Language, Mobility and Study Abroad in the Contemporary European Context 9780367512521, 9780367763879, 9781003087953

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors
Preface
PART I: Overviews of the Field
1. Language and Student Mobility in Europe
2. International Student Mobility as Transnationalism
3. Linguistic Effects of International Student Mobility in European Perspective
4. Conceptualising Plurilingual Identities in Study Abroad Settings
PART II: Empirical Studies
5. Study Abroad and Students’ (Lack of) Social Integration: The Case of Spanish Ghettos in Italy
6. Retelling Immersion in France: Opportunities and Affordances in Language Use
7. Motivations and Social Integration of Mobile Students: Experiences of Short-Term International Mobility Students at a Lithuanian University
8. Peer Interactions and Second Language Learning: The Contributions of Social Network Analysis in Study Abroad vs At-Home environments
9. Self-Efficacy in Managing Intercultural Interactions as an Outcome of Participation in the Erasmus Programme: Evidence from German Exchange Students in the UK
10. L2 Progress and Changes in Participants’ Intercultural Competence Abroad: A Study of Flemish Sojourners
11. How Social Interaction Affects Students’ Formulaic Development in L2 German in a Multilingual SA Context: Four Case Studies
12. The Impact on Language Identity of a Study Abroad Experience
13. The Role of Context in Shaping Narratives of Plurilingual Identity: The Case of Non-Language Majors Studying Abroad
14. The Linguistic Repertoire and Lived Experience of a Slovak Student: Contradictory Dispositions to L1 Slovak and L2 Japanese Revealed by Language Portraits
15. Learner Engagement and Study Abroad: The Influence of Personal Agency on Sojourner–Host Interaction
16. Self-Regulatory Strategy Use and its Impact on Motivated Language Learning Behaviour and Self-Efficacy in European Study Abroad Contexts
17. Extracurricular Language Learning during Study Abroad in Lithuania
PART III: Afterword
18. Afterword
Index

Citation preview

Language, Mobility and Study Abroad in the Contemporary European Context

This collection explores student mobility and study abroad programmes across Europe, presenting original research on personal, linguistic, and intercultural development during study abroad experiences. The volume synthesizes work from the 2016–2020 Cost Action 15130 “Study Abroad Research in European Perspective” research network, offering a multidisciplinary account of the intersection of language learning and study abroad in Europe amidst the changing contemporary higher education landscape, as well as new directions for future research. The initial section comprises short survey chapters outlining key themes and literature, connecting traditional study abroad research with new multilingual and transnational realities. This is supported by a main section containing original empirical studies in a wide range of European contexts and a short afterword bringing together policy and pedagogical proposals. Taken together, the collection shines a light on the impact of the internationalisation of higher education on linguistic dimensions of student mobility while including a range of lesser-studied settings and languages. New insights are offered on language learning, identity, interculturality, student agency and motivation, and transnational social networks in the study abroad context. This book will be of particular interest to students, researchers and institutions interested in the intersection of language learning and study abroad, including such areas as multilingualism, higher education, and applied linguistics. Rosamond Mitchell is Emeritus Professor of applied linguistics at the University of Southampton, UK. She has long-standing research interests in second language acquisition and in language in education. Recently her work has focused on study abroad, and its long-term consequences for L2 development and maintenance, as well as for language identity. Henry Tyne lectures in applied linguistics at the University of Perpignan, France, where he is also director of the language centre. His main area of research is L2 variation, in particular within the study abroad context. Through his work on variation he has become interested in the potential of corpora for language learning.

Routledge Studies in Applied Linguistics

Autoethnographies in ELT Transnational Identities, Pedagogies, and Practices Edited by Bedrettin Yazan, Suresh Canagarajah, and Rashi Jain Researching Interpretive Talk Around Literary Narrative Texts Shared Novel Reading John Gordon Analyzing Discourses in Teacher Observation Feedback Conferences Fiona Copland and Helen Donaghue Learning-Oriented Language Assessment Putting Theory into Practice Edited by Atta Gebril Language, Mobility and Study Abroad in the Contemporary European Context Edited by Rosamond Mitchell and Henry Tyne Intonation in L2 Discourse Research Insights María Dolores Ramirez-Verdugo Contexts of Co-Constructed Discourse Interaction, Pragmatics, and Second Language Applications Edited by Lori Czerwionka, Rachel Showstack, and Judith Liskin-Gasparro Second Language Prosody and Computer Modeling Okim Kang, David O. Johnson, Alyssa Kermad For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Applied-Linguistics/bookseries/RSAL

Language, Mobility and Study Abroad in the Contemporary European Context

Edited by Rosamond Mitchell and Henry Tyne

First published 2021 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Rosamond Mitchell and Henry Tyne; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Rosamond Mitchell and Henry Tyne to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. With the exception of Chapter 8, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Chapter 8 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-51252-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-76387-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-08795-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of contributors Preface

viii ix xi xvi

PART I

Overviews of the Field 1 Language and Student Mobility in Europe

1 3

ROSAMOND MITCHELL

2 International Student Mobility as Transnationalism

13

HENRY TYNE AND PAOLO RUSPINI

3 Linguistic Effects of International Student Mobility in European Perspective

22

CARMEN PÉREZ-VIDAL AND ÀNGELS LLANES

4 Conceptualising Plurilingual Identities in Study Abroad Settings

34

ANA BEAVEN AND JEAN E. CONACHER

PART II

Empirical Studies 5 Study Abroad and Students’ (Lack of) Social Integration: The Case of Spanish Ghettos in Italy

45 47

SÒNIA MAS-ALCOLEA AND HELENA TORRES-PURROY

6 Retelling Immersion in France: Opportunities and Affordances in Language Use ANNE MARIE DEVLIN AND HENRY TYNE

64

vi

Contents

7 Motivations and Social Integration of Mobile Students: Experiences of Short-Term International Mobility Students at a Lithuanian University

79

INGA GAIŽAUSKAITĖ, IRENA ŽEMAITAITYTĖ AND LORA TAMOŠIUNIENĖ

8 Peer Interactions and Second Language Learning: The Contributions of Social Network Analysis in Study Abroad vs At-Home environments

99

MICHAŁ B. PARADOWSKI, ANDRZEJ JARYNOWSKI, KAROLINA CZOPEK AND ´ SKA MAGDALENA JELIN

9 Self-Efficacy in Managing Intercultural Interactions as an Outcome of Participation in the Erasmus Programme: Evidence from German Exchange Students in the UK

117

GIANNA HESSEL

10 L2 Progress and Changes in Participants’ Intercultural Competence Abroad: A Study of Flemish Sojourners

136

ANA MARIA MORENO BRUNA AND PATRICK GOETHALS

11 How Social Interaction Affects Students’ Formulaic Development in L2 German in a Multilingual SA Context: Four Case Studies

154

GRIET BOONE

12 The Impact on Language Identity of a Study Abroad Experience

171

ˇ IC ´ TAKACˇ , EMRE GÜVENDIR, ROSAMOND MITCHELL, VIŠNJA PAVIC GRIET BOONE AND ANU HÄRKÖNEN

13 The Role of Context in Shaping Narratives of Plurilingual Identity: The Case of Non-Language Majors Studying Abroad

189

SANJA MARINOV, MARÍA-VICTORIA SOULÉ AND JOSEP-MARIA COTS

14 The Linguistic Repertoire and Lived Experience of a Slovak Student: Contradictory Dispositions to L1 Slovak and L2 Japanese Revealed by Language Portraits

207

NORIKO IWASAKI

15 Learner Engagement and Study Abroad: The Influence of Personal Agency on Sojourner–Host Interaction

225

JUNE EYCKMANS

16 Self-Regulatory Strategy Use and its Impact on Motivated Language Learning Behaviour and Self-Efficacy in European Study Abroad Contexts MIROSŁAW PAWLAK AND KATA CSIZÉR

242

Contents 17 Extracurricular Language Learning during Study Abroad in Lithuania

vii 260

SAULĖ PETRONIENĖ AND SAULĖ JUZELĖNIENĖ

PART III

Afterword

275

18 Afterword

277

ROSAMOND MITCHELL AND HENRY TYNE

Index

280

Figures

5.1 The Data Collection Methodology 5.2 The Complementarity of MCA and Stance 7.1 Pooled Responses (2013-2017) to Survey Question 1: “Please tick the main reasons (up to 3) for participating in exchange programme” 7.2 Social and Academic Integration of International Students Into Different Social and Academic Communities 8.1 Interactions in One Class Group of Students Learning Polish in an Intensive Summer Course 8.2 Clusters Identified among AH Students 14.1 Denisa’s Language Portrait Before the First SA (Language Portrait 1: June 2015) 14.2 Denisa’s Language Portrait Nearing the End of Her Second SA (Language Portrait 4: June 2019) 15.1 Boxplots of Students’ Likert Ratings (1–7) for Agency, Perceived Intensity, and Perceived Variation of Interaction with TL Speakers (n = 85)

49 50

83 89 101 109 214 217

232

Tables

1.1 Source and Destination Countries for Erasmus+ Students, 2016–2017 5.1 Transcription Conventions (based on Payrató & Alturo, 2002) 6.1 Overview of Participants 6.2 Environment, Category, and Affordance 8.1 Most Commonly Used Centrality Measures Exemplified on Data from a Karate Club Network (After Zachary, 1977) 8.2 Study Sample and Measures 9.1 Participant Background Characteristics at Baseline (pre-SA) 9.2 Overview of Data Collection Points 9.3 Self-efficacy in Managing Intercultural Interactions: Group Means and Gain Scores, in SA 9.4 Multiple Regression of Overall Self-Efficacy Gain during SA on Group Membership (SA1 and SA2 vs. AH) and the SelfEfficacy Baseline Score 9.5 Self-Efficacy in Managing Intercultural Interactions: Group Means and Gain Scores, Post-SA 10.1 Example Items from the Expanded Cultural Intelligence Scale (E-CQS) 10.2 Scores on Participants’ CQ Profile Pre- and Post-SA: Subvariables of MOCQ (Motivational Intelligence), CCQ (Cognitive Intelligence), MECQ (Metacognitive Intelligence), and BCQ (Behavioural Intelligence) 10.3 Pre-SA, Post-SA, and Gain Scores on L2 Lexical Proficiency Scale (LexTALE) and Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) 10.4 Non-parametric Correlations between Gains on E-CQS Dimensions and L2 Vocabulary and Pragmatic Gains post-SA 11.1 Social Interaction in German (SASIQ Data Extract) 11.2 Pre- and Post-SA Individual Scores (Collocations and Pragmatic Expressions) 12.1 Participant Details 13.1 Participants’ Linguistic Background 13.2 Analytical Framework

4 49 66 68 102 105 122 124 125

127 127 139

142 143 145 160 161 174 193 194

x

List of tables

14.1 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4

16.5 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 17.6

Schedule of Data Collection Sessions and Collected Data Example Items from the SAQ Cronbach Alpha Values and Descriptive Statistics (all Scales) Results of Cluster Analysis Results of Regression Analysis for Self-Regulatory Strategy Use Scales with Motivated Learning Behaviour as Dependent Scale Results of Regression Analysis for Self-Regulatory Strategy Use Scales with Self-Efficacy Beliefs as Dependent Scale Respondents’ Gender and Age, by Language Group Overview of Participants’ Language Learning Environment and Practices (Percentages) Motivation for Studying Lithuanian, LLS Group Exposure to English/ Lithuanian Outside the Classroom (Question 22: Percentages) Participant Preferences among Institutionally Organised ECAs Beliefs about Language Skills Impacted by ECA (Percentage of “Yes” Responses)

212 248 250 251

252 253 263 265 267 269 271 271

Contributors

Ana Beaven teaches English as a Foreign Language at the University of Bologna Language Centre (Italy). Her main areas of interest are intercultural foreign language teaching and learning, plurilingualism and plurilingual identities, and virtual exchange. She was the coordinator of the project IEREST (Intercultural Education Resources for Erasmus Students and their Teachers) in 2012–2015. Griet Boone is a research and teaching assistant in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University, Belgium. She currently teaches German as a foreign language, interpreting and translation. Her research interests include phraseology, foreign language learning and teaching, study abroad and intercultural communication. Jean E. Conacher is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Her primary research areas include applied linguistics, particularly language-in-education policy and planning, and language teaching and learning. Her previous study abroad research explored student experience with a strong focus on social integration and the formation of friendship circles. Josep-Maria Cots is Professor of English and Applied Linguistics in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain), where he teaches courses in pragmatics, discourse analysis, intercultural communication and multilingual education. His research focuses on applied discourse analysis, multilingualism, and intercultural competence. Kata Csizér is Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. Her main field of research interest is the social psychological aspects of L2 learning and teaching, as well as foreign language motivation. Karolina Czopek is a PhD student at the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland. As a language teacher and a linguist, she is primarily interested in language acquisition processes later in life, with a particular emphasis on third-age learners.

xii

List of contributors

Anne Marie Devlin is a lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Speech and Hearing Sciences in University College Cork (Ireland). Her interests include language contact and identity development during study abroad and interlanguage pragmatics. June Eyckmans is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Ghent University (Belgium). She teaches courses on second language acquisition and teaching English as a foreign language. Her research interests centre on second language acquisition research, with a focus on L2 vocabulary learning. Her research into contextual language learning led her to the field of study abroad research. Inga Gaižauskaitė is a sociologist, currently working as a researcher at the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences. Her main research interests include democratisation, social and political trust, intergenerational relationships as well as developments of social research methodology. Patrick Goethals is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Ghent University (Belgium), where he teaches courses on cross-linguistic pragmatics and Spanish language. His research interests centre on multilingualism in travel contexts, computer-mediated communication, and computer-assisted vocabulary learning Emre Güvendir is Associate Professor of Foreign Language Teaching at Trakya University (Turkey), where he teaches second language acquisition and language teaching methodology. His research focuses on investigating social, intercultural, individual, and psychological factors related to language acquisition in both study abroad and foreign language learning contexts. Anu Härkönen is Head of International Affairs at Turku University of Applied Sciences (Finland). Her research interests include internationalisation of higher education, educational and academic mobility, and critical interculturality. Gianna Hessel is FWF Hertha-Firnberg Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research focuses on the psychology of second language learning, L2 self-concept, self-motivation, and intercultural learning during and following study-related sojourns abroad. Noriko Iwasaki is Professor of Japanese Applied Linguistics at Nanzan University, Japan. Prior to the appointment, she lectured at SOAS University of London and was the president of the Association of Japanese Language Teachers in Europe. Her research interests include individual differences in study abroad research. Andrzej Jarynowski is an expert in infectious disease modelling and a specialist in epidemiology from Wrocław (Poland). He is interested in the application of social network analysis in various social processes, including that of second language acquisition.

List of contributors

xiii

Magdalena Jelin´ska is a psychologist, translator, and PhD student at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw (Poland). Her interests concern the psychology of L2 acquisition, personality and individual differences, developmental and cognitive changes, as well as psychosocial aspects of L2 learning processes. Saulutė Juzelėnienė is a Professor at Kaunas University of Technology, Institute of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities (Lithuania). Her scientific interests are in educational science and applied linguistics, including translation studies, semiotics of advertising, cognitive linguistics, semantics, and pragmatics. Àngels Llanes is an Associate Professor at the Universitat de Lleida (Catalonia, Spain), where she teaches second language acquisition. Her main areas of research are the role of learning context (especially study abroad) and age on L2 development, and the impact of reading in an L2 on L2 development. Recently her work has focused on the impact of a translanguaging methodology on L2 development and curriculum internationalisation. Sanja Marinov is a Lecturer in languages for specific purposes at the University of Split (Croatia). Her professional and scientific interests include designing study materials for English in tourism, data-driven learning, vocabulary learning strategies, and lexical competence. Currently, her main focus is on the lexical development of non-language majors during study abroad. Sònia Mas-Alcolea is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Linguistics at the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). Her work, which adopts a discourse-analytic approach, has focused on study abroad, identity, second language acquisition, cross-cultural communication and interculturality. Rosamond Mitchell is Emeritus Professor of applied linguistics at the University of Southampton, UK. She has long-standing research interests in second language acquisition and in language in education. Recently her work has focused on study abroad, and its long-term consequences for L2 development and maintenance, as well as for language identity. Ana Moreno Bruna is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Applied Linguistics at Ghent University (Belgium), where she researches second language acquisition and intercultural development during study abroad, including the influence of pedagogical efforts from home institutions on learners’ learning process regarding intercultural competence and lexical and pragmatic proficiency in L2 Spanish. Michał B. Paradowski is an Associate Professor and teacher trainer at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw (Poland). His

xiv

List of contributors

interests include second and third language acquisition research, foreign language teaching, multilingualism and bilingual education, translanguaging, English as a lingua franca, and study abroad. Mirosław Pawlak is Professor of English at Adam Mickiewicz University, Kalisz, Poland, and the State University of Applied Sciences, Konin, Poland. His main areas of interest are second language acquisition theory and research, form-focused instruction, corrective feedback, classroom discourse, learner autonomy, learning strategies, motivation, willingness to communicate, boredom and pronunciation teaching. Višnja Pavicˇ ic´ Takacˇ is Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Osijek (Croatia). Her professional and research interests include individual differences in FL learning, language learning strategies, communicative competence, lexical development, cross-linguistic studies, and pre-service teacher education. Carmen Pérez-Vidal is Full Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. Her main research interests lie within the field of foreign language acquisition, child bilingualism, and the linguistic and non-linguistic effects of different learning contexts, namely study abroad, immersion (CLIL/EMI), and instructed second language acquisition (ISLA). Saulė Petronienė holds a PhD in humanities and is a professor at Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania), Institute of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities (Translation and Language Studies Research Group). She is also the head of Foreign Language Centre. Her research interests cover applied linguistics, translation problems, new media language and educational science. Paolo Ruspini has been researching international and European migration and integration since 1997. He is currently Associate Researcher at the Institute of Sociological Research (IRS), University of Geneva, Switzerland, and Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Roehampton, UK. María-Victoria Soulé is a researcher and Spanish language instructor at Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus. Her research interests include second language acquisition (the analysis of morphological, syntactic and discursive knowledge of tense and aspect among adult second language learners, particularly within the study abroad context) and technology enhanced language learning. Lora Tamošiu-nienė is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Humanities, Faculty of Human and Social Studies, Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania. Her research interests embrace multilingual and transcultural studies.

