benefit oral skills rather than written skills, at least in the short term (Freed et al., 2003; Llanes and Mun˜oz, in press). A plausible explanation for this finding could be found in Anderson’s ACT* theory (Anderson, 1983, 1992, 1993), supported by DeKeyser (2007, 2010), which states that participants first need to have some declarative knowledge of the L2 rules; next, this knowledge is proceduralized by practicing it, and after massive hours of practice, they are able to automatize the L2, or certain aspects of it. This theory could explain the findings of the present study, whose participants engaged in the SA experience with some declarative knowledge thanks to the fact that they had all studied English for five years before departure. And the information obtained through the questionnaire (see Appendix B) shows that once abroad, these participants practiced the L2 for many hours, a fact which might have led them to automatize certain aspects of the L2. This theory of practice would also explain why none of the participants experienced significant positive gains from the post-test to the delayed post-test, because, as can be seen in Appendix Table 3 Results of the Wilcoxon signed Rank Test for the SA group in the delayed post-test. Measures
Mean Post-test (SD)
Mean Delayed P-t
Z
p
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
111.08 4.73 1.50 0.35 7.85 5.39 1.33 0.32
122.18 4.92 1.61 0.25 7.04 5.68 1.39 0.41
1.244 .533 .534 2.075 1.481 .652 .296 1.362
.214 .594 .594 .038* .139 .515 .767 .173
*small effect size.
(33.74) (0.44) (0.26) (0.14) (1.12) (0.91) (0.26) (0.13)
(43.52) (0.78) (0.49) (0.14) (2.15) (1.40) (0.37) (0.16)
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Table 4 Results of the Wilcoxon signed Rank Test for the AH group in the delayed post-test. Measures
Mean Post-test (SD)
Mean Delayed P-t
Z
p
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
74.51 3.79 1.31 0.07 7.68 5.40 1.26 0.32
92.99 4.35 1.46 0.19 9.25 5.83 1.35 0.33
.000 1.690 1.521 1.363 .845 .338 .845 .169
1.00 .091 .128 .173 .398 .735 .398 .866
(43.38) (0.71) (0.26) (0.13) (2.31) (0.87) (0.27) (0.26)
(26.97) (0.63) (0.24) (0.13) (4.01) (2.16) (0.38) (0.17)
B, the amount of L2 practice and contact that participants experienced once they returned from their SA experience was drastically reduced. Another possible explanation for these findings could lie in Long’s (1981) Interaction Hypothesis, which posits that language learners need to be active learners when receiving language input and that only listening to new language structures will not lead to successful language learning. Long’s Interaction Hypothesis requires input and output for there to be an interaction. The fact that SA participants not only practiced the L2 more than AH learners, but they also did so in a wider variety of contexts and with a larger number of interlocutors, and were exposed to higher-quality input than their AH peers (see Appendix B), suggests that SA participants interacted in the L2 more often than AH participants. In the same vein, the lack of interaction and consequently of output in the L2 during the time elapsed between the post-test and the delayed post-test also seems to indicate that the factors explained in Long’s hypothesis may have played a role. The fact that SA participants interacted in the L2 more than AH participants during their SA indicates that Swain’s (1985) Comprehensible Output Hypothesis may also have played a role in the greater L2 acquisition by SA participants given that this hypothesis highlights the importance of pushed output; according to Swain (1985), when participants are forced to produce output, they may modify a previous utterance or try out new forms. This would, in turn, explain the lack of significant gains between the post-test and the delayed post-test. The fact that oral skills were improved more than writing skills during SA could be explained by the type of practice participants experienced (Appendix B shows that participants reported to have spent more time practicing their oral skills than their written ones). However, this finding could also be explained by the fact that two months abroad are not sufficient for gains in L2 writing development to occur, whereas they seem to be enough for oral gains to emerge. This would be in line with Serrano et al. (2012), who investigated the oral and written L2 development by a group of undergraduates studying abroad for a year and found that whereas gains in oral skills occurred during their first semester, gains in L2 writing skills did not appear until the second semester abroad. The two subquestions asked about the duration and strength of the L2 gains experienced by L2 learners, and the results of the present study regarding these subquestions seem to be positive. Although practically none of the variables turned out to be statistically significant from the post-test to the delayed post-test, SA participants still registered higher scores in the delayed post-test in most of the variables examined (with the exception of oral accuracy and written fluency) despite the greatly reduced L2 practice and contact post-SA. In addition to that, two of the four
Table 5 Cohen’s d values in the post-test and in the delayed post-test. Measures
Cohen’s d Post-test
Cohen’s d Delayed P-t
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
0.94*** 1.59*** 0.73*** 2.07*** 0.09* 0.01* 0.26* 0*
0.80*** 0.80*** 0.38* 0.44** 0.68** 0.08* 0.10* 0.48**
*small effect size, **medium effect size, ***large effect size.
