Assessment of study abroad outcomes in Chinese as a second language: gains in cross-cultural adaptability, language contact and proficiency

Abstract

Participants were 109 American college students studying Chinese in a study-abroad programme in Beijing. Following Kelley and Meyer, intercultural competence was defined as cross-cultural adaptability involving four dimensions (emotional resilience, flexibility/openness, perceptual acuity and personal autonomy) and was measured with a survey. A language contact questionnaire was used to document the amount of time spent on social activities. Language proficiency was measured with a standardised Chinese test. Results revealed that intercultural competence and language contact combined explained 37.7% of the proficiency gains. Language contact had direct effects on proficiency, but intercultural competence had indirect effects, mediated by language contact.

Keywords:

• Intercultural competence
• study abroad
• Chinese
• proficiency
• language contact

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank administrators, instructors and students in the research site in Beijing for their generous support and cooperation for this project. Thanks also go to the editor, associate editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We are responsible for all the errors that may remain.

Notes

1. There are a variety of labels describing intercultural competence, including intercultural communicative competence, intercultural sensitivity, cross-cultural adaptability, ethnorelativity and cultural sensitivity Because the distinction among these labels is not the focus of this article, we will use the term ‘intercultural competence’ synonymously with other related terms.

2. This is part of a larger study that examined development of pragmatic competence in a study abroad context (Taguchi, Xiao, & Li, 2016). Tables 1 and 2 were reproduced with permission.