List of contributors

xv

Helena Torres-Purroy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Catalan Language and Communication at the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). Her research interests are multimodal communication, communication in scientific communities of practice, critical discourse analysis, and the internationalisation of higher education. Henry Tyne lectures in applied linguistics at the University of Perpignan, France, where he is also director of the language centre. His main area of research is L2 variation, in particular within the study abroad context. Through his work on variation he has become interested in the potential of corpora for language learning. Irena Žemaitaitytė is a Professor of Education Sciences at Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania. She has long-standing research interests in adult education and in learning motivation. Recently her work has focused on study abroad, and its consequences for experiences of short-term international mobility students, as well as for motivations and social integration of mobility students.

Preface

This book is a product of the 2016–2020 research network “Study Abroad Research in European Perspective” (SAREP), funded by the European agency “Cooperation in Science and Technology” (COST Action 15130). All lead authors and most co-authors were network members and much of the theoretical and empirical work reported here was stimulated and discussed within the network. We are very grateful to the entire network membership for their direct or indirect contributions. In particular we are grateful to the Chair of SAREP Martin Howard, to Vice-Chair Carmen Pérez-Vidal, and to Working Group leaders Fred Dervin, Jonas Granfeldt, Marianne Gullberg, Anu Härkönen, and Maria Juan-Garau for their support and successful management of network events. We also thank our anonymous reviewers and our editors at Routledge/Taylor and Francis, Elysse Preposi, and Helena Parkinson. Rosamond Mitchell, University of Southampton, UK Henry Tyne, University of Perpignan Via Domitia, France October 2020

Part I

Overviews of the Field

1

Language and Student Mobility in Europe Rosamond Mitchell

Introduction In recent decades higher education (HE) has increasingly been viewed as a key contributor to economic success in a globalised world, and has grown accordingly. Recent estimates suggest that prior to the Covid emergency of 2020, c220 million young people were taking part in some form of HE worldwide (Calderon, 2018). Among these students, a small but growing proportion of over 5 million were degree-mobile, i.e. they had crossed an international border to undertake a full degree programme (Unesco Institute for Statistics, 2019). Europe has hosted well over 1 million such degree-mobile students, mainly clustered in larger, high-income countries (c500k in the United Kingdom, c250k in each of France and Germany: Unesco Institute of Statistics, 2019). Additionally, within Europe, the long-standing Erasmus programme has promoted the option of credit mobility, where students earn academic credit in another country over one or two semesters, while remaining enrolled for their degree in the home country (Van Mol & Ekamper, 2016). Since 1987, over 3 million credit-mobile students have taken part in Erasmus exchanges, with over 300k participating annually. European policymakers expect the scheme to contribute to participants’ employability, language skills, intercultural awareness, and sense of European citizenship (Cairns et al., 2018). Nonetheless, mobile students remain a small proportion of the total student population. Some HE programmes include a compulsory study abroad (SA) requirement. However, numerous studies have shown that where SA is voluntary, Erasmus participants are socially advantaged compared with their stay-at-home peers (Cairns, 2019; Finn & Darmody, 2017; Van Mol, 2014). Their families are better educated, and more likely also to have had international experience (Bahna, 2018; Van Mol, 2014). Concerning academic disciplines, around 40% of Erasmus students study social sciences, business, and law. Around 20% specialise in humanities (including languages), while others study engineering (15%), science, maths and computing (7%), and health and welfare (6%) (European Commission, 2014). Thus, while language learning is viewed as an important Erasmus objective, most participants have not been language specialists. However, they have almost universally studied English

4

Rosamond Mitchell

for many years at school, and many have studied other languages in line with the European “1 + 2” strategy for language education. Depending on their social and geographical origins, participants’ motivations for SA may be quite instrumental, aiming to improve longer-term career prospects and chances of mobility, but may also be more experiential and concerned with personal development. In practice, a small number of countries stand out as main source and destination countries for European student exchanges. Erasmus+ statistics for 2016–2017 are shown in Table 1.1. Participation largely reflects relative population sizes; France, Germany, Spain and Italy are among the top five sending and receiving countries. However, the figures also show imbalances. Thus the English-speaking UK is a top five receiving country, but only sends around half the students it receives; Turkey on the other hand sends around five times the number of students it receives. Recently, the European Union has increasingly acknowledged economic and sociocultural obstacles to participation in SA (Souto-Otero et al., 2013), and has launched several initiatives to widen opportunity, including the possibility of virtual student exchanges, like the EVOLVE project (https://evolve-erasm us.eu/) and the Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange project (European Commission, 2019). These initiatives are limited in scale but may offer valuable precedents as it becomes necessary to reimagine student mobility in pandemic times. Table 1.1 Source and Destination Countries for Erasmus+ Students, 2016–2017 Country

Outgoing

Incoming

Country

France Germany Spain Italy Turkey United Kingdom Poland Netherlands Belgium Portugal Czech Republic Austria Romania Finland Greece

43905 40959 40079 35666 17008 16561 15453 13831 9284 9132 7892 7427 7202 6263 5259

28722 34497 48595 26294 3563 31727 16908 14145 10712 14306 10534 7934 3541 8698 4688

4659 4452

5731 3161

Hungary Sweden Slovakia Ireland Bulgaria Norway Latvia Slovenia Croatia Estonia Cyprus Luxembourg Malta Iceland FYR Macedonia Liechtenstein Partner countries

Denmark Lithuania

Outgoing

Incoming

4341 4069 3769 3472 2465 2315 2156 1958 1778 1135 635 538 413 372 312

6242 10521 2149 8017 1545 6765 1941 2684 2097 1871 1077 1077 2431 922 121

42 10954

85 2454

Language and Student Mobility in Europe

5

Regarding choice of academic institutions, it seems that Erasmus participants are not greatly concerned with institutional standing. Indeed, when choosing a destination, it seems Erasmus participants have preferences for a warm climate, and for large, historic cities (Van Mol & Ekamper, 2016). The current growth in English-medium instruction (EMI) in European HE (Dafouz & Smit, 2019; Dimova et al., 2015) has clearly expanded the opportunities for Erasmus sojourners. HE institutions have been developing EMI programmes primarily to serve degree-mobile international students, as well as local students (Costa & Coleman, 2013). However, EMI programmes can also accommodate credit-mobile Erasmus students, and do so increasingly, as discussed below.

Language-Related Study Abroad Research Language learning has centuries-old connections with scholarly mobility (de Ridder-Symoens, 1992). Research on the language learning associated with contemporary credit mobility can be traced back to the 1960s (Carroll, 1967), and grew considerably from the 1990s (e.g. Freed, 1995), as part of a general expansion of second language acquisition (SLA) research. This research tradition has generally focused on the learning gains of students who are language specialists (see reviews by Isabelli-García et al., 2018; Sanz & Morales-Front, 2018). European studies in this tradition also date back to the 1970s (e.g. Towell et al., 1996; Willis et al., 1977), and have recently included some large-scale research programmes (e.g. Pérez-Vidal, 2014). However, much international SA/SLA research concerns North American students of world languages such as Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. Overall, this research has supported lay perceptions that SA is indeed effective in promoting SLA. (Pérez-Vidal and Llanes, this volume, provide a more detailed review.) A consistent finding, however, has been that of wide variation in language learning gains among sojourners, which has led both to in increased interest in “individual differences” (Iwasaki, 2019) and to a “social turn” in SA/SLA research. Numerous studies now investigate sojourners’ language use patterns when abroad, their social engagement and social integration, and their intercultural adaptation, aiming to link this behavioural evidence to SLA (see e.g. Baker-Smemoe et al., 2014; Kinginger, 2013). However, some important language dimensions of SA in Europe have so far received comparatively limited attention. As we have seen, most credit-mobile students are not language specialists, yet they also travel with language learning expectations, which may or may not be fulfilled in the same way. Furthermore, European HE settings are increasingly multilingual, at least in terms of their student populations, and credit-mobile students commonly take part in regular courses alongside local students (and international degree-mobile students). Their school-derived English skills mean that they can increasingly take advantage of EMI, regardless of destination country, and are likely to use

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English as a lingua franca (ELF) with other international students (Kalocsai, 2013). Erasmus students’ preference for English is also reflected in statistics for the Online Linguistic Support (OLS) test required of all participants (Erasmus+, 2019). This test is available in all major European languages, yet around two-thirds of test-takers annually choose the English version, regardless of SA destination (Sockett, 2019). There is already a body of research on EMI in Europe, but major longitudinal EMI studies such as Smit (2010) or Komori-Glatz (2018), which track students’ in-class participation and development over time, focus only on degree-mobile students. Other EMI studies do not seem to distinguish between degree-mobile and credit-mobile students (e.g. Gotti, 2014; Schaller-Schwaner, 2018). So far, rather limited research deals specifically with the EMI/ELF experience of credit-mobile students. Borghetti and Beaven (2017) surveyed a cohort of Italian sojourners in varied destinations, and explored relationships between language learning beliefs and lingua franca practices. Pogorelova and Trenchs (2018) were primarily concerned with their Catalan sojourners’ intercultural development in Anglophone and ELF settings, but also examined their experience of EMI, and their sense of English language gains. Kaypak and Ortaçtepe (2014) surveyed Turkish sojourners in a range of EMI/ELF settings, and found they became more confident users of English. Finally, a small number of studies have directly examined English proficiency development in EMI/ELF contexts. Llanes et al. (2016) administered English language tests to a cohort of Catalan sojourners pre- and post-SA in EMI settings, finding gains in general proficiency and lexical complexity. Martin-Rubió and Cots (2018) tracked six Catalan students sojourning in Denmark, and documented their adjustment to EMI; oral assessments pre- and post-sojourn, showed improvement in both fluency and accuracy. Glaser (2017) tracked German students studying in both Anglophone and EMI/ELF settings, and found evidence for sociopragmatic development in both contexts. A start has thus been made in investigating EMI/ELF with credit-mobile students, but still on a small scale, and with a rather limited set of outgoing groups. Widening the focus beyond EMI/ELF, some researchers have acknowledged the broader multilingual nature of the contemporary European university, and explored the implications for SA. In some parts of the European Union, HE policy is expected to support regional languages (such as Basque, Catalan, or Welsh), yet internationalisation has also promoted EMI (Garrett & GallegoBalsà, 2014). In small nations such as the Baltic states, HE is also expected to contribute to maintenance of national languages, but again, internationalisation is promoting EMI (Soler-Carbonell, 2015). The attitudes of credit-mobile students toward “smaller” national and regional languages have been researched to some extent, with findings showing rather limited interest (Cots et al., 2016; Dervin, 2013; Martin-Rubió & Cots, 2016). Studies also document more “bottom up” multilingual practices, showing how mobile students make flexible use of their total language resources, including home languages and other languages learned at school, as well as lingua francas (e.g. Behrent, 2007;

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Martínez-Arbelaiz et al., 2017). But again, research is patchy and often focuses on rather limited aspects of the overall multilingual environment. Finally, to make sense of mobile students’ language learning goals and practices, researchers need to examine their SA motivations and their vision of the desired longer-term self. A good deal of research has taken place on the identity of Erasmus students in Europe, related to EU goals for the development of “European citizenship,” and on the development of intercultural competence, again with mixed findings (see e.g. Cairns et al., 2018; Llurda et al., 2016; Pogorelova & Trenchs, 2018; Van Mol, 2018). However, investigations of linguistic dimensions of identity, and how these relate to mobile students’ sense of agency and self-management, have been quite limited.

Ways Forward for European SA Research To make sense of language practices and language learning in the increasingly multilingual European university, some refocusing of SA research is needed. (Duff, 2019, and Tullock & Ortega, 2017, make similar arguments from a North American perspective.) Firstly, a better understanding is needed of SA participants’ engagement with EMI, and the nature of their language learning in EMI/ELF settings (Kimura, 2019). Secondly, students’ own individual plurilingualism, and the translanguaging practices of student SA communities, need more systematic investigation, including their implications for language acquisition. In future it is likely that language-related research will have to take more systematic account of virtual sojourns and exchanges, as well as those involving physical mobility, if the total student experience is to be understood. Finally, a fuller programme of research is needed on the motivation and language identity of mobile students, and connections between the multilingual context and students’ own agency as language users and language learners (Cots et al., 2021).

Contents of This Book Connecting with the themes just discussed, Part I of this book provides an overall framing of the field. This introductory chapter is followed by a discussion of contemporary mobility, conceptualised within transnational theory (Chapter 2). Chapter 3 provides a more detailed account of SA/SLA research in the European SA setting; Chapter 4 discusses language identity from a plurilingual perspective. Part II presents a set of empirical studies, conducted by members of the COST Action CA15130 “Study Abroad Research in European Perspective (SAREP).” This complements other collections arising from SAREP (Howard, 2019, 2021). It adds significantly to the range of study sites and languages investigated in language-related SA research, and the attention given to non-language specialists. A first group of chapters deals with factors affecting the social and linguistic integration of mobile students, reporting

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studies in Italy (Chapter 5), France (Chapter 6) and Lithuania (Chapter 7). In Chapter 8, the use of social network analysis to model sojourner relationships in different settings is evaluated. The next group of chapters investigate sojourners’ intercultural and sociopragmatic experience. Chapter 9 investigates sojourners’ self-efficacy in managing intercultural interactions, compared to that of at-home students; Chapter 10 uses quantitative techniques to measure relationships between developing L2 proficiency, sociopragmatic competence, and “cultural intelligence,” in a single setting (Spain); and Chapter 11 adopts a case study approach to investigate sociopragmatic development in target language (TL)-using and non-TL-using SA settings. Issues of language identity are then explored in a set of qualitative studies. Chapter 12 reports an investigation of change in SA participants’ language identity. Chapter 13 explores the role of context in shaping the plurilingual identity of non-specialist sojourners. Chapter 14 traces the evolving language values of a Slovak student as she journeys through a series of international sojourns. The last group of chapters within Part II explore the contribution of sojourners’ individual agency and capacity for self-regulation to the SA experience. Chapter 15 examines sojourners’ use of agency to engage in desired interactional experiences when abroad; Chapter 16 reports a largescale questionnaire survey linking the extent of self-regulation to sojourners’ language learning motivations. Chapter 17 explores how SA participants exploit informal language learning opportunities with respect to English on the one hand, and a “small language” (Lithuanian) on the other. Finally in Part III, Chapter 18 provides a brief afterword drawing more general implications, from the entirety of the research presented in the book, and in the light of the implications for SA of pandemic conditions.

References Bahna, M. (2018). Study choices and returns of international students: On the role of cultural and economic capital of the family. Population, Space and Place, 24(2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2082 Baker-Smemoe, W., Dewey, D. P., Bown, J., & Martinsen, R. A. (2014). Variables affecting L2 gains during study abroad. Foreign Language Annals, 47(3), 464–486. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12093 Behrent, S. (2007). La Communication interalloglotte [Lingua franca communication]. L’Harmattan. Borghetti, C., & Beaven, A. (2017). Lingua francas and learning mobility: Reflections on students’ attitudes and beliefs towards language learning and use. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 27(1), 221–241. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12123 Bulajeva, T., & Hogan-Brun, G. (2014). Internationalisation of higher education and nation building: Resolving language policy dilemmas in Lithuania. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(4), 318–331. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01434632.2013.874431

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Cairns, D. (2019). Researching social inclusion in student mobility: Methodological strategies in studying the Erasmus programme. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 42(2), 137–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2018.1446928 Cairns, D., Krzaklewska, E., Cuzzocrea, V., & Allaste, A.-A. (Eds.) (2018). Mobility, education and employability in the European Union: Inside Erasmus. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76926-4 Calderon, A. J. (2018). Massification of higher education revisited. RMIT University. http://cdn02.pucp.education/academico/2018/08/23165810/na_mass_revis_230818.pdf Carroll, J. B. (1967). Foreign language proficiency levels attained by language majors near graduation from college. Foreign Language Annals, 1, 131–151. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1967.tb00127.x Costa, F., & Coleman, J. A. (2013). A survey of English-medium instruction in Italian higher education. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 16(1), 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2012.676621 Cots, J. M., Aguilar, M., Mas-Alcolea, S., & Llanes, À. (2016). Studying the impact of academic mobility on intercultural competence: A mixed-methods perspective. The Language Learning Journal, 44(3), 304–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736. 2016.1198097 Cots, J. M., Mitchell, R., & Beaven, A. (2021). Structure and agency in the development of plurilingual identities in study abroad. In M. Howard (Ed.), Study abroad and the second language learner: Expectations, experiences and development (pp. 165–188). Bloomsbury. Dafouz, E., & Smit, U. (2019). Road mapping English medium education in the internationalised university. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-3-030-23463-8 Dervin, F. (2013). Politics of identification in the use of lingua francas in student mobility to Finland and France. In C. Kinginger (Ed.), Social and cultural aspects of language learning in study abroad (pp. 101–126). John Benjamins. https://doi. org/10.1075/lllt.37.05der Dimova, S., Hultgren, A. K., & Jensen, C. (Eds.) (2015). English-medium instruction in European higher education. De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9781614515272 Duff, P. A. (2019). Social dimensions and processes in second language acquisition: Multilingual socialization in transnational contexts. The Modern Language Journal, 103(S1), 6–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12534 Erasmus+. (2019). Online linguistic support. https://erasmusplusols.eu/en/ European Commission. (2019). Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange: Intercultural learning experiences. Publications Office of the European Union. https://europa.eu/youth/ sites/default/files/eyp/eve/attachments/eve_brochure_2019.pdf European Commission. (2014). Erasmus facts, figures and trends. https://ec.europa. eu/assets/eac/education/library/statistics/erasmus-plus-facts-figures_en.pdf Eurostat. (2019). People on the move: Statistics on mobility in Europe, 2019 edition. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/eumove/ Finn, M., & Darmody, M. (2017). Examining student immobility: A study of Irish undergraduate students. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 39(4), 423–434. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2017.1335265 Freed, B. F. (Ed.) (1995). Second language acquisition in a study abroad context. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.9

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Garrett, P., & Gallego Balsà, L. (2014). International universities and implications of internationalisation for minority languages: Views from university students in Catalonia and Wales. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(4), 361–375. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2013.874434 Glaser, K. (2017). Metapragmatic perceptions in native language vs. lingua franca settings: Does target language status during study abroad make a difference? Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education, 2(1), 107–131. https://doi.org/10.1075/sar.2.1.05gla Gotti, M. (2014). Explanatory strategies in university courses taught in ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3(1), 337–361. https://doi.org/10.1515/jelf-2014-0020 Howard, M. (Ed.) (2019). Study abroad, second language acquisition and interculturality: Contemporary perspectives. Multilingual Matters. Howard, M. (Ed.) (2021). Study abroad and the second language learner: Expectations, experiences and development. Bloomsbury. Isabelli-García, C., Bown, J., Plews, J. L., & Dewey, D. P. (2018). Language learning and study abroad. Language Teaching, 51(4), 439–484. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S026144481800023X Iwasaki, N. (2019). Individual differences in study abroad research: Sources, processes and outcomes of students’ development in language, culture and personhood. In M. Howard (Ed.), Study abroad, second language acquisition and interculturality: Contemporary perspectives (pp. 237–262). Multilingual Matters. Jacobone, V., & Moro, G. (2015). Evaluating the impact of the Erasmus programme: Skills and European identity. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40(2), 309–328. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2014.909005 Kalocsai, K. (2013). Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca: A study of students in a central European context. De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10. 1515/9783110295511 Kaypak, E., & Ortaçtepe, D. (2014). Language learner beliefs and study abroad: A study on English as a lingua franca (ELF). System, 42, 355–367. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.system.2014.01.005 Kimura, D. (2019). Toward cross-fertilization of English as a lingua franca and study abroad. JACET ELF SIG Journal, 3, 3–24. Kinginger, C. (Ed.). (2013). Social and cultural aspects of language learning in study abroad. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.37 Komori-Glatz, M. (2018). “Cool my doubt is erased”: Constructive disagreement and creating a psychologically safe space in multicultural student teamwork. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 7(2), 285–306. https://doi.org/10.1515/jelf-2018-0012 Llanes, À., Arnó, E., & Mancho-Barés, G. (2016). Erasmus students using English as a lingua franca: Does study abroad in a non-English-speaking country improve L2 English? The Language Learning Journal, 44(3), 292–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09571736.2016.1198099 Llurda, E., Gallego-Balsà, L., Barahona, C., & Martin-Rubió, X. (2016). Erasmus student mobility and the construction of European citizenship. The Language Learning Journal, 44(3), 323–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2016.1210911 Martin-Rubió, X., & Cots, J. M. (2016). Englishisation at a global space: Students and staff making sense of language choices. Language and Intercultural Communication, 16(3), 402–417. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2016.1168051

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Martin-Rubió, X., & Cots, J. M. (2018). Self-confidence amongst study abroad students in an ‘English as a lingua franca’ university. Language Awareness, 27(1–2), 96–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2018.1435673 Martínez-Arbelaiz, A., Areizaga, E., & Camps, C. (2017). An update on the study abroad experience: Language choices and social media abroad. International Journal of Multilingualism, 14(4), 350–365. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2016.1197929 Pérez-Vidal, C. (Ed.) (2014). Language acquisition in study abroad and formal instruction contexts. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.13 Pogorelova, I., & Trenchs, M. (2018). An exploration of life experiences during study abroad: A case study of bilingual students and their process of intercultural adaptation. In C. Pérez-Vidal, S. López-Serrano, J. Ament, & D. J. Thomas-Wilhelm (Eds.), Learning context effects: Study abroad, formal instruction and international immersion classrooms. Language Science Press. https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/180 Regan, V., Howard, M., & Lemée, I. (2009). The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in a study abroad context. Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10. 21832/9781847691583 de Ridder-Symoens, H. (1992). Mobility. In H. de Ridder-Symoens (Ed.), A history of the university in Europe. Volume 1: Universities in the middle ages (pp. 280–304). Cambridge University Press. Salajan, F. D., & Chiper, S. (2012). Value and benefits of European student mobility for Romanian students: Experiences and perspectives of participants in the ERASMUS programme. European Journal of Higher Education, 2(4), 403–422. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2012.737999 Sanz, C., & Morales-Front, A. (Eds.). (2018). The Routledge handbook of study abroad research and practice. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315639970 Schaller-Schwaner, I. (2018). ELF as multilingual “edulect” in a bilingual university. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 7(1), 113–129. https://doi.org/10.1515/ jelf-2018-0005 Smit, U. (2010). English as a lingua franca in higher education: A longitudinal study of classroom discourse. Walter De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110215519 Sockett, G. (2019). Input in the digital wild: Online informal and non-formal learning and their effects on second language acquisition. Paper presented at SAREP WG1 Workshop, Barcelona, January 2019. Soler-Carbonell, J. (2015). Language policy in Estonian higher education: Internationalisation and the tension over English. In S. Dimova, A. K. Hultgren, & C. Jensen (Eds.), English-medium instruction in European higher education (pp. 247–268). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614515272 Souto-Otero, M., Huisman, J., Beerkens, M., de Win, H., & Vujic, S. (2013). Barriers to international student mobility: Evidence from the Erasmus program. Educational Researcher, 42(2), 70–77. https://doi.org/10.3102%2F0013189X12466696 Towell, R., Hawkins, R., & Bazergui, N. (1996). The development of fluency in advanced learners of French. Applied Linguistics, 17(1), 84–119. https://doi.org/10. 1093/applin/17.1.84 Tullock, B., & Ortega, L. (2017). Fluency and multilingualism in study abroad: Lessons from a scoping review. System, 71, 7–21. doi:10.1016/j.system.2017.09.019 Unesco Institute for Statistics. (2019). Outbound internationally mobile students by host region. http://data.uis.unesco.org/Index.aspx?queryid=172

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Van Mol, C. (2014). Intra-European student mobility in international higher education circuits: Europe on the move. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/ 9781137355447 Van Mol, C. (2018). Becoming Europeans: The relationship between student exchanges in higher education, European citizenship and a sense of European identity. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 31(4), 449–463. https://doi. org/10.1080/13511610.2018.1495064 Van Mol, C., & Ekamper, P. (2016). Destination cities of European exchange students. Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 116(1), 85–91. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00167223.2015.1136229 Waibel, S., Rüger, H., Ette, A., & Sauer, L. (2017). Career consequences of transnational educational mobility: A systematic literature review. Educational Research Review, 20, 81–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2016.12.001 Willis, F., Doble, G., Sankarayya, U., & Smithers, A. (1977). Residence abroad and the student of modern languages: A preliminary survey. Modern Languages Centre, University of Bradford.

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International Student Mobility as Transnationalism Henry Tyne and Paolo Ruspini

Introduction While studies focusing on second language acquisition (SLA) have tended, understandably, to concentrate on linguistic gains during study abroad (SA), a range of mainly sociological and geographical considerations relating to the impact of space and time have, until recently, remained relatively underdeveloped in SA research. This chapter considers SA from a transnational perspective, looking at student mobility in terms of movement, cross-border activities and social ties. What comes to the fore is not so much the linguistic attainments of SA participants, as the broad spectrum of opportunities and uses for languages to be found in mobile (or mobility-oriented) behaviours. It is claimed that such an approach is useful for understanding the dynamic and ongoing nature (and impact) of mobility and how it affords different environments and opportunities for engagement with language at a range of levels.

Study Abroad, Transnationalism, and Migration The term “study abroad” is not the sole appellation for situations involving young mobile learners abroad (cf. “residence abroad”: Coleman, 2015, or “sojourn abroad”: Mitchell et al., 2017). The discussion here relates principally to students in the academic setting (and not on some form of work placement or internship), hence our use of the term despite shortcomings, such as its categorisation of mobile people for whom studying is only one activity among others. More of a problem however, as we will see, is the home-abroad opposition. With the continuing internationalisation of higher education (HE), there has been increased academic interest in student mobility and migration. Although international students are in general considered as “having left their country of origin and moved to another country for the purpose of study” (Riaño & Piguet, 2016, p. 1), student mobility and migration also include an array of practices as students undertake a variety of activities and cover multiple roles, including being family members, actual or potential workers, or refugees and asylum‐seekers (King & Raghuram, 2013).

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For Teichler (2015, p. 16), “student mobility is such a heterogeneous feature that hardly any generalisation can be made about its modes and its impact.” Indeed, a student may be outwardly mobile at a given point in time, but this mobility may merely be a chapter within ongoing mobile behaviour or may entail virtual participation through technological means, meaning that the individual is involved in a continuum of real and virtual activity, with social and symbolic ties including former, current and future spheres of involvement (Amelina et al., 2013). Thus so-called “temporary mobility” (Teichler, 2015) is not, as it may seem, characterised merely by a moment of SA before returning to a former life (albeit with enhanced language skills). And return should not be seen as the end of the mobile experience. Indeed, as Ruspini (2019) stresses, the transnational approach essentially tackles the connectedness of individuals experiencing mobility and migration over time and space. The concept of transnationalism is neither new nor limited to migration-related phenomena, but refers to a wider range of actions, processes and institutions that cross the boundaries of states or national communities (Bauböck, 2008). To be “here and there” at the same time represents the paramount feature of many current transnational configurations. In terms of language learning during SA, numerous studies have highlighted the extent to which meaningful interactions contribute to linguistic gains (e.g. Dewey et al., 2013; Gautier & Chevrot, 2015; Isabelli-García, 2006; Magnan & Back, 2007; McManus, 2019). However, the wider picture of what such interactions entail for all involved has been less studied within SLA-focused accounts of SA. Approaching the issue of student mobility as an urban geographer, Collins (2012) argues that mobile students should be considered not merely in terms of language learning, but also in terms of their participation in the host society through multiple practices linking them to both home and host spheres. The need for SA researchers to broaden their line of enquiry has been highlighted by Kinginger (2013, p. 354), who laments “the tendency of researchers to limit the scope of their studies to the perspectives of students, leaving the host communities’ point of view out of the picture.” In an attempt to address this critique, we draw on transnational theory, positing the interconnectedness of people and practices across established borders, considering students as both “transnationally mobile” and “locally emplaced” (Collins 2012, p. 298). The interplay between these two features is key to reconceptualising SA in terms of participation in complex and evolving social spaces. Correspondingly, “spaces” are seen foremost in terms of socialisation opportunities and affordances rather than physical settings, and may include different “spatialities” (Raghuram, 2013) and timespans (Tyne, 2019). The extent to which students participate in the host society has been analysed by SA/SLA researchers using social network theory (e.g. Dewey et al., 2013; Gautier & Chevrot, 2015), and following Granovetter’s (1973) original observations it has been shown that the development of L2 mastery is related to the nature of the network. Research of this type has been

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interested in the linguistic outcomes of SA at the individual level and in relation to contacts and relationships during a given period of mobility. However, the broader issue of what SA entails for all actors and environments is not easily accounted for since sociological boundaries are ultimately challenged through developing practices and changing transnational spaces (Faist, 1999, 2000). The present-day situation in Europe exemplifies this trend since transnationalism tends to be the norm for many of its inhabitants, whose daily activities include real and virtual multilingual and cross-border practices. This is enhanced by the changing lifestyles of contemporary Europeans in general, with changing social practices meaning “marriage/partnership, children, and the attainment of stable livelihoods become progressively delayed” causing “the linearity of the youth transition … to be reanalysed via a range of temporalities and spatialities that are also enfolded into the migration experience, including ruptures and reversals” (King, 2017, p. 9).

SA Students as Transnational Agents When looking specifically at students involved in cross-border realities and transnational social spaces, it is worth remembering that research on international and European migration more broadly has long been permeated by a kind of “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002). The fact that SA research has been largely developed through the study of Anglophone learners of other languages (e.g. Freed, 1995; Kinginger, 2008; Regan et al., 2009) has undoubtedly contributed to the reification of travel–stay–return considerations in SA due to the geographical make-up of Europe in relation to key English-speaking countries. By the late 1990s, first in the US and then in Europe, the transnational approach to the study of migration enabled a new perspective, linking migrant countries of destination, origin, and other localities. Portes et al. (1999, p. 217) have argued that “while back-and-forth movements by immigrants have always existed, they have not acquired until recently the critical mass and complexity necessary to speak of an emergent social field.” The “transnational turn” in empirical migration research accordingly became quite popular among scholars and practitioners and offered a challenge to nation-oriented approaches (see Amelina et al., 2013). It has been objected that the transnational framework leaves certain issues open to debate, particularly in relation to migrant assimilation theory and the link between transnational migration and immigrant integration (e.g. Kivisto, 2001; Lucassen et al., 2006). Further objections pertain to the theoretical focus on national and ethnic identities as well as the failure to link descriptions of migrant local and trans-border connections (i.e. transnational communities as transnational social spaces) to analysis of new flexible modes of capital accumulation and current neoliberal restructuring of space, self and modes of social legitimation (Glick Schiller, 2010). Mobility can become migration (e.g. through relationships and marriage, employment, etc.). Furthermore, time and space considerations can lead us to challenge

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the seemingly binary opposites of “transnationalism” versus “integration,” thereby raising further questions in relation to the durability of transnational ties over time and the way integration and transnationalism influence each other (Bivand Erdal & Oeppen, 2013; Faist, 2000), and impact on both languages and attitudes (Tyne, 2019). A pragmatic approach currently prevailing in migration studies sees connections with the homeland and the receiving society (or societies) as occurring simultaneously: mobile people may thus be both integrated and transnational (Bivand Erdal & Oeppen, 2013; Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2004; Mügge, 2016). It is this concept of the “connected” SA participant, that we highlight so as to engage with “whole people and whole lives” (Coleman, 2013) as we attempt to reconceptualise language dimensions of SA, looking beyond student mobility as SLA. Student mobility can be construed in terms of transnationalism on account of features such as regular communication and language exchange across borders, travel between home and host country (or countries), transnational practices such as remittances or exchange of ideas, ongoing cultural and political connections, etc. Students can be thought of as agents of transnationalism as they are involved in a complex network of institutions, actors and places constituting a “spatiality of knowledge” (Raghuram, 2013). Existing SA research downplays the transnational character of language learners, suggesting that local integration (in opposition to maintaining ties with the homeland or co-nationals) is more likely to lead to high language learning gains (e.g. Mitchell et al., 2017). However, the transnational nature of SA is essentially unavoidable, since mobility implies interconnectedness, nowadays facilitated by virtual communication. The applicability of a transnational perspective to the interpretation of student behaviours and in particular their language practices would appear inevitable in the context of internationalisation within HE (Montgomery, 2010), and this is illustrated below.

Examples of Transnationalism in SA In this section we briefly summarise a range of transnational practices reported in interviews with international students enrolled on a linguistics master’s programme (taught through French) at a southern French university in 2018.1 The dataset was made up of semi-structured interviews with 18 SA participants (from North Africa, China and Kazakhstan) and local French students with SA experiences (in Europe and Asia). For reasons of space, we present a condensed analysis (without supporting quotations). While the practices discussed here are by no means exhaustive, they nonetheless serve to exemplify the transnational nature of a typically diverse subset of students at a small European university. Transnational activities reported by our participants mainly take place through travel or using virtual means (e.g. social media). Technology supports both teaching and language use, including, for example, giving French lessons to peers in China. For some participants, notably those from China, intercultural relations2 mostly arise in academic/language networks, with fellow

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students, language teachers/academic lecturers, language learners at home or in other countries (via technology) or with representatives from the host university. Language learning experiences go, however, beyond the so-called “target” language of the SA site (e.g. learning Chinese, Japanese, or Hindi while in France). The role of social networks and varied actors in facilitating or hindering transnational patterns of mobility and migration is well known (Boyd & Nowak, 2012). In our dataset, the role of SA support agencies and HE institutions is acknowledged as essential in making SA possible for many students who rely on their services. There are, however, some discrepancies among students in evaluating institutional impact. Importantly, the transnational configurations and ties across borders reported by some participants may also be the outcome of personal connections (e.g. ties with former mobile students). The students interviewed are not connected with any migrant associations or NGOs, whether in the host or home country; transnational ties often arise through family and friends. SA and the resulting intercultural encounters appear to generate linguistic and cultural desires as well as professional aspirations, with one student, for example, expressing the new desire to teach French in Japan. This is coupled with a general urge to travel, including returning to the SA location later on, but also to meet new people, or learn new languages. However, the majority of students also show a tendency to keep their feet on the ground, and although ready for new experiences, they are also keen to seek employment (typically as language teachers/academic instructors) in their home country. In fact, this is mostly where the interviewees see their long-term future. Thus, while students envisage future employment in their home country, the nature of their SA experience has opened many doors to continued or future transnational practices as well as new intercultural desires.

Summary To summarise, we can consider mobile students as transnational agents on account of a range of practices together with increased intercultural sensitivity, a positive attitude for further intercultural encounters and a growing appetite for learning languages as part of ongoing activities (cf. the “transnational futures” discussed by Mitchell et al., 2017, pp. 216–219). Rather than considering SA merely as academic sojourn in another country in order to learn the national language of that country, patterns of socialisation and transnational practices also sustain use of the home language (whether through physical networks or virtual means), and also include openness to other languages. Successful language learners who typically demonstrate local embeddedness have been referred to as “high gainers” (Klapper & Rees, 2012). However, this local embeddedness certainly does not exclude transnationalism, as advanced earlier with reference to research on the transnationalism-integration nexus (Bivand Erdal & Oeppen, 2013). And transnational mobile students’ gains can

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also include enhanced intercultural awareness and desire for learning and teaching other languages. Perceiving oneself as multicultural and mastering multiple languages may eventually be a long-term strategy to demonstrate being part of transnational communities, particularly for the highly skilled (Mihailov et al., 2017). Finally, it could be asked what the transnational perspective can bring in terms of engaging with identity (Benson et al., 2012; Kinginger, 2013; Norton & Toohey, 2011); present research clearly acknowledges a variety of forms of belonging and simultaneous embeddedness in multiple societies (Bilgili, 2014). Moving beyond the SA context to the types of transnational migrants in studies reported by Benson and O’Reilly (2009), Forsberg Lundell and Bartning (2015), Lawson (2016, 2017) and Tyne (2019), there is further scope for engaging with mobile language learners. A move away from academic or institutional settings can offer a more open backdrop against which transnational practices and language use can be considered and issues such as identity and belonging can be gauged more fully, and can feed back in turn into moving SA studies decisively beyond methodological nationalism.