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oral variables that had a large effect in the post-test still showed large effect sizes in the delayed post-test (fluency and lexical complexity), and two of the written variables that had a small effect size in the post-test, were found to have a moderate effect size in the delayed post-test (fluency and accuracy); only two oral variables lost some strength from the post- to the delayed post-test (complexity and accuracy). Given the limited practice and exposure to the L2 after the SA, these findings might suggest that the L2 gains obtained in an SA experience are indeed long lasting. Therefore, the present study is the first attempt, to my knowledge, to add evidence to the long lasting effects of L2 gains emerged during an SA experience on children, and it confirms Regan’s (2005) findings. The fact that Pe´rez-Vidal and Juan-Garau (2009) and Howard (2009) did not find positive long-term effects of SA experiences could be due to the type of measures examined, as well as to the type of population under study. The results of the present investigation shed light on two important issues. First, the comparative analyses indicate that engaging in a relatively short SA program (eight weeks) is highly beneficial for the improvement of the participants’ L2, especially their oral skills. This finding is relevant because, despite the fact that short SA experiences (
Appendix A. Results of the ManneWhitney U Test in the pre-test
Measures
U
Z
p
O. SPM O. Gui O. CL/TU O. EFTU/TU W. Wds/TU W. Gui W. CL/TU W. EFTU/TU
28.000 29.000 18.000 28.000 31.000 26.000 25.000 17.000
0.370 0.265 1.429 0.387 0.053 0.582 0.690 1.537
0.758 0.837 0.174 0.758 1.00 0.606 0.536 0.142
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Appendix B. Amount and type of L2 contact.
L2 contact by SA participants in the post-test and the delayed post-test. Post-test Speaking Listening Reading Writing Instruction in English
29.69 32.4 8.92 12.15 25
h/w h/w h/w h/w h/w
Delayed post-test (10.13) (9.15) (8.78) (8.27) (0.00)
0.20 5.5 1.34 5.58 4
h/w h/w h/w h/w h/w
(0.12) (2.35) (0.87) (0.25) (0.00)
*Standard deviations in parentheses.
L2 contact by AH participants in the post-test and the delayed post-test. Post-test Speaking Listening Reading Writing Instruction in English
5 6.25 2.67 3.67 6
h/w h/w h/w h/w h/w
Delayed post-test (3.43) (4.97) (2.74) (3.02) (0.00)
0.20 6.37 1.78 6.13 4
h/w h/w h/w h/w h/w
(0.12) (2.37) (1.02) (0.97) (0.00)
*Standard deviations in parentheses.
