When ‘domestic’ and ‘international’ students study abroad: reflections on language learning, contact, and culture

ABSTRACT

The present study examines the language- and culture-learning perceptions of domestic and international students from a Canadian university who participated in an intensive four-week-long Spanish language and cultural immersion program in Spain. The study draws on quantitative and qualitative data to explore the ways in which the participants’ previous international, language learning experiences influenced their acculturation in Spain. A language history questionnaire, a language contact profile, and an open-ended questionnaire offered insight into the participants’ experience abroad, their perceptions of language and intercultural learning, and their identified cultural representations on which they drew to make sense of the new environment. We review key findings and offer suggestions for the enhancement of study abroad programs of this nature.

KEYWORDS:

• Study abroad
• language and intercultural development
• language contact
• self-reports

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

John W. Schwieter is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Linguistics and Faculty of Arts Teaching Scholar at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Jane Jackson is a Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Aline Ferreira is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Notes

1 We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for noting this.

2 Given the small number of participants, care must be taken when interpreting the trends found in the t-tests.

3 Minor corrections were made, when necessary, to international students’ grammatically-incorrect constructions in the English quotes elicited from the open-ended questions.