Notes 1 The authors acknowledge COST Action 15130 funding for a short-term scientific mission carried out in March 2018. 2 By interculturalism, we broadly mean the philosophy which promotes dialogue and exchanges between cultural groups within a society. In this context, it refers to an enhanced sensitivity to dialogue and exchange which is deemed complementary to students’ cross-border transnational practices and ties.

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Boyd, M., & Nowak, J. (2012). Social networks and international migration. In M. Martiniello & J. Rath (Eds.), An introduction to international migration studies: European perspectives (pp. 79–105). Amsterdam University Press. Coleman, J. A. (2013). Researching whole people and whole lives. In C. Kinginger (Ed.), Social and cultural aspects of language learning in study abroad. (pp. 17– 44). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.37.02col Coleman, J. A. (2015). Social circles during residence abroad: What students do, and who with. In R. Mitchell, N. Tracy-Ventura & K. McManus. (Eds.), Social interaction, identity and language learning during residence abroad (pp. 33–52). European Second Language Association. www.eurosla.org/monographs/ EM04/Coleman.pdf Collins, F. L. (2012). Researching mobility and emplacement: Examining transience and transnationality in international student lives. Area, 44(3), 296–304. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2012.01112.x Dewey, D. P., Belnap, R. K., & Hillstrom, R. (2013). Social network development, language use, and language acquisition during study abroad: Arabic language learners’ perspectives. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 22(1), 84–110. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v22i1.320 Faist, T. (1999). Developing transnational social spaces: The Turkish-German example. In L. Pries (Ed.), Migration and transnational social spaces (pp. 36–72). Ashgate. Faist, T. (2000). The volume and dynamics of international migration and transnational social spaces. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/ 9780198293910.001.0001 Forsberg Lundell, F., & Bartning, I. 2015 (Eds.). Cultural migrants and optimal language acquisition. Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783094042 Freed, B. F. (Ed.) (1995). Second language acquisition in a study abroad context. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.9 Gautier, R., & Chevrot, J.-P. (2015). Social networks and acquisition of sociolinguistic variation in a study abroad context: A preliminary study. In R. Mitchell et al. (Eds.), Social interaction, identity and language learning during residence abroad (pp. 169–184). European Second Language Association. www.eurosla. org/monographs/EM04/Gautier_Chevrot.pdf Glick Schiller, N. (2010). A global perspective on transnational migration: Theorising migration without methodological nationalism. In R. Bauböck & T. Faist (Eds.), Diaspora and transnationalism: Concepts, theories and methods (pp. 109–129). Amsterdam University Press. https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/14318/ Diaspora_and_Transnationalism.pdf Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380. https://doi.org/10.1086/225469 Isabelli-García, C. L. (2006). Study abroad social networks, motivation, and attitudes: Implications for SLA. In M. DuFon & E. Churchill (Eds.), Language learners in study abroad contexts (pp. 231–258). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/ 9781853598531-013 King, R. (2017). Theorising new European youth mobilities. Population, Space and Place, 24(1), e2117. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2117 King, R., & Raghuram, P. (2013). International student migration: Mapping the field and new research agendas. Population, Space and Place, 19(2), 127–137. https:// doi.org/10.1002/psp.1746

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Kinginger, C. (2008). Language learning in study abroad: Case studies of Americans in France. The Modern Language Journal, 92(S1), 1–124. https://doi.org/10.1111/j. 1540-4781.2008.00821.x Kinginger, C. (2013). Identity and language learning in study abroad. Foreign Language Annals, 46(3), 339–358. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12037 Kivisto, P. (2001). Theorizing transnational immigration: A critical review of current efforts. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24(4), 549–577. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01419870120049789 Klapper, J., & Rees, J. (2012). University residence abroad for foreign language students: Analysing the linguistic benefits. The Language Learning Journal, 40(3), 335–358. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2011.625215 Lawson, M. (2016). Identity, ideology and positioning in discourses of lifestyle migration. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33566-7 Lawson, M. (2017). Narrative positioning and ‘integration’ in lifestyle migration: British migrants in Ariège, France. Language and Intercultural Communication, 17(1), 58–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2016.1165242 Levitt, P., & Glick Schiller, N. (2004). Conceptualizing simultaneity: A transnational social field perspective on society. International Migration Review, 38(3), 1002– 1039. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2004.tb00227.x Lucassen, L., Feldman D., & Oltmer, J. (2006). Paths of integration: Migrants in Western Europe (1880–2004). Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9789048504244 Magnan, S., & Back, M. (2007). Social interaction and linguistic gain during study abroad. Foreign Language Annals, 40(1), 43–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720. 2007.tb02853.x McManus, K. (2019). Relationships between social networks and language development during study abroad. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 32(3), 270–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2019.1661683 Mihailov, D., Richter, M., & Ruspini, P. (2017). Social networks and transnational migration practices. In M. Richter, P. Ruspini, D. Mihailov, V. Mintchev, & M. Nollert (Eds.), Migration and transnationalism between Switzerland and Bulgaria (pp. 153–180). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31946-9 Mitchell, R., Tracy-Ventura, N., & McManus, K. (2017). Anglophone students abroad: Identity, social relationships, and language learning. Routledge. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9781315194851 Montgomery, C. (2010). Understanding the international student experience. Palgrave Macmillan. Mügge, L. (2016). Transnationalism as a research paradigm and its relevance for integration. In B. Garcés-Mascareñas & R. Penninx (Eds.), Integration processes and policies in Europe. Contexts, levels and actors (pp. 109–125). Springer. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4 Norton, B., & Toohey, K. (2011). Identity, language learning, and social change. Language Teaching, 44(4), 412–446. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444811000309 Portes, A., Guarnizo, L. E., & Landolt, P. (1999). The study of transnationalism: Pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(2), 217–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/014198799329468 Raghuram, P. (2013). Theorising the spaces of student migration. Population, Space and Place, 19(2), 138–154. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1747

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Regan, V., Howard, M., & Lemée, I. (2009). The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in a study abroad context. Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10. 21832/9781847691583 Riaño, Y., & Piguet, E. (2016). International student migration. In Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/OBO/9780199874002-0141 Ruspini, P. (2019). Migrants unbound. Transnational Press London. Teichler, U. (2015). The impact of temporary study abroad. In R. Mitchell, N. Tracy-Ventura & K. McManus (Eds.), Social interaction, identity and language learning during residence abroad (pp. 15–32). European Second Language Association. www.eurosla.org/monographs/EM04/Teichler.pdf Tyne, H. (2019). Le Temps comme facteur qualitatif dans l’immersion. https://langi dent.hypotheses.org/136 Wimmer, A., & Glick Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–334. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-0374.00043

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Linguistic Effects of International Student Mobility in European Perspective Carmen Pérez-Vidal and Àngels Llanes

Introduction: Trends in SA Programmes and Research Until the Covid emergency, the popularity of transnational mobility programmes worldwide has been undeniable, Europe being a case in point. Its most important academic exchange programme, the European Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (Erasmus), reportedly mobilised 3 million students since launching in 1987 (European Commission, 2014). In its second edition called Erasmus+ (2014–2020), with a budget of €14.7 billion, the programme has aimed at providing opportunities for over 4 million students from 33 EU member states, candidate states and EFTA members: they study, train, and gain experience in another country, each with its own official language(s) (European Commission, 2018). The most popular destinations are Spain, France, Germany, UK, and Italy. Amidst such rich multilingualism, English-medium instruction (EMI) has also been widely introduced, to accommodate mobility students, reflecting a worldwide trend (Pérez-Vidal, 2015). According to an Academic Cooperation Association survey, by 2014 there were over 8,000 EMI programmes in European higher education institutions, “reaching 1.3% of total student enrolment in the countries covered (an estimated 290,000 students), although with regional variations” (Wächter & Maiworm, 2014, p. 16). The US has been another success story in SA numbers, with 1,094,792 incoming and 341,751 outgoing students in 2017–2018 (Dietrich, 2018). As in Europe, short-term stays are also becoming more popular. The most common destinations are European: the UK, Italy, Spain, and France. Then comes China, a country which is in turn experiencing a rapid growth in incoming SA figures (Wright, 2018), and the related promotion of EMI (Hu et al., 2014). Scholarly enquiry into second language acquisition (SLA) examining the supposed linguistic and personal benefits of SA has grown alongside mobility figures. Starting in the 1990s (Coleman, 1998; DeKeyser, 1991; Freed, 1995; Milton & Meara, 1995), an expansion of publications rapidly followed: edited volumes and journal issues (Collentine & Freed, 2004; Kinginger, 2013; Mitchell et al., 2015; Pérez-Vidal, 2014); authored volumes (Kinginger, 2009;

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Pellegrino Aveni, 2005); pedagogical material (Paige et al., 2004); SLA handbook chapters (Collentine, 2009; Pérez-Vidal & Shively, 2018); handbooks proper (Sanz & Morales-Front, 2018) and recently a specialised journal Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education (SARSLAIE), edited in Europe, in addition to the long-standing US journal Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad. Study Abroad Programme Features Erasmus+ supports young people who study, work, or volunteer abroad. The SA strand supports students financially to spend from 3 to 12 months while obtaining credits at a host university in Europe (European Commission, 2020). Top sending countries, i.e. Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Poland, and top receiving countries, i.e. Spain, Germany, France, the UK, and Italy, mostly coincide. Apart from studying, students travel independently to their destinations, search for accommodation in mixed-L1 halls of residence or rented flats, and may even find a job (see Pérez-Vidal, 2014; Huensch & Tracy-Ventura, 2017). Beyond Erasmus, shorter intensive language courses, more typically for adolescents, are also popular in Europe and subject to scholarly enquiry (Briggs, 2015; Llanes & Muñoz, 2009). In contrast, US participants are mostly accompanied, and often taught, by their at-home teachers, travel as a group, and mostly live together (Kinginger, 2009). Contact with local students or community members is either specifically organised, or happens through service encounters or set assignments (Dewey et al., 2013). Another key difference between European and US programmes has to do with onset proficiency levels. In Europe, foreign languages are learnt in mainstream education from primary school, and many SA participants have a CEFR B2 or C1 level in English pre-departure.1 However, in the US, foreign languages may have been learnt only at university, for up to four semesters. Scores then typically reach an Intermediate-Mid level2 for spoken language, as commonly measured with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI: ACTFL, 2012).

Linguistic Development and Accompanying Factors Searching through the past five years’ empirical studies in the Scopus and JCR databases yields a total of 46 articles dealing with linguistic development during SA, 20 of them with European students travelling to the UK and the US (12), Mexico and Spain (2), France (2), and other countries in Europe (4). The remaining 26 deal with US sojourners in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries (14), China (6), Jordan (2), France, Korea, Japan and Russia (1 each). Confirming the findings of earlier surveys (e.g. Llanes, 2011; Sanz & Morales-Front, 2018, Part 2), recent research generally shows linguistic benefits while abroad, in particular in productive oral development. This section discusses key aspects of this literature, together with factors affecting the extent of linguistic gains.

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Longitudinal Large-Scale Research Projects Following pioneering studies on the linguistic effects of the British and Irish “year abroad” (e.g. Coleman, 1998; Howard, 2005; Regan et al., 2009), a broader SLA-oriented line of research emerged in Europe, including two large-scale funded projects, the Study Abroad and Language Acquisition (SALA) project (Pérez-Vidal, 2014) and the Language and Social Networks Abroad Project (LANGSNAP) (Mitchell et al., 2017). These projects share a focus on advanced-level language majors on a compulsory mobility programme in multiple sites in England (SALA),3 and France, Spain or Mexico (LANGSNAP). As DeKeyser (2014) has noted, language majors in Europe are excellent candidates for development abroad, given their high preparedness and positive motivation. These projects both draw on skill acquisition theory (SAT) whereby declarative/procedural knowledge acquired through instruction can be automatised abroad, and measured through complexity, accuracy, fluency and lexis (CAFL) measures (DeKeyser, 2014). However, they differ in scope, participants’ L1s, and length of stay. LANGSNAP explored the effects of the typical British “year abroad” on oral and written development, with 56 Anglophone learners of French and Spanish. For this group, linguistic change was followed over 21 months and 6 data collection waves, 3 of them while abroad, and trade-offs among CAFL components were explored, based on prior claims that SA will privilege gains in fluency and vocabulary over those in accuracy and complexity. Data was also collected on programme type, language use, and social networking. The SALA project examined the longitudinal development of 87 EFL Spanish/Catalan translation specialists. It had a somewhat similar withingroup design whereby the learners’ development over 30 months was tracked, including their own “at home” (AH) development. The first, AH, data collection (T1–T2), was contrasted with a three-month compulsory Erasmus exchange in the UK, T2–T3, and, finally, with retention effects, T3–T4, 11 months later. All skills were examined both holistically and with fine-grained measures often using CAFL. Alongside the research programmes led in the last decade by Howard (Cork) and Llanes (Barcelona/Lleida), these two projects have raised the international profile of European SA/SLA research, and were followed by a joint US–Barcelona project, still in progress (Bryfonski & Sanz, 2018). We now turn to present more detailed evidence on different aspects of language gains from recent SA studies. Linguistic Development: Recent Research Studies Oral fluency stands for the delivery of speech at a flowing pace without much pausing or hesitation (De Jong et al., 2012), and is a key component of the CAFL construct. According to Tullock and Ortega’s (2017) scoping review, both extensive and intensive SA show L24 fluency gains which are significantly higher than AH classroom learning. Findings confirming the

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positive impact of SA on oral and written fluency have consistently been reported from both SALA and LANGSNAP, and in further recent studies. For L1 English speakers, Kim et al. (2015) report a strong impact of SA on fluency in L2 Chinese. Leonard and Shea (2017) contrasted a general improvement in fluency with lesser growth in complexity and accuracy among Anglophone students learning Spanish in Buenos Aires for three months. Di Silvio et al. (2016) conducted a multi-site and cross-language study which found that the more distant language Mandarin yielded larger fluency benefits than Spanish or Russian. For learners of English, Tavakoli (2018) reports a strong impact on fluency arising from a short (one-month) stay in the UK. Turning to vocabulary knowledge, the review by Zaytseva et al. (2018) confirms this has been generally shown to significantly improve abroad, though these authors comment that past research is somewhat fragmented especially in the domains of vocabulary knowledge which are researched. Within SALA, Zaytseva (2016) analysed growth in lexical fluency, density, diversity, and sophistication, finding greatest growth in lexical fluency and diversity. For LANGSNAP, Tracy-Ventura (2017) reported development in lexical sophistication in both speech and writing. Using a levels test for both productive and receptive vocabulary, Briggs (2015) tracked SA participants over varying lengths of time, confirming that the whole group showed improvement, with length of stay as the main external factor associated with vocabulary growth. Research on morphosyntactic accuracy continues to yield mixed evidence, with many early studies showing little or no advantage for SA over AH study for grammatical development (Howard & Schwieter, 2018). However, some European studies with advanced learners have shown grammatical gains, e.g. various studies by Howard of the L2 French verb system (Howard, 2012). Treating grammatical development as morphosyntactic “accuracy” within a CAFL framework, both SALA and LANGSNAP have found evidence of accuracy gains during SA (Edmonds & Gudmestad, 2018; Gudmestad et al., 2019; Juan-Garau et al., 2014; Mitchell et al., 2017), supporting the SAT-based idea that advanced learners undertaking SA can rapidly proceduralise existing morphosyntactic knowledge. Most research on L2 development during SA has concentrated on oral proficiency (see review by Isabelli-García et al., 2018). However, both SALA and LANGSNAP also collected evidence regarding L2 writing. The SALA study found significant gains in written fluency and complexity, but not in accuracy (Pérez-Vidal & Barquin, 2014); in LANGSNAP however, complexity did not improve significantly during SA (Mitchell et al., 2017). A small-scale study of L2 French writing comparing SA and AH groups found that the SA group made greater gains in accuracy, and the AH group in complexity (Godfrey et al., 2014). Moving beyond CAFL-focused research, the SALA project also collected data on development of listening comprehension during SA, finding

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significant improvement which was sustained post-SA (Beattie et al., 2014). Research on reading is scarce, but Borràs and Llanes (2020) found that adolescent learners’ reading speed, comprehension and receptive vocabulary improved after a three-week period abroad. Finally, a substantial body of international research has shown the positive contribution of SA to L2 pragmatics (see reviews by Pérez-Vidal & Shively, 2018; Ren, 2018). However, only a limited number of European studies have dealt with aspects of pragmatics, e.g. the acquisition of idiomatic expressions in L2 French (Arvidsson, 2019), German (Boone, Chapter 11 this volume), and Spanish (Moreno Bruna & Goethals, Chapter 10 this volume). External and Internal Factors Influencing Gains A complex web of external programme features and learner-internal variables conditions the linguistic progress summarised above. In Europe, length-of-stay research has yielded mixed results, although even 3- to 4-week-SA programmes seem beneficial (Borràs & Llanes, 2020; Llanes & Muñoz, 2009), and have been shown to yield significantly better results than AH intensive instruction for lexical richness, although not for grammaticality judgements (Serrano et al., 2016). Interestingly, the English grammatical abilities of L1 German sojourners in the UK increased during the first three months but plateaued after that (Hessel & Vanderplank, 2018). Likewise, British undergraduates’ L2 Spanish speed fluency developed within three months abroad and then stabilised, unlike repair fluency which required more time (Huensch & Tracy-Ventura, 2017). However, some linguistic dimensions show continuous development through the entire length of stay (e.g. Briggs, 2015, for L2 vocabulary). Research on out-of-class contact confirms that, firstly, SA in multilingual European settings does not guarantee a monolingual immersion environment (e.g. Martínez-Arbelaiz et al., 2017). Accommodation types have attracted research interest, including the potential of homestays and integrated residences to promote L2 interaction (e.g. Bracke & Aguerre, 2015). However, the relationship between amount of L2 interaction and L2 development is not straightforward, with e.g. repeated superficial engagement in service encounters having little independent impact (Briggs, 2015). The focus has thus turned to quality of L2 interaction partly through the analysis of social networks, initiated in the US (Dewey et al., 2013) and pursued in Europe through LANGSNAP and other studies. For example, Gautier (2019) modelled the social network types engaged in by American and Chinese students in France, finding important differences with consequences for L2 use opportunities. Diaries and audio/video-recordings have also been analysed from a language socialisation perspective (see review by Kinginger, 2017). As a result of these analyses, pedagogical interventions prior to and during SA have been suggested in order to promote richer and more sustained out-of-class L2 interaction. Recent European examples include the 2012–2015 IEREST project (Beaven & Borghetti, 2018), and the development of mobile apps to

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accompany students during their SA and prompt L2 engagement and reflection (Eyckmans, this volume; Guichon, 2019). Current research further examines the impact on linguistic development of a number of “individual difference” variables such as pre-departure proficiency, age, gender, and aspects of individual identity such as motivation, anxiety, personality, willingness to communicate, agency, self-regulation. As regards onset proficiency level, studies show mixed results; for example, Hessel (2017) reports higher gains for SA participants with upper-intermediate proficiency in L2 English compared to participants with advanced proficiency. However, a recent review argues that both lower-level and higher-level participants can benefit linguistically from SA, though in significantly different ways (Issa & Zalbidea, 2018). The European context allows for meaningful comparisons regarding age, and Llanes and colleagues have carried out a programme of SA/AH research investigating patterns of L2 development with children, adolescents and adults (Llanes, 2018). For example, a comparative study by Llanes and Muñoz (2013) found that SA children tended to improve on a range of measures, whereas SA adults improved only in certain oral abilities. Adults, however, seemed better able to take advantage of AH tuition. The challenge of negotiating a new gendered identity, and its consequences for L2 socialisation, has been a prominent theme in North American SA research (Galindo, 2018; Kinginger, 2009), but not so far in European research. Sociocognitive differences have received rather more attention; for example, Hessel (2017) found that selfefficacy in L2 social interaction, attitudes toward national group, L2 selves and anxiety all played a role as predictors of variation in linguistic outcomes after SA, for German intermediate/advanced learners of English. (Participants’ intercultural self-efficacy also grew through SA participation: Hessel, Chapter 9, this volume.) Pawlak and Csizér (Chapter 16, this volume) also investigate SA participants’ development of self-efficacy, and its relationship with self-regulatory strategies and L2 motivation. Overall, this survey shows that contemporary European research is making an increasing contribution to our understanding of the SA benefits for L2 proficiency, in important domains. Particularly striking is the attention paid to advanced learners, and the more encouraging evidence regarding the impact of SA on the development of accuracy/grammatical proficiency with this group. Increased attention is being paid to the complex social context of SA and its implications for L2 engagement and learning, with an emphasis on the multilingualism of the European setting.

Multilingualism, EMI, and ELF in Europe The English language stands out as increasingly central to SA in Europe, where both EMI and lingua franca (ELF) experiences are widely available. European young peoples’ positive motivation for English is well known

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(Busse, 2017). Accordingly, European SA/SLA researchers are beginning to investigate the language learning potential of EMI/ELF environments. Köylü (2016) compared three groups of Turkish students learning L2 English for one semester either at home (AH), in the UK (classic SA), or following EMI programmes in Germany, Poland or Spain (ELFSA). The ELFSA context encouraged learners to see themselves as ELF speakers with a multilingual identity. Both classic SA and ELFSA were equally beneficial linguistically, promoting similar gains in oral fluency and speech rate, whereas the AH group was significantly better in written fluency. Similarly, Llanes et al. (2016) followed a group of Spanish/Catalan students undertaking SA in several non-English-speaking countries, and found gains comparable to those reported in classic SA studies, in general proficiency and in (written) lexical complexity. Llanes (2019) then investigated the spoken English development of a further group, finding significant gains in general proficiency, and on measures of fluency and lexical richness. Geoghegan and Pérez-Vidal (2019) investigated the role of ELF for Spanish/Catalan learners sojourning in Germany and France, finding it might both hinder, and support, the learning of German or French, as well as offering a “bridge of communication” with other international students, and an interim “language user” identity. These small-scale studies offer a new research direction adapted to the contemporary multilingualism of European higher education (see also Boone, this volume).

Concluding Remarks Undoubtedly the most salient feature of SA in Europe these days is the strong multidimensional nature of the experience, with different languages playing different roles. This poses a challenge for sojourners aiming to acquire any particular target language, given that “the more accessible social networks typically involve[d] bilingual or multilingual speakers, with whom [learners] have to negotiate language choice” (Mitchell et al., 2017, p. 127). Such negotiations require learners’ agency to pursue their ultimate linguistic goal through the different language choices they encounter, both on campus and in social interaction during service encounters and leisure, involving ELF, the local language or languages in contact, such as, for example, Catalan and Spanish. Future European research on linguistic development during SA must acknowledge interactions among different languages in the local environment, and also investigate students’ agency and self-regulation in exploiting the surrounding multilingualism (as in Eyckmans, Chapter 15 this volume). This will involve a broadening of theoretical perspectives and conceptualisations of proficiency, as well as the adoption of mixed-methods approaches (Hessel, 2017; DeKeyser, 2014). Benefits will include a more secure basis for counselling and preparing future students to make the most of their multilingual learning opportunity.

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Acknowledgements This research was supported by the following grants: PGC2018-098815-B-I00; PID2019-104333GB-I00; 2017 SGR 1028; and 2017 SGR 1522. We would like to thank Judith Borràs for her help.

Notes 1 Erasmus+ has developed an online language support scheme in the 24 EU official languages, accessible to Erasmus+ mobility students and to refugees. The related level tests have reportedly been used by over 350,000 students. https://ec.europa.eu/p rogrammes/erasmus-plus/resources/online-linguistic-support_en 2 Equivalent to an A2/B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference. 3 A very small number travelled to the US and Australia. 4 Second language (L2) includes an L3, L4, LX, unless otherwise stated.

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Conceptualising Plurilingual Identities in Study Abroad Settings Ana Beaven and Jean E. Conacher

Introduction Language identity has received attention in the field of SLA since the 1990s (see e.g. Norton, 2009; Piasecka, 2019; Rivers & Houghton, 2013). One branch of SLA research increasingly interested in identity issues is that exploring the experience of students undertaking study abroad (SA). Early studies focused primarily on language students sojourning in what Coleman (1998)—adopting an admittedly over-simplified one-nation-one-language construct—terms “L2land,” in order to deepen their linguistic and sociocultural competence in relation to their language of study (Freed, 1995; Jackson, 2008). While research on language majors remains popular (Kinginger, 2015), such students now constitute a minority of those engaged in SA. Pennycook’s (2010) framing of language as a local practice and as “a material part of social and cultural life” (p. i) emphasises the importance of considering broader language use beyond formal language learning, and this is central to understanding linguistic aspects of contemporary SA. Equally, as is highlighted for example in Streitwieser’s (2014) edited volume on internationalisation in higher education (HE), increased global mobility has changed the cultural, demographic and educational landscape in many countries, including the SA experience of individual students. Participant profiles and study patterns have been transformed, through initiatives such as the Erasmus programme (Cairns et al., 2018), international joint degree programmes (Tsiligiris & Lawton, 2018) and rapid growth in English-medium instruction (EMI) beyond the English-speaking world (Earls, 2016). Our chapter recognises that concepts such as “L2land” (and its concomitant “L1land”) insufficiently acknowledge the fact that most SA destinations are now both multilingual and multicultural, and that the experience of plurilingual students reflects this.1 Therefore, this chapter explores how far increasing mobility, diversifying models of SA and greater diversity of participant profiles and experience call for a shift in the framing of language identity within SA environments. We begin by investigating the concept of L2 identity elaborated by Block (2007), before considering the L2 identity continuum model proposed by Benson et al. (2012, 2013). We discuss to what extent the

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components of this continuum might fit appropriately into a new plurilingual identity paradigm and how this could enable future researchers to conceptualise better the language identities that students increasingly bring to, and develop within, their SA experience.

Paradigms of L2 Identity A binary conceptualisation of language identity (L1/L2), often subconsciously predicated on a model of normative monolingualism and an idealisation of the native speaker (Davies, 2003), has lingered within SLA research and pedagogy. Challenging this idealisation, Leung et al. (1997, pp. 555–557) position linguistic identity at the nexus between the language community into which one is born (“language inheritance”), the linguistic community with which one self-identifies (“language affiliation”), and the linguistic proficiency which facilitates acceptance by other users (“language expertise”). Such a perspective recognises the fluidity of linguistic identity, acknowledging that one’s position may differ according to circumstance or experience. Other researchers have equally accepted such a dynamic view, while often still conceiving identity as a negotiated positioning between the poles of L1 and L2. In Second Language Identities, Block for example emphasises language identity as “the assumed and/or attributed relationship between one’s sense of self and a means of communication” (2007, pp. 46–47). When discussing SA more explicitly, he focuses on how the SA experience can encourage the L2 speaker to adopt new, and flexible, subject positions (located within national, gender, and/or pedagogical frames) that provide creative, if still constrained, opportunities for self-expression and self-identification abroad. Drawing on Murphy-Lejeune’s (2002) study of the Erasmus experience, Block concludes that this model of mobility leads “these students [to] embody an emergent pan-European identity,” for “while they are crossing national state, language, and cultural borders, they are doing so as Europeans as much as Irish nationals, Spanish nationals, German nationals and so on” (2007, pp. 216–217). Recognising the existence of such multilayered transnational identities (cf. Tyne and Ruspini, Chapter 2 this volume) makes it harder to sustain a theoretical model that articulates L2 (or indeed L3/ LN) identity as simply an additional complement to an established L1 identity. Contemporary mobility finds SA students, often already speakers of different languages, moving between multicultural and multilingual contexts, both at home and abroad, where their identities will evolve as part of a dynamic interplay between often complementary, but sometimes competing, social, cultural and linguistic selves. Partly in response to Block’s discussion, Benson et al. (2012, 2013) conceptualise L2 identity—which they define as “any aspect of a person’s identity that is connected to their knowledge or use of a second language” (2012, p. 174)—as a continuum that stretches from aspects of L2 identity very closely related to language proficiency to L2-related personal

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development. For Benson et al., between these two extremes lies the bulk of L2 identity, referred to as “linguistic self-concept.” Their framework (2012, 2013) was based on 48 case study narratives of Hong Kong students of English, at high school and university. The participants’ SA programmes included ten-day school exchanges, six-week study tours, one-semester immersion programmes, independently organised semester exchanges, and whole degree programmes abroad, all in English-speaking environments. This is a very different setting to the European Erasmus programme: The European context is much more varied in terms of countries (and languages) of origin and destination. Indeed, in their attempt to counterbalance the prevalence in the SA literature of studies focusing on Anglophone students, Benson and his colleagues offer a similarly narrow representation by focusing on students of English sojourning in English-speaking countries. Although some of their informants may have been plurilingual, this is seldom mentioned in their study, nor is there any suggestion that they may have had a plurilingual experience abroad. Nonetheless, given the provenance of Benson et al.’s empirically-based framework in earlier SLA studies and its focus on a variety of SA environments, this seems a good starting point from which to develop a conceptualisation of plurilingual identity in an SA context.

Conceptualising Plurilingual Identity In this section, we consider how far each of Benson et al.’s components might contribute to a conceptualisation of plurilingual identity relevant for SA. We also draw upon the work of further scholars who explore in other settings whether plurilingual identities might constitute more than the simple addition of multiple L2 identities. Identity-Related L2 Proficiency For Benson et al. (2012, pp. 182–183), SA may facilitate greater pragmatic proficiency, helping students achieve more with their acquired language in increasingly differentiated contexts and enabling them to perform more varied identities. While results of language tests conducted as part of the students’ normal studies demonstrated little objective improvement in proficiency during SA (2012, p. 183), their participants reported improvements in language use and an increased ability to communicate. The researchers argue that these self-perceived pragmatic gains may have been impacted not only by length of stay (2012, p. 184) but also by aspects of agency and reception. In particular, they argue that “students’ acquisition and use of pragmatic competence partly depends on the kinds of identities they want to project and the responses they receive to them” (2012, p. 183). Changing educational conditions have deep potential implications for the type of identity which sojourners want to project, and consequently the

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pragmatic competence they value. Duff (2015) highlights that the traditional focus of L2 education was to “provide learners with the skills required to travel to or settle in other countries and speak the languages of the mainstream” (p. 75), thus reflecting a desire for peer-status communication with national speakers of the L2. The realities of today’s more globalised experiences are now, as she argues, far more complex since SA students increasingly mix with a range of international (and potentially plurilingual) students who are often not language specialists. The desire for language proficiency of such SA students may be shaped by a wide range of factors including longer-term academic, personal, and professional goals, alongside reasons attaching to their chosen study location. This diversity noted by Duff may help SA students draw upon more of their own linguistic repertoire—defined by Hall (2019) as “the totality of an individual’s language knowledge” including “a whole range of nonlinguistic resources that individuals use to make meaning, including gestures, facial expressions, and other modes in addition to linguistic constructions” (pp. 86–87)—and thus transform their own and others’ perception of their identity as plurilingual. Against this background, their developing language proficiency may more closely resemble that of Cenoz and Gorter’s (2019) “emergent multilinguals [who] have rich and complex trajectories and repertoires and also different aims when learning additional languages” (p. 132). The extent to which such complex realities may have an impact on the SA student’s linguistic proficiency in even one language is unclear, not least because, as Benson et al. claim, the multifactorial nature of the experience makes valid and reliable measurement of improved performance extremely difficult. Indeed, Benson et al. subsequently question more fundamentally the value of general vocabulary and grammar tests in identifying “the kinds of language development that are particular to study abroad as an experience that challenges participants’ identities” (2013, p. 43). Students’ narratives reveal that advances in sociopragmatic competence may be a more important benefit of SA than simple vocabulary extension and increased accuracy (Benson et al. 2013, pp. 68–69). Those researching plurilingual identity face further challenges in mapping and measuring plurilingual proficiency within multilingual environments where interlocutors may engage in forms of “translanguaging” that Otheguy et al. (2015, p. 283) argue go beyond codeswitching between two separate linguistic systems. An appreciation of the complexities of a plurilingual repertoire has been increasingly reflected in the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The most recent iteration of CEFR performance descriptors emphasises plurilingualism as “an uneven and changing competence” with plurilinguals possessing “a single, interrelated, repertoire” (Council of Europe, 2018, p. 28). Against such conceptualisations of plurilingualism as “dynamic and transforming” rather than “additive” (Piccardo, 2019, p. 194), the strongly bounded labelling of L1/L2 which underpins SLA and lies at the heart of Benson

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et al.’s first component of L2 identity within SA contexts appears wanting, reflecting Heller’s conceptualisation of “parallel monolingualism” (1999, p. 271). Yet, simply replacing L2 with the term “plurilingual” is clearly insufficient, and the challenge of measuring the complexities of a formulation such as “plurilingual repertoire” (Council of Europe, 2007, p. 35) remains unresolved. Nevertheless, this term seems to encompass more fully the experience and performative potential of plurilingual students engaged in a period of SA, where they may call upon their full arsenal of linguistic and cultural resources to establish their own sense of identity in relation to their new environs. Linguistic Self-Concept For Benson et al., the central component of the L2 identity continuum, “linguistic self-concept,” expresses “the participants’ sense of who they are as language learners and users, and their ability to negotiate personal identities through a second language” (2012, p. 184). The SA experience is, they suggest, key in the transformation of the students’ self-concept from language learner to language user (Benson et al., 2013, pp. 2–3), a shift that “represents a significant development in their second language identities” (p. 3). While they acknowledge the plurality of identities performed by any individual, however, the transformation portrayed by Benson et al. continues to reflect their binary L1/L2 approach. In a conceptual paper, Henry (2017) suggests that there is a similar monolingual bias in research on L2 motivation. He posits, however, that when learning more than one language, “the motivational systems of the learner’s different languages need to be conceptualized as interrelated systems that are simultaneously constituents within a higher-level multilingual motivational system” (p. 549) (the term multilingual equating with our understanding of a plurilingual self which we, therefore, adopt when discussing his work below). Although Henry draws on his earlier research on Swedish secondary pupils studying languages other than English (2010), his work is also relevant to SA. Given the position of English as a global language, it has become relatively common to meet students who represent a “contented bilingual self” (p. 553), happy to speak only their L1 + English, and the SA experience may reinforce their belief that this combination is sufficient. However, some students bring to their SA experience an already developed plurilingual self-concept, based on the successful experience of plurilingual proficiencies discussed earlier. This plurilingual self-concept is far from static and can be affected, as Henry suggests, by changing attitudes and beliefs about plurilingualism, not least arising from an SA experience. In line with Heller’s (1999) concept of “parallel monolingualism,” Henry also argues that an individual’s wish to know a series of additional, distinct languages is “phenomenologically distinct” (2017, p. 554) from the wish to

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be or to become plurilingual. According to Henry, a future L2 or L3 self (being able, for example, to speak Italian well while living in Italy) is easier to imagine than a plurilingual self, because “being plurilingual” is a more subjective, less concrete concept (2017, p. 557). Students often speak about their wish to learn additional languages and the opportunities these languages could offer them in the future, rather than about their desire to develop a plurilingual self. Yet, Henry argues this very ambiguity in imagining future identities, “freed from situational constraints” (2017, pp. 557–558), can be highly motivational. Indeed, when individuals speak about their plurilingual selves, they may focus rather on core values and principles associated with their sense of self (openness, curiosity etc.), while the desire to see themselves in this way “may have greater motivational potential than a desire to be proficient in [a specific target language] per se” (2017, p. 559). Henry’s discussion can, in our opinion, be extended to the SA context. Students may become interested in a country’s language not because they perceive a specific associated value, but because this interest allows them to develop their sense of being plurilingual, either as a means of acquiring plurilingual capital or as a counter to what Henry calls a “feared bilingual self,” which carries with it “a sense of discomfort associated with being a person who, in a globalized world … only speaks their L1 and English” (2017, p. 560). Considering such a plurilingual self-concept, it is valuable to revisit Benson et al.’s focus on the transformation of language learner to language user. Rather than conceiving SA as the trigger for such a transformation in relation to any individual language, the emerging perception of oneself as a language user (reflecting how, when, where and with whom one uses one’s complete linguistic repertoire) may positively influence the development of a plurilingual self-concept. Such an emphasis on language use does not, of course, preclude formal or informal language learning being undertaken, but this activity becomes just one aspect of the individual’s plurilingual experience and local practice. L2-Mediated Personal Development Regarding personal development, Benson et al. (2012) highlight that many previous SA studies report outcomes which are “apparently unrelated to second language learning or use” (p. 185). The two aspects they focus upon—problem-solving and intercultural competence—can be outcomes of SA in an L1 country. Nevertheless, Benson et al. (2013, p. 48) point out that solving problems in an L2 context requires sociopragmatic competence; there is, therefore, a strong link between L2-mediated personal development and L2 proficiency. Moreover, “sociopragmatic successes are likely to fuel the students’ self-efficacy and self-confidence as a second language user, which may carry over into greater self-efficacy and self-confidence in other aspects of the student’s life during study abroad” (p. 48). Concerning

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intercultural competence, Benson et al. refer to Byram and Zarate’s (1997) concept of intercultural communicative competence to underline how, “in second language programmes, this experience of unfamiliarity is woven into the second language experience through verbal interactions in which cultural identities are enacted, explained and negotiated” (p. 48). Here too, it is clear that “participants’ sense of themselves as culturally situated persons [is] mediated through second language use” (p. 49). We would argue, though, that this mediation takes place through the students’ entire linguistic repertoire and the potentially greater range of strategies that a plurilingual mindset, might bring. It should be noted that Benson at al.’s fuller discussion of L2-related personal development is based on the reported experiences of two Hong Kong participants undertaking full degrees in English-speaking countries (2013, pp. 90–107), rather than the shorter-term credit mobility typical in Europe. This decision may suggest that evidence of L2-mediated personal development is best gathered through longitudinal study and that this mode should become a priority for future research. The “Plurilingual Identity” research project undertaken within the SAREP COST Action (see Mitchell et al., Chapter 12 this volume, and Marinov et al., Chapter 13 this volume), involving collaborative inquiries into the linguistic identity of both language specialists and non-specialists among Erasmus students in a wide variety of host destinations across Europe, is one such example. Similarly, the LANGSNAP 3.0 project (https://schola rcommons.usf.edu/langsnap/) explores the experience of SA students three years after their period abroad (Mitchell et al., 2020), while Umino and Benson (2019) use students’ photographs taken throughout their SA placement as a stimulus for discussions around language use and linguistic identity. While their focus lies primarily in developing a suitable methodology for language learning history research, their approach opens up opportunities to explore broader issues of personal development within a plurilingual context. It provides a potentially fruitful route into the more complex dynamic of an individual’s “multilingual motivational self system” (Henry, 2017, p. 552) in recognising, as Aronin (2016) argues, that plurilingual identity must be conceived “as a whole, not divided into or separated into distinct sub-identities” (p. 145).

Reflecting Plurilingual Identities in Future SA Research The SA experience provides opportunities to explore the potential advantages of moving from a binary SLA understanding of L2 identity to a model that better reflects the plurilingual experience. Some students embarking on an SA experience already bring with them a multiplicity of language competences, providing them with the potential to perform a plurality of nuanced identities as they desire and require through the medium of their plurilingual repertoires. Both past and current understandings of linguistic performance and the value afforded this by students

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themselves, their interlocutors, and society more generally impact upon their potential to develop a sense of themselves as plurilingual beings. “Personal development” is a key feature of SA for some students (more important potentially at the outset for non-language majors). But while the SA experience often represents the catalyst that awakens a more profound understanding of the potential of plurilingualism, it can in fact be considered simply a particular moment or intervention, interchangeable with other life experiences, within which the continuous negotiation of plurilingual identities takes place. Indeed, despite the educational and cultural capital invested in SA by universities and especially languages departments, one must be careful not to overestimate the impact of any one experience or intervention. Equally, one should be cognisant of Cenoz and Gorter’s (2019, p. 132) warning against “replacing the idealized monolingual speaker with the idealized multilingual speaker” in a move which might diminish the richness and complexity of trajectories, repertoires, and motivations which emergent multilinguals may bring to their experience abroad. Ortega (2019) argues that if SLA research were to expand geographically, geopolitically, and socioeconomically, many new shades and grades of multilingual learning would be placed under the lens of inquiry. This would greatly sharpen theory building and explanations of the human capacity for language. (p. 33) Expanding the scope of SA research beyond a focus on educational mobility involving countries whose main languages are globally dominant may indeed break down some barriers, and lead to new insights. Broadening social access to SA remains a major challenge, and developing effective strategies to support non-traditional SA participants will also require better understanding of the potential impact of plurilingual socialisation processes students undergo both before and during SA period (Duff, 2019). Research oriented clearly to plurilingual realities has potential to contribute to new curricula and assessment mechanisms better suited to future, more diverse student needs.

Conclusion From a review of the literature on linguistic identity within SLA, we have started out from Benson et al.’s model of L2 identity in our attempt to shed light on the construct of plurilingual identity. While maintaining the three original components, we have developed their descriptions. Thus, regarding the first aspect—identity-related linguistic proficiency—we suggest plurilingual identity work is performed through the use of the entire available linguistic repertoire, with partial proficiency no longer being viewed as connoting deficiency. The second aspect, linguistic self-concept, could be

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redefined in terms of the plurilingual self, transcending the concept of multiple monolingualism (in the same way that a European identity potentially transcends a combination of national identities). Finally, we suggest that plurilingual personal development (including academic and professional development) connects qualities such as agency, resilience, or tolerance to the autonomous development of a plurilingual sense of self. Future empirical studies on plurilingual identities will help refine these aspects and put our proposals to the test.

Note 1 While recognising that the terms “multilingual” and “plurilingual” are frequently used interchangeably in SLA research, we have adopted here the terminology preferred by European institutions, whereby multilingualism refers to “the presence of several languages in a given space” (Language Policy Division, 2007, p. 18 https://rm.coe.int/16802fc1c4), and plurilingualism to an individual person’s capacity to use more than one language.

References Aronin, L. (2016). Multi-competence and dominant language constellation. In V. Cook & Li Wei (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic multi-competence (pp. 142–163). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107425965 Benson, P., Barkhuizen, G., Bodycott, P., & Brown, J. (2012). Study abroad and the development of second language identities. Applied Linguistics Review, 3(1), 173–193. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2012-0008 Benson, P., Barkhuizen, G., Bodycott, P., & Brown, J. (2013). Second language identity in narratives of study abroad. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/ 9781137029423 Block, D. (2007). Second language identities. Continuum. Byram, M., & Zarate, G. (Eds.). (1997). The sociocultural and intercultural dimension of language learning and teaching. Council of Europe. Cairns, D., Krzaklewska, E., Cuzzocrea, V., & Allaste, A.-A. (2018). Mobility, education and employability in the European Union: Inside Erasmus. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76926-4 Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2019). Multilingualism, translanguaging, and minority languages in SLA. The Modern Language Journal, 103(S1), 130–135. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/modl.12529 Coleman, J. A. (1998). Language learning and study abroad: The European perspective. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 4(1), 167–203. http s://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v4i1.67 Council of Europe. (2007). From linguistic diversity to plurilingual education: Guide for the development of language education policies in Europe. https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPu blicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=09000016802f.c1c4 Council of Europe. (2018). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Companion volume with new descriptors. https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989

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Davies, A. (2003). The native speaker: Myth and reality. Multilingual Matters. https:// doi.org/10.21832/9781853596247 Duff, P. A. (2015). Transnationalism, multilingualism, and identity. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 57–80. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026719051400018X Duff, P. A. (2019). Social dimensions and processes in second language acquisition: Multilingual socialization in transnational contexts. The Modern Language Journal, 103(S1), 6–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12534 Earls, C. W. (2016). Evolving agendas in European English-medium higher education: Inter-culturality, multilingualism and language policy. Palgrave Macmillan. https:// doi.org/10.1057/9781137543127 Freed, B. F. (Ed.). (1995). Second language acquisition in a study abroad context. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.9 Hall, J. K. (2019). The contributions of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics to a usage-based understanding of language: Expanding the transdisciplinary framework. The Modern Language Journal, 103(S1), 80–94. https://doi. org/10.1111/modl.12535 Heller, M. (1999). Linguistic minorities and modernity: A sociolinguistic ethnography. Longman. Henry, A. (2010). Contexts of possibility in simultaneous language learning: Using the L2 Motivational Self System to assess the impact of global English. Journal of Multicultural and Multilingual Development, 31(2), 149–162. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01434630903471439 Henry, A. (2017). L2 motivation and multilingual identities. The Modern Language Journal, 101(3), 548–565. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12412 Jackson, J. (2008). Language, identity, and study abroad: Sociocultural perspectives. Equinox. Kinginger, C. (Ed.) (2015). Social and cultural aspects of language learning in study abroad. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.37 Language Policy Division. (2007). From linguistic diversity to plurilingual education: Guide for the development of language education policies in Europe. Council of Europe. https://rm.coe.int/16802f.c1c4 Leung, C., Harris, R., & Rampton, B. (1997). The idealised native speaker, reified ethnicities, and classroom realities. TESOL Quarterly, 31(3), 543–560. https://doi. org/10.2307/3587837 Mitchell, R., Tracy-Ventura, N., & Huensch, A. (2020). After study abroad: The maintenance of multilingual identity among Anglophone languages graduates. The Modern Language Journal, 104(2), 327–344. doi:10.1111/modl.12636 Murphy-Lejeune, E. (2002). Student mobility and narrative in Europe: The new strangers. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203167038 Norton, B. (2009). Identity: Second language. In J. L. Mey (Ed.), Concise encyclopedia of pragmatics (2nd ed., pp. 358–364). Elsevier. Ortega, L. (2019). SLA and the study of equitable multilingualism. The Modern Language Journal, 103(S1), 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12525 Otheguy, R., Ofelia García, O., & Wallis Reid, W. (2015). Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review, 6(3), 281–307. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2015-0014 Pennycook, A. (2010). Language as a local practice. Routledge. https://doi.org/10. 4324/9780203846223

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Piasecka, L. (2019). Foreign language students’ perceptions of their identity. Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition, 5(1), 93–112. https://doi.org/10. 31261/TAPSLA.2019.05.06 Piccardo, E. (2019). “We are all (potential) plurilinguals”: Plurilingualism as an overarching, holistic concept. Cahiers de l’ILOB, 10, 183–204. https://doi.org/10. 18192/olbiwp.v10i0.3825 Rivers, D. J., & Houghton, S. A. (Eds.) (2013). Social identities and multiple selves in foreign language education. Bloomsbury. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781472542045 Streitwieser, B. (Ed.). (2014). Internationalisation of higher education and global mobility. Symposium Books. https://doi.org/10.15730/books.87 Tsiligiris, V., & Lawton, W. (Eds.) (2018). Exporting transnational education: Institutional practice, policy and national goals. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-3-319-74739-2 Umino, T., & Benson, P. (2019). Study abroad in pictures: Photographs as data in life-story research. In P. Kalaja, & S. Melo-Pfeiler (Eds.), Visualising multilingual lives: More than words (pp. 173–193). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10. 21832/9781788922616-014

Part II

Empirical Studies

5

Study Abroad and Students’ (Lack of) Social Integration The Case of Spanish Ghettos in Italy Sònia Mas-Alcolea and Helena Torres-Purroy

Introduction Academic and institutional discourses on study abroad (SA) have often reinforced the belief that it benefits language and intercultural learning, using the “metaphor of linguistic and cultural immersion” (Mitchell et al., 2017, p. 19). However, research on SA has also pointed out both the existence of individual differences that make development “dynamic and unique” (Sauer & Ellis, 2019, p. 739), and the importance of taking these into account when examining language development (Isabelli-García, 2006; Iwasaki, 2019; Jackson, 2011; Kinginger, 2015; Pellegrino Aveni, 2005). The social networks that students develop during SA have been deemed one of the most relevant factors affecting individual differences in language learning (Bracke & Aguerre, 2015; Dewey et al., 2013; Gautier, 2019; Hasegawa, 2019; Jackson, 2008; Sauer & Ellis, 2019; Shiri, 2015). Dervin (2009) and Murphy-Lejeune (2002) propose three categories to describe socialisation patterns in SA: international (non-compatriot) students, co-national students and locals (those residing more permanently in the host country). As suggested by De Federico de la Rúa (2008), network ties with each of these groups help determine three features of exchange students’ socialisation abroad: their integration into the host society, the degree of intercultural contact, and their adjustment to the international community. The European SA literature widely acknowledges a general trend towards the formation of an apparently homogeneous “self-contained enclave” (Tsoukalas, 2008), “bubble” (Mas-Alcolea, 2019) or “community” (Kalocsai, 2014), consisting of a foreign student cohort with shared practices and features, and which does not interrelate with another parallel community formed by “the locals” (Ballatore, 2010; Kimmel & Volet, 2012; Mitchell et al., 2017; Montgomery & McDowell, 2009). Some of the factors said to promote the establishment of this international community, and at the same time inhibit interaction with the local community, are language proficiency (Ballatore, 2010; Dervin, 2009; Smith & Khawaja, 2011); shared social practices or similar lifestyle (Van Mol & Michielsen,

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2015); and the creation of separate spaces for international and local students either on campus, in hosting facilities, or in leisure spaces (Dervin, 2009; Dunne, 2009; Harrison & Peacock, 2010). On the one hand, the establishment of social ties among international students has been argued to be desirable since it may foster the development of a global identity (Montgomery & McDowell, 2009) and, in the case of Erasmus students, of a European identity (Sigalas, 2010; Van Mol, 2013); and of intercultural and plurilingual skills. On the other hand, forming relationships with locals may also entail advantages, such as cultural learning about the local context and the learning of local languages, other than English. The current study focuses on a feature that does not seem to fit comfortably with this picture of European mobility, although it has been previously documented with reference to mobile Asian students (e.g. Lux, 2013): the formation of “ghettos”1 of Spanish Erasmus students in Italy. Despite their initial will and effort, the participants in this study did not manage to socialise with the other two social groups. In spite of the emotional support that compatriot groups provide (Dervin, 2009; Murphy-Lejeune, 2002; Papatsiba, 2006), it has also been argued that limiting social networks to co-national subcommunities may prevent sojourners from accessing international experiences and, thus, from developing intercultural or foreign language skills. The present chapter adds to the existing SA literature by showcasing the heterogeneity of the participants’ experiences and the reasons that led to the formation of co-national enclaves abroad. Following Van Mol and Michielsen’s (2014) claim that “social network formation of European exchange students is still an underexplored topic” (p. 441), the current study also sets out to fill the existing gap in the study of socialisation patterns of Spanish exchange students more generally, and in Italy, specifically.

Methodology Participants This chapter presents a longitudinal case study of four Catalan–Spanish undergraduate students (here called Verònica, Patrícia, Georgina and Josep Miquel), who were not language specialists, and who spent from 5 to 10 months as Erasmus students at two different universities in Italy. The participants’ mean age was 22.7 (range 22–24 years), and before SA, only Verònica and Georgina had travelled abroad for a (short) holiday. All of them lived in a student residence during their sojourn, except Josep Miquel who shared an apartment with a local student and other internationals. While the SA place of residence may influence local integration, this was not salient in these students’ accounts and therefore will not be considered here.

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Data Collection and Analysis The study provides a qualitative and longitudinal analysis of SA students’ (lack of) socialisation. Data were collected using multiple tools: pre/post focus group interviews, semi-structured interviews in-sojourn and an individual narrative interview one year post-SA (see Figure 5.1). All interviews were conducted in Catalan but the excerpts presented below have been translated into English. Transcription conventions are shown in Table 5.1. The textual data was complemented with observations gathered through the method known as “shadowing” (Gilliat-Ray, 2011), which allows the researchers to view the students’ experiences directly and thus to negotiate and co-construct their Erasmus stories. Although not explicit in the excerpts analysed here, the researcher drew on the shadowing observations when asking questions or raising different topics in relevant interviews and focus groups. Adopting a discourse-analytic approach, the study documents the rarely studied case of Spanish students in a non-English-speaking country (Italy) and explores the factors that led to their clustering in a Spanish ghetto. The ethnomethodologically-oriented method of membership categorisation ana-

Figure 5.1 The Data Collection Methodology

Table 5.1 Transcription Conventions (based on Payrató & Alturo, 2002) @

Laughter particles, approximating syllable number; utterances spoken laughingly appear between square brackets [] · Prolongation of the immediately prior sound / Rising pitch movement \ Falling pitch movement _ Level pitch * Reformulation […] Words omitted & Unfinished word Utterances in languages other than speaker’s first language (Catalan) appear between square brackets [] with the language indicated: [ENG], [SPA]. All repetitions of words and phrases are transcribed.

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lysis (MCA: Stokoe, 2012) was used to examine how the participants invoked categories, category-bound predicates and activities to describe both themselves and their social networks during SA, while emphasising the differences (and similarities) that existed among members of the same category (Erasmus students) and which, ultimately, accounted for both the inevitable and the impossible ties during their SA experience. In addition, through the notion of stance (Jaffe, 2009) we sought to analyse the linguistic mechanisms that the students used in order to evaluate their SA experience in terms of their socialisation patterns and how these fostered or obstructed their (initial) desired goals. Excerpt [1] exemplifies the analysis of textual data using MCA and stance by drawing on the narrative interview with Verònica: [1] (post-SA narrative interview). well_ what annoyed me was tha··t in many subjects you were told not_ not to come\ because·· you will do something different\ … for instance_ there was a subject which was political economy or I don’t know what it was_ in which the teacher had been on an Erasmus i··n_ in the Canary islands and took all of us the Spanish students and told us that he would_ he would give us a book and that we had to study it in Spanish_ and that we would sit for the exam in Spanish\ because he could understand Spanish and we didn’t speak Italian very well\

VERÒNICA:

First, Verònica uses the pronoun “us” to overtly construct herself as a member of the category “Spanish students” and at the same time, to position herself towards some activities that were often attributed to members of this category: doing something different from the other international students and studying in Spanish. Second, Figure 5.2 visually illustrates Verònica’s (negative) affective stance towards the behaviour of Spanish students, underscoring Jaffe’s (2009) claim that “personal stance is always achieved through comparison and contrast with other relevant persons and categories” (p. 9).

Figure 5.2 The Complementarity of MCA and Stance

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Indeed, the fact of “doing something different” and “studying in Spanish” became stance objects that Verònica evaluated and towards which she clearly positioned herself as feeling “annoyed.” In brief, the analysis of Excerpt [1] illustrates the complementarity of the two methods used in the present study to provide a richer account of two common discursive practices among participants: categorisation and evaluation of social “reality.”

Data Analysis Prior to departure, all participants expressed their desire to interact with people from different countries (including “the locals”) during their SA experience and to avoid compatriots. However, during and after the sojourn, all of them admitted that co-nationals had become their main social tie (see excerpts [2], [3] and [4]). [2] (post-SA narrative interview). the first days it was a little··· weird because you are out of your comfort zone_and little by little you start meeting people_people from other countries_mainly Spanish people\ RESEARCHER: so you interacted mostly with Spanish students/ J. MIQUEL: yes\ mostly with Spanish students\ J. MIQUEL:

[3] (post-SA focus group). I think that at the e··nd it is kind of inevitable to join other Spanish students\ because··_

J. MIQUEL:

[4] (in-SA semistructured interview). at the beginning that was the objective\ wasn’t it/ the Spanish out\ ye·s\ you are actually warned about the fact that you end up joining them_but_ * well_at the end_ it’s inevitable\ GEORGINA: yes\ I didn’t want to socialise with Spanish people because I wanted to learn Italian\ but it’s inevitable\ RESEARCHER: PATRÍCIA:

Some participants, like Patrícia in [4], referred to a general rumour that relating mainly with co-nationals was a typical activity bound to the category “(Spanish) Erasmus student.” Despite participants’ initial scepticism, this rumour became reality during SA. Once in Italy, interaction with compatriots became “inevitable,” and while some initially resisted this tendency, all of them ended up succumbing to it, from a very early stage. Interactions with other types of social groups were reported as accidental or incidental, and these were never deemed by participants as a core part of their SA networks. This was confirmed during shadowing in month 4

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out of 9 (for Verònica and Josep Miquel) and in month 3 out of 5 (for Patrícia and Georgina). In what follows, we will explore the diverse causes for the participants’ inevitable social ties mostly with compatriots and the formation of Spanish Erasmus ghettos in Italy. The Size of the Compatriot Cohort Abroad All participants linked their tendency to interact with other Spanish students to the fact that these largely outnumbered any other national group within the international cohort in Italy (see [5] and [6]). [5] (post-SA narrative interview). who did you interact with the most/ with Spanish students/ mainly with Spanish students\ because it’s a small village and close_ and the Italian language * well_ Italian is not so difficult to understand\ and that is why they have a lot * you actually saw this\ we were a lot of Spanish students\

RESEARCHER: J. MIQUEL:

[6] (post-SA narrative interview). I had the idea that I would_ meet people from everywhere a·nd_ I left to Italy very happily and found lots of Spanish students\ … I knew there would be Spanish people because everybody was telling me that there are loads in Italy_but not so many\ you know/ RESEARCHER: so_there were only Spanish people\ right/ VERÒNICA: well_ not a hundred per cent bu·t a ninety per cent yes\ and this is not Erasmus\ this is a … or whatever it’s called\ we were also gobsmacked but the problem was that since there were so many Spanish_we were such a big group_tha··t_ we were * we supported each other\ you know/ and then the others were kind of * separated\ VERÒNICA:

Excerpts [5] and [6] exemplify how the participants deemed the large size of the Spanish cohort to be evident and even predictable, since some participants mentioned having been “warned” (in Verònica’s words) about it prior to SA. Verònica displayed a very negative stance towards this fact and compared her Erasmus experience with SICUE,2 a scheme allowing students to study in different universities within Spain. The bonds among the Spanish students were so strong that other internationals were “kind of separated” (Verònica). Verònica in particular related the large number of Spanish Erasmus students in Italy to the fact that they could not access destinations where a certain proficiency in English was required (see [7]).

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[7] (in-SA semistructured interview). If I could go back in time I would do an Erasmus_ but I wouldn’t do it in Italy\ I would love to go··· to more difficult places to access for us\ everybody goes to Italy because our level of English is very low\

VERÒNICA:

In Excerpt [7], Verònica used the words “nosaltres” (us) and “tothom” (everybody) to refer to the category “Spanish Erasmus students,” of which she considered herself a member. By this, she implied that Spanish Erasmus students chose destinations for which a specific level of English was not required. The Language Threshold: English and Italian From the beginning of SA, the participants, who had not been required to undertake a linguistic preparation pre-sojourn, realised that expressing themselves in Italian or in English was very demanding. Poor self-perceived L2 competence was construed by the participants as closely related to the social networks they established abroad. The predominance of English as a lingua franca (ELF) among the Erasmus community, in a country where they were not required to have a pre-departure level in English, hindered their interactions with other non-compatriot internationals and thus increased their tendency to interact with co-nationals. They felt they could not reach the minimum linguistic threshold in English necessary to socialise in this language (see [8], from Mas-Alcolea, 2018). [8] (in-SA semistructured interview). the problem is that if I could speak English as I can speak Catalan … I would obviously be able to speak more wi··th_ with these people and I would be able to make social contacts\ but the truth is that my English is not enough\

VERÒNICA:

In [8], Verònica expressed her inability to interact with non-compatriot international students due to not being able to communicate in English (a feature often presented as bound to all Spanish Erasmus students). Similarly, despite their willingness to learn Italian (expressed before departure), their inability to function completely in this language—despite it being a Romance language like Catalan and Spanish—pushed Spaniards together (see [9], from Mas-Alcolea, 2018, and [10]). [9] (post-SA narrative interview). at the beginning the classes {(@) we found them difficult to understand} but * well_since we went with a Spanish boy in the first semester who understood more_ he helped us a lot\ a··nd also a lot of

PATRÍCIA:

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Sònia Mas-Alcolea and Helena Torres-Purroy people when we said hey we are Erasmus_ they told us oh_ don’t worry_ we’ll share the class notes with you_ don’t worry\ so good_very good\ when you saw the classmates you spoke Spanish_Catalan and Italian_*complicated\ but well_

(Note the use of the personal pronouns “we” and “us” to refer to herself and her friend Georgina, with whom she lived throughout SA in Italy.) [10] (post-SA narrative interview). a··nd a··nd and any other change/ do you think the Erasmus experience had any other impact on you/ PATRÍCIA: +u··h+ well also the fact of wanti·ng to keep on learning new languages\ because· it’s true that I think you need English to go everywhere but if apart from it you know the local language * of course_ there are people * in Italy_ I found very few people who knew English\ it was like here in Spain where· * there were people that did speak English but at the residence for instance {(@) not even the doorman knew English\} and you say_ {(@) we·ll we found it very difficult at the beginning\} and that is why Georgina and I were always together\ RESEARCHER:

Like Verònica, Patrícia realised the importance of being linguistically prepared for the SA experience and of learning the local language, mainly in a context where English does not really seem to be a lingua franca (“I found very few people who knew English”). Her poor self-perceived competence in both English and Italian resulted both in her not understanding the classes and in her socialising mostly with co-nationals. Feeling “at Home” with Co-nationals Another reason that some participants gave for staying with co-nationals, especially at the beginning, was the emotional support they provided and their sense of being like a family (see [11] and [12]). [11] (post-SA focus group). so initially you had contact with Italians but then you joined other Spanish students\ PATRÍCIA: yes\ … I think you feel more at home\ RESEARCHER:

[12] (post-SA focus group). in relation to the language_ could you have done something more o··r_ VERÒNICA: I haven’t had the opportunity\ RESEARCHER:

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we did\ it was just that we eventually joined other Spanish students\ GEORGINA: it was our fault\ PATRÍCIA: yes\ yes\ it was our fault\ we felt at home with the Spanish students _ and we met the Italians from time to time\ PATRÍCIA:

Excerpts [11] and [12] show how Patrícia stresses her sense of being like a family when joining Spanish students, with whom they could communicate effortlessly. Both Patrícia and Georgina assumed responsibility for their limited interactions with Italians, with a negative connotation: “it was our fault.” The (Lack of) Opportunities to Use Italian at University At university, some participants had the opportunity to choose between English-medium courses and Italian-medium courses. Although choosing the latter might arguably involve interacting with local students, for them it also meant meeting a greater number of Spanish Erasmus students, who again are presented as preferring Italian rather than English (see [13]). [13] (in-SA semistructured interview). besides_ we go together to_ for instance_ some subjects_ the Spanish Erasmus students and the other [Erasmus students] and we [the Spanish Erasmus students] just go separately\ … there is a subject which you can take in Italian and in English\ you know/ and they obviously go to·· the English one and we go to the Italian\ but one day the teacher_ organised a meeting with all the Erasmus students and then I realised that we [Spanish Erasmus students] were all together\ you know/ and I said what is going on here/ RESEARCHER: so_ all the rest of the countries mix together but the Spanish don’t\ VERÒNICA: yes\ VERÒNICA:

In this excerpt, Verònica distinguishes between the categories “Spanish Erasmus students” and “the others,” attaching to the former category the activity of “going together to courses (in Italian)” and to the latter “going separately (to courses in English).” Also within the university context, some professors attempted to facilitate Spanish students’ success by discouraging them from attending certain classes or from following the same assessment methods as others (see [14]). [14] (post-SA narrative interview, in Mas-Alcolea, 2018). RESEARCHER:

and what about the classes/

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Sònia Mas-Alcolea and Helena Torres-Purroy well_ what annoyed me was tha··t in many subjects you were told not_ not to come\ because·· you will do something different\ … for instance_ there was a subject which was political economy or I don’t know what it was_ in which the teacher had been on an Erasmus i··n in the Canary islands and took all of us the Spanish students and told us that he would_ he would give us a book and that we had to study it in Spanish_ and that we would sit for the exam in Spanish\ because he could understand Spanish and we didn’t speak Italian very well\

VERÒNICA:

Verònica shows an affective negative stance (“annoyed me”) towards the grouping that “many” professors created among students and the different treatment they offered Spaniards. She clearly categorises herself as “Spanish” and links such different treatment to the category-bound feature of “not speak[ing] Italian very well.” Incompatible Lifestyles of Erasmus and the Locals Although Spanish Erasmus students used to attend Italian-medium courses with local students, their socialising with the locals was hindered by the different lifestyles of “Erasmus students” and “local students,” as highlighted in the following excerpts ([15], [16] and [17]): [15] (post-SA narrative interview). where were the Italians in your stay/ you didn’t have contact with the Italians\ did you/ VERÒNICA: no\ but we did go in the same class as the Italians\ yes but * well * it’s also_ it’s what happens\ here you don’t pay attention to the Erasmus students when they come\ people go with * Erasmus go with Erasmus\ I don’t know\ and in Italy the Spanish Erasmus students go with the Spanish Erasmus students\ RESEARCHER: and the university didn’t organise any activity to try to··_ VERÒNICA: they did things_ Erasmus things but they were always {(ENG) party Erasmus}_Tuesdays_Wednesdays_Thursdays_Fridays_Saturdays and Sundays\ they opened the bars for us\ for all the Erasmus\ that’s why you went out partying and_ and you didn’t mingle with Italians\ RESEARCHER:

[16] (in-SA semistructured interview). you mingle more with Erasmus students than with Italians\ don’t you/ GEORGINA: yes\ PATRÍCIA: yes\ RESEARCHER: okay\ and is this what you expected/ GEORGINA: yes\ RESEARCHER:

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yes\ it’s what we were told would happen and we didn’t want it\ you ended up doing it\ why/

RESEARCHER: okay\ bu··t PATRÍCIA: yes\ because_

because they share your same lifestyle\ you know/ an Italian is from here_lives here and is from here\ but the others * they are more o··f_ let’s do this_ let’s do that_

GEORGINA:

[17] (post-SA narrative interview). so you had contact with Italians but then you joined other Spanish students\ PATRÍCIA: yes\ yes\ I also think that it is because of the lifestyle\ because as an Erasmus student_ you go to the same parties_ you do the same things\ we for instance_ * the Italians were either studying or working\ and you could meet them bu··t_ … it was complicated\ … we started meeting Italians but also ended up_ joining with all the Spanish\ RESEARCHER:

Through their categorisation work, Verònica, Georgina and Patrícia highlight the differences between the categories “Erasmus students” and “Italian students” by attaching different typical activities to each. While the former used to “go to Erasmus parties” every day, “share your life rhythm,” “do this and that,” and “do the same things,” the latter only “studied or worked,” and “it was complicated” to meet with them. The Participants’ Priorities Abroad The participants reported that their initial language learning objective changed in the course of their Erasmus experiences. After facing obstacles that hindered socialising with non-Spanish speakers, this aim was abandoned or postponed and SA was deemed a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to do activities such as travelling and hanging out with other international students, mostly compatriots, as illustrated in [18]. [18] (in-SA semistructured interview). and_ and are you happy about that/ of course\ it’s different at the beginning because at the beginning we did say yay_ we will meet people from abroad bu··t_ we did less things\ now we have something to do every day\ GEORGINA: we didn’t want to but now that we are here we are fine\ the truth is that the learning of Italian hasn’t been very successful but next year I have already thought of taking a course in Italian and keep on learning\ PATRÍCIA: no because·· what really·· * for instance_ if we enrol in a course of Italian we will learn it anyway\ but now * travelli··ng with the RESEARCHER: PATRÍCIA:

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Sònia Mas-Alcolea and Helena Torres-Purroy people * because being a group o·f sixteen people will not happen\ once abroad you will probably travel three_four times * now this is what we want to take advantage of\ since we realise that next year we won’t be able to do it\

Despite not achieving their initial language learning goal, Georgina and Patrícia did not display a negative stance on this. Instead, learning Italian was something they thought they could do back at home. They now valued the opportunity that SA had offered to travel within Italy with many other [Spanish] Erasmus students (a group of 16 people); this was something they would “not be able to do the next year.” With different nuances and stances, all participants defined Spanish Erasmus students as their almost exclusive type of social network abroad. They included themselves within this category and through the attachment of typical predicates and activities, they distinguished themselves from both the locals and other non-Spanish internationals. While this distinction is explicit and unequivocal for all participants, we can observe two opposed stances in the data. On the one hand, J. Miquel, Patrícia, and Georgina accepted the obstacles that prevented them from achieving some of their goals, but also embraced positively the opportunities that SA offered them. On the other hand, Verònica deemed having chosen Italy as her Erasmus destination an error that entailed her inescapable clustering in a Spanish ghetto and the failure of her whole Erasmus experience.

Discussion and Conclusion Meeting non-compatriots and learning foreign languages were two activities that the participants in this study initially anticipated through SA. However, challenging the evidence for the formation of groups of international students who share the status of “equal strangers” (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002, p. 202), having all moved from a familiar to an unfamiliar milieu (Kalocsai, 2014; Kim, 2012; Tsoukalas, 2008), J. Miquel, Georgina, Patrícia and Verònica declared having established relationships mainly, and often exclusively, with co-nationals. Indeed, their constant use of the pronoun “we” underlines the inclusive nature of their utterances, suggesting that they deemed themselves members of the category “Spanish Erasmus student” and thus affiliated to the predicates and activities typically bound to it regarding their socialisation patterns. The analysis has uncovered multiple factors that may have affected participant socialisation and the establishment of Spanish ghettos in Italy, which was deemed “inevitable.” These include: (1) the size of the compatriot cohort abroad; (2) the existence of an apparently insurmountable linguistic barrier in both English and Italian; (3) the security and sense of being like a family that relating with compatriots provided; (4) the (lack of) opportunities to use Italian and interact with local students at university; (5) Erasmus students’ distinctive lifestyle, and (6) the students’ priorities once abroad.

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A factor that appeared as especially relevant in the participants’ discourse was the size of the compatriot cohort abroad. Verònica felt that the Spanish cohort amounted to 90% of the international group; J. Miquel pointed to the many Spanish Erasmus students in his small host town; Georgina and Patrícia themselves had coincided in choosing Italy as their host country, lived together there, and formed a network of Spanish Erasmus students with whom they engaged in leisure activities. The size of the (Spanish) compatriot cohort in Italy seems to be an exceptional fact which, despite being well-known among many Erasmus students and despite affecting the students’ outcomes, has not been studied specifically in SA research. Regarding language, having noticed that speaking English was a typical category-bound activity of the Erasmus community, even in Italy, and that outside the international group, Italian was essential, participants realised that crossing the linguistic threshold was “a requirement for embarking on the integration process” (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002, p. 117). Nonetheless, all participants reported having no choice but to interact mostly with other Spanish Erasmus students due to their own perceived poor competence in English, despite having studied this language at school for more than 10 years, and in Italian, despite the similarities between this language and their Romance L1 and the initial efforts they had made to learn it. This confirms Penz’s (2015) claim that “the ability to build relationships in intercultural contact situations is once again highly influenced by students’ linguistic competence” (p. 64). As has been shown, joining compatriots became especially important for our participants. Patrícia, Georgina and Verònica explicitly linked the fact that their social networks abroad were mainly formed by co-nationals to the sense of being like a family. Co-nationals were an indispensable and necessary support, especially at the beginning of their sojourn, and this marked the rest of their SA experience. Although the university context could have become a site facilitating social encounters between our participants and other students, the actions taken by some university professors who intended to facilitate Spanish students’ academic success actually hindered their opportunities to share these spaces with the locals and thus reduced their chances to socialise with them. Some participants tried to come up with another “lifestyle” explanation for the almost non-existent tie between Erasmus students in general and the local community. They attributed it to the former being keen on partying and travelling and the latter more focused on studying and working. Van Mol (2014) observes that mobile students can be viewed as “a specific group of international migrants” who, similarly to economic migrants, “prefer to interact with people they consider similar to themselves” (pp. 67–68). Likewise, Ballatore and Ferede (2013) report that “compared with sedentary students, Erasmus students engaged in more academic and leisurely travel” (p. 525). The participants did not report participating in any activity in the local environment. They assumed their condition of Erasmus students, engaged in activities typically bound to this category, and frequented places aimed at this group, like Erasmus parties or trips.

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These types of activities replaced the participants’ initial aim. After several failures, they stopped prioritising L2 learning and engaged actively in these activities. For them, SA became “a social experience rather than exclusively an academic one” (Krzaklewska, 2013, p. 212). Yet, two different stances arose regarding this shift. While J. Miquel, Patrícia and Georgina showed a positive stance towards the Erasmus experience, Verònica showed frustration at the fact that she could not achieve her initial goal of learning Italian in Italy and that she could not escape the overarching Spanish ghetto. In line with Duff’s (2007) “third space” occupied by international students living between their home and host countries, without “[being] involved in any of their home country or host country social networks” (Kalocsai, 2014, p. 99), it could be argued that Spanish Erasmus students in Italy tend to occupy a fourth space, between the international group, the local community and their social ties in their home country, yet involved in none of them. The formation of such an exclusive network of compatriots may have two main implications concerning the aims of the Erasmus programme. First, the formation of co-national ghettos abroad may go against the aim of “apprehending Europe at the individual level and developing a sense of European belonging that may impact on the process of European integration” (Papatsiba, 2006, p. 121). And second, the European Commission objectives for intercultural and L2 learning (see Kalocsai, 2014) cannot be accomplished through same-nationality social networks. This study may thus prompt the design and provision of support mechanisms for mobility students so that students are in better positions to achieve their initial goals and the intended outcomes of the Erasmus programme. Potentially successful strategies to facilitate mobile students’ interaction with non-compatriots could include the following: local housing (Carnine, 2015); the creation of opportunities for interaction among students with diverse nationalities and with the local population (De Federico de la Rúa, 2003; Martinovic et al., 2011); the management of student flows and the establishment of maximum quotas at the host destination (Van Mol & Michielsen, 2014); and a requirement for a minimum command of English and/or the local language/s.

Notes 1 Although the term “ghetto” originally referred to the isolated Jewish residential area in 16th-century Venice (O’Reilly, 2000), in this chapter it is used to describe the common segregation and isolation of co-national groups of students while abroad. 2 Initials stand for Sistema de Intercambio entre Centros Universitarios de España; in English: Exchange Programme among Spanish Higher Education Institutions.

References Ballatore, M. (2010). Erasmus et la mobilité des jeunes européens [Erasmus and the mobility of European youth]. Presses Universitaires de France.

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Ballatore, M., & Ferede, M. K. (2013). The Erasmus programme in France, Italy and the United Kingdom: Student mobility as a signal of distinction and privilege. European Educational Research Journal, 12(4), 525–533. https://doi.org/10.2304/ eerj.2013.12.4.525 Bracke, A., & Aguerre, S. (2015). Erasmus students: Joining communities of practice to learn French? In R. Mitchell, N. Tracy-Ventura & K. McManus (Eds.), Social interaction, identity and language learning during residence abroad (pp. 139–168). European Second Language Association. http://www.eurosla.org/monographs/EM04/Bracke_ Aguerre.pdf Carnine, J. (2015). The impact on national identity of transnational relationships during international student mobility. Journal of international Mobility, 1(3), 11–30. https://doi.org/10.3917/jim.001.0011 De Federico de la Rúa, A. (2003). La dinámica de las redes de amistad: La elección de amigos en el programa Erasmus [The dynamics of friendship networks. Friendship choice in the Erasmus programme]. Revista Hispana para el Análisis de Redes Sociales, 4(3), 1–44. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/redes.42 De Federico de la Rúa, A. (2008). How do Erasmus students make friends? In S. Ehrenreich, G. Woodman & M. Perrefort (Eds.), Auslandsaufenthalte in Schule und Studium: Bestandsaufnahmen aus Forschung und Praxis (pp. 89–103). Waxmann. Dervin, F. (2009). The Others as impediments to ‘integration’ into Finnish society: The case of exchange students in higher education. Research on Finnish Society, 2, 19–27. http://www.finnresearch.fi/5_dervin_2009.pdf Dewey, D. P., Belnap, R. K., & Hillstrom, R. (2013). Social network development, language use, and language acquisition during study abroad: Arabic language learners’ perspectives. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 22(1), 84–110. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v22i1.320 Duff, P. A. (2007). Second language socialization as sociocultural theory: Insights and issues. Language Teaching, 40(4), 309–319. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444807004508 Dunne, C. (2009). Host students’ perspectives of intercultural contact in an Irish university. Journal of Studies in International Education, 13(2), 222–239. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1028315308329787 Gautier, R. (2019). Understanding socialisation and integration through social network analysis: American and Chinese students during a stay abroad. In M. Howard (Ed.), Study abroad, second language acquisition and interculturality (pp. 207–236). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781788924153 Gilliat-Ray, S. (2011). “Being there”: The experience of shadowing a British Muslim hospital chaplain. Qualitative Research, 11(5), 469–486. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1468794111413223 Harrison, N., & Peacock, N. (2010). Cultural distance, mindfulness and passive xenophobia: Using integrated threat theory to explore home higher education students’ perspectives on ‘internationalisation at home’. British Educational Research Journal, 36(6), 877–902. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920903191047 Hasegawa, A. (2019). The social lives of study abroad: Understanding second language learners’ experiences through social network analysis and conversation analysis. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429505829 Isabelli-García, C. (2006). Study abroad social networks, motivation and attitudes: Implications for second language acquisition. In E. Churchill & M. DuFon (Eds.), Language learners in study abroad contexts (pp. 231–258). Multilingual Matters.

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Montgomery, C., & McDowell, L. (2009). Social networks and the international student experience: An international community of practice? Journal of Studies in International Education, 13(4), 455–466. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315308321994 Murphy-Lejeune, E. (2002). Student mobility and narrative in Europe: The new strangers. Routledge. O’Reilly, K. (2000). The British on the Costa del Sol: Transnational identities and local communities. Routledge. Papatsiba, V. (2006). Study abroad and experiences of cultural distance and proximity: French Erasmus students. In M. Byram & A. Feng (Eds.), Living and studying abroad: Research and practice (pp. 108–133). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/ 10.21832/9781853599125-008 Payrató, L., & Alturo, N. (Eds.). (2002). Corpus oral de conversa col·loquial. Materials de treball (Vol. 11). Edicions Universitat Barcelona. Pellegrino Aveni, V. A. (2005). Study abroad and second language use: Constructing the self. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620584 Penz, H. (2015). English is not enough—local and global languages in international student mobility: A case study of the Austrian university context. In A. Fabricius & B. Preisler (Eds.), Transcultural interaction and linguistic diversity in higher education (pp. 56–91). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137397478 Sauer, L., & Ellis, R. (2019). The social lives of adolescent study abroad learners and their L2 development. The Modern Language Journal, 103(4), 739–762. https://doi. org/10.1111/modl.12589 Shiri, S. (2015). The homestay in intensive language study abroad: Social networks, language socialization, and developing intercultural competence. Foreign Language Annals, 48(1), 5–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12127 Sigalas, E. (2010). Cross-border mobility and European identity: The effectiveness of intergroup contact during the ERASMUS year abroad. European Union Politics, 11(2), 241–265. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116510363656 Smith, R. A., & Khawaja, N. G. (2011). A review of the acculturation experiences of international students. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 35(6), 699– 713. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2011.08.004 Stokoe, E. (2012). Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: Methods for systematic analysis. Discourse Studies, 14(3), 277–303. https://doi.org/10. 1177/1461445612441534 Tsoukalas, I. (2008). The double life of Erasmus students. In F. Dervin & M. Byram (Eds.), Students, staff and academic mobility in higher education (pp. 131–152). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Van Mol, C. (2013). ERASMUS student mobility and the discovery of new European horizons. In B. Feyen & E. Krzaklewska (Eds.), The ERASMUS phenomenon: Symbol of a new European generation? (pp. 163–174). Peter Lang. https://doi.org/ 10.3726/978-3-653-03007-5 Van Mol, C. (2014). Intra-European student mobility in international higher education circuits: Europe on the move. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137355447 Van Mol, C., & Michielsen, J. (2015). The reconstruction of a social network abroad. An analysis of the interaction patterns of Erasmus students. Mobilities, 10 (3), 423–444. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2013.874837

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Retelling Immersion in France Opportunities and Affordances in Language Use Anne Marie Devlin and Henry Tyne

Introduction Driven by findings which compellingly highlight the “complexity and variation” (Coleman, 2013, p. 25) of sojourns in a target language (TL) country and the “remarkable individual differences” (Kinginger, 2013, p. 5) in learning outcomes, the field of study abroad (SA) research has, in recent times, experienced an increase in qualitative studies. Such studies foreground “individual trajectories” as “the essence of … SA research” (Coleman, 2013, p. 25). They represent a counterbalance to a predominantly quantitative approach which risks reducing “learners’ identities and experiences to an array of variables … represented as numbers” (Isabelli-García et al., 2018, p. 445). A growing body of research has emerged focusing on interactions between sojourners and the SA environment. It is against this backdrop that the current study positions itself. By exploring first memorable encounters as affordances, it aims to develop insight into the shared “typical common features” (Coleman, 2013, p. 36) which underpin individual SA experiences, shedding light on how individual engagement with these can give rise to differential interactional outcomes.

Conceptual Frameworks Here, we introduce the two key concepts on which the study is based: first memorable encounters (FMEs) and affordances. We take FMEs to mean encounters occurring early in the SA experience that are reified in sojourner narratives as important moments, generally lending themselves to granular, detailed accounts. While they are, to an extent, similar to other key moments, explored variously as “turning points” (Muñoz, 2012), “critical experiences” (Benson et al., 2013) or “vital moments” (Pogorelova & Trenchs-Parera, 2018), they are clearly etched on sojourners’ memories of the beginning of SA, but, importantly, are not necessarily key language learning moments in all cases (see below). They are often accompanied by verbs of remembering or impressions (in our data the French verbs se souvenir and se rappeler [to remember/recollect], but also penser [to think], for example) and may make use of the present tense (see e.g. extracts 3 and 10 below). As

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Murphy-Lejeune (2002) stresses, the beginning of a sojourn is crucial and shapes further experiences: “Recollections and images of the very first moments on foreign land often remain etched out in memory as symbols of the passage into a new space and filter perceptions to come” (p. 111). This is not to say, of course, that other moments cannot be memorable or important in terms of the SA experience. Drawing on the work of Gibson (1979), in the field of ecological perceptual psychology, van Lier (2000) extends the concept of affordance into the field of language learning. In basic terms, affordances are “possibilities for action” (Aronin & Singleton, 2012, p. 312) which emerge due to “people-environment reciprocity” (Kordt, 2018, p. 136). Following van Lier, we conceptualise affordances as possible language learning moments emerging within an “ecosocial system” (Lemke, 2002, p. 69). In contrast to other ecological models emphasising learner–environment interaction such as “loci of learning” (Devlin, 2019), an affordance may or may not become a language learning moment, since what emerges is highly individualised. While any two given events may be objectively similar, the emergent affordances may differ from one individual to the next and from one moment to the next. Additionally, subsequent accounts and understandings of the impact of events may alter over time, and work in different ways retroactively. Recently, the concept of affordance has been gaining traction in the fields of SLA and multilingualism. Larsen-Freeman (2015) highlights it as an alternative to the concept of input, whereby learner and environment are reunited. Aronin and Singleton (2012, p. 328) note that “affordances can genuinely shed new light on multilingual phenomena, in particular, on second and multiple language acquisition.” However, despite theoretical interest (Aronin & Singleton, 2012; Kordt, 2018; Larsen-Freeman, 2015), empirical research is still limited. In an early paper, Allen (2010) equates affordances with potential learning moments and explores how far they are perceived as valuable by learners. Smolcic (2013) and Carter (2018) both position affordances in opposition to constraints, whereby affordances are deemed positive learning opportunities and constraints, on the other hand, are factors which restrict learning. Murray and Fujishima (2013) and Murray et al. (2018) investigate affordances as positive experiences in the context of specialised language learning spaces such as an English café in a Japanese university. While these studies foreground the importance of “access to potential affordances” (Murray et al., 2018, p. 245), they assume a monolithic view of affordances, eschewing a multilevel perspective. The current study addresses gaps in the literature by (a) adopting a more nuanced conceptualisation of affordances, and (b) addressing the intersectionality of individual learner and environmental factors. It considers the impact affordances may have on future engagement with language learning opportunities. The research questions are:

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1

What are the learner-internal and environmental factors that aid in the co-construction of an affordance during an FME? To what extent does the affordance of the FME influence the emergence of and engagement with potential future affordances?

2

The Study Participants The participants were all female students at a university in the south of France. They originated from China, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and the UK. A majority were studying over two years for a master’s degree in linguistics, while one credit-mobile participant was participating in a 1-year Erasmus+ exchange and another had taken unpaid leave to study French at the university language centre. While by no means a fully representative sample of international students at the university, the participants, all primarily in France for learning French, and selected on a “friend of a friend” (Milroy, 1987, p. 66) basis by peer fieldworkers (see below), formed a typically diverse subset. Table 6.1 presents an overview of participants.

Methodology Semi-structured interviews were carried out in French by peers1 following the basic procedure set out in Avarguez et al. (2014), with a shared fieldwork protocol and data transcription including quality control across the dataset. Based on the idea that FMEs are etched on memory and can be recalled in narratives as past events that potentially shape impressions as well as future experiences, interviews were conducted well into the SA experience (in most cases towards the end of the first year in France or at Table 6.1 Overview of Participants Participant

Country of origin

Purpose

Cathy Christine Ursula Caroline Kate Kim Karen Charlie Edith Evelyn

China China Ukraine China Kazakhstan Kazakhstan Kazakhstan China UK UK

Master programme Master programme Master programme Master programme Master programme Master programme Master programme Master programme French course Erasmus+

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the beginning of the second), thus allowing a sufficient timespan between moment of arrival and moment of reminiscence (i.e. FME are not hot news). The interviews were recorded and transcribed, making a 57,000 word corpus. Narrative inquiry provided the framework for data analysis. A narrative approach is seen as crucial for exploring “the different subjective positions from which we experience and interpret the world” (Moen, 2006, p. 63). It also constitutes a recommended methodological approach for “ecologically orientated inquiries” (Murray & Fujishima, 2013, p. 143). The approach is, of course, not without limitations. For example, within retrospective accounts, “memory lapses … may affect the veracity of the event” (Carter, 2018, p. 129). Additionally, it has been argued that accounts may vary according to circumstances, thus questioning the “truthfulness of a story” (Shenhav, 2015, p. 70), although for the present study, objective truthfulness is not an issue since retelling also serves to shape past events. It has been acknowledged that “reflective accounts also bring clarification” and can “problematise events that seemed neutral at the time” (Carter, 2018, p. 129). Furthermore, as Benson et al. (2013, p. 9) point out, exploring narratives is a means of engaging with the significance that narratives lend “to what might otherwise be myriad unconnected events” (2013, p. 9). Thus, retelling FMEs, for the purpose of this study, is considered an act through which people ultimately make sense of their environment and their interactions through space and time. Analytical Tools The interviews were analysed by means of an adapted version of the affordance framework proposed by Kyttä (2002). For Kyttä (2002), following Reed (1993), affordances can be analysed through the lens of four non-categorical levels: potential, perceived, shaped, and utilised, each moulded by the interaction between individual and environment. This framework reflects the dimensions of identification, perception, creation and effectuation proposed by Aronin and Singleton (2012). Briefly, the potential level is when an opportunity is presented by the environment, but not perceived as such by the individual at that particular time within that particular space; perceived, on the other hand, is when the individual notes the affordance, yet decides not to engage. Utilised is the successful convergence of individual and environment resulting in the effectuation of the affordance. Finally, when the individual is in a position to change the environment, this is known as shaped. To this basic taxonomy, we add two further levels which emerged from the learners’ narratives: rejected and denied. Rejected is when the individual acknowledges the affordance, but dismisses it as illegitimate; and denied occurs when the individual recognises a possible affordance, but is denied the opportunity to utilise or shape it by the environment or fellow participants.

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Findings Environments are categorised according to three types: constraining, absent, and conducive. A constraining environment is one where interaction is restricted through social, cultural, or linguistic barriers. Absent is when the environment does not overtly present possibilities for interaction and conducive refers to environments where interaction is positively promoted. The analysis is presented under those three headings (for an overview, see Table 6.2).

Constraining Environments An environment may be viewed as constraining insofar as it does not adapt to the needs of the learner. This was perceived in seven cases: four administrator encounters, one with a bus driver and two with landlord/lady. We will consider the administrator encounters and the bus driver together since the actors embedded in these environments typically offer a degree of linguistic and cultural knowledge that is above—or simply perceived as being more legitimate than—that of the learner. Despite the real or perceived disadvantage, some learners were able to draw on elements of what Allen (2010, p. 19) refers to as “social histories” to make an “informed decision on the value” (Aronin & Singleton, 2012, p. 324) of the encounter, thereby becoming agentive actors in the co-construction of an affordance. In extracts [1] to [3],2 we see first of all how the students (Caroline, Ursula and Kate) described these constraints. [1] C’est trop compliqué … je sais pas quels dossiers que je dois offrir [It is too complicated … I don’t know which documents I have to present]. (Caroline/Administrator) [2] Dans les institutions administratives tu dois expliquer tout ce que tu as besoin de faire et si tu parles pas très bien il y a des personnes qui ne

Table 6.2 Environment, Category, and Affordance Participant

Environment of FME

Environment Category

Affordance Level

Cathy Christine Ursula Caroline Kate Kim Karen Charlie Edith Evelyn

Passer-by Administrator Administrator Administrator Bus driver Passers-by Shopkeeper Landlord Landlady Administrator

Conducive Constraining Constraining Constraining Constraining Absent Absent Constraining Constraining Constraining

Perceived Utilised Utilised Utilised Utilised Shaped Shaped Shaped Denied Rejected

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veut pas te comprendre [In administrative institutions you have to explain what you need to do and if you don’t speak very well, there are people who don’t want to understand you]. (Ursula/Administrator) [3] Je suis allée je me rappelle la deuxième journée je pense je suis allée à la plage de X toute seule … le chauffeur me disait quelque chose je comprenais pas je lui donne l’argent il me demande encore quelque chose et je comprends pas vas-y prends l’argent et je sais pas donne-moi le ticket