Further L2 contact information: time spent interacting with NSs and non-native speakers (NNSs), context that fostered the most interaction in the L2 (options: family, school or friends), and family member with which they interacted the most (only of SA participants) Post-test
Interaction NSs Interaction NNSs Context most L2 interaction
Family member most L2 interaction
Delayed post-test SA group
AH group
SA and AH groups
28.13 h/w (9.33) 1.56 h/w (0.63) Family 87.5% Friends 6.25% School 6.25% Siblings 100%
0 h/w 0 h/w 5 h/w (3.43) School 100%
0 h/w 0 h/w 1.75 h/w (1.72) School 100%
e
e
Appendix C. Oral data from an SA participant in the pre-, post- and delayed post-test. Note that all the names have been changed for anonymity reasons. Pre-test: the boy the boy and the girl is, it’s it’s putting the food in a cest to do a picnic, and the dog and the dog puts in the in the cest picnic and the mother is is with a map learning where, how ai ostres where where are going, and and goes to the street and and says bye bye to her mother and goes to the mountain, and with two cows and a very good day, and after, the boys find the dog in the picnic cest and look the picnic cest and the dog eats all the things. Time of speech: 64 s. Post-test: this is a an story of one boy and one girl and they want to go to picnic with the mother and there are making the with jam sandwich for eat in the picnic and here is the mother showing where where are they going and there is the dog hmm and he’s wants to go inside the cest of the picnic and here they are in the street saying goodbye to the mother and the boy with the cest in the hand here is a very sunny day with cows in a in a mountain with houses there and a and grass and after here when they are going to begin to eat the dog appear inside and when they they see wh what is inside they see the eat the dog ate all. Time of speech: 58 s. Delayed post-test: One boy and one girl are making some sandwich with jam for going to a for going picnic and when the mother is going is showing the boys hmm which place a in the map where that they have to go hmm they
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leave there the picnic hmm the bag of the picnic and in a bag and the dogs enters in in the second picture you can see the boys walking with the bag of the picnic and the mother saying bye bye and the two boys are in the mountain you see two cows here there’s a house and there’s a sunny day and the boys say oh look this is a great place for do the picnic come on begin and then when they sit down and open the bag of the picnic and they go are going to take a sandwich oh surprise the dog is inside and he eat all the sandwich and hmm sandwiches and he gets out of the picnic then and goes to run very happy and the boys what are we going to eat now? Time of speech: 68 s.
Appendix D. Written essays from an SA participant (the same as in Appendix B) in the pre-, post- and delayed post-test. Note that all the names have been changed for anonymity reasons. Pre-test: Hello my name is Jonathan. I born the first of January of nineteen ninety-six in the General Hospital of Catalonia. My father is Jose of Barcelona and my mother is Rosa of Rubı´. I have two sisters Montse and Sara. I the big brother. I go to the school called School and I do sixth. I live in Sant Cugat. I go the school on my bicycle. I wants to study buseness in ESADE and a doctor. My fathers want I work in a bank because are director of banks but I want to be a business and a doctor. Post-test: I was borned the first of January nineteen ninety-six. My parents names are Jose and Rosa. I have two siblings, two girls, and my mother is pregnant and the baby is a boy. I have a lot of hobbies wrestling soccer, bikes, dogs and climbing. At the moment I’m studying in six class. I went to Ireland. I did a lot of friends there. When I come older I want to be a doctor or a bussnes man, but I have a lot of diferent ideas for my future. Delayed post-test: I was born in Sant Cugat. I am thirteen years old. My parents are called Jose and Rosa. I have three brothers, two sisters Sara and Montse and one brother Arnau. I go School and I study there. I play football in a club called Junior FC. I am the striker. In the futur I want to study medicine like House, yes to be like House. It’s a stupid thing yes, but he is a great doctor and he safe’s a lot of lifes every day. I want to win a log of money to help the poor people because the politics say always we help the poor countries, but that is not real. References Anderson, J., 1983. The Architecture of Cognition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Anderson, J., 1992. Automaticity and the ACT* theory. American Journal of Psychology 105 (2), 165e180. Anderson, J., 1993. Rules of the Mind. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale. Cohen, J., 1988. Statistical Power of Analysis for the Behavioural Sciences. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale. Collentine, J., 2004. The effects of learning contexts on morphosyntactic and lexical development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26, 227e248. Cubillos, J.H., Chieffo, L., Fan, C., 2008. The impact of short-term study abroad programs on L2 listening comprehension skills. Foreign Language Annals 41 (1), 157e185. DeKeyser, R., 2007. Practice in a Second Language. Perspectives from Applied Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology. Cambridge University Press, New York. DeKeyser, R., 2010. Monitoring processes in Spanish as a second language during a study abroad program. The Foreign Language Annals 43 (1), 80e92. Dewey, D.P., 2004. A comparison of reading development by learners of Japanese in intensive and domestic immersion and study abroad contexts. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26, 303e327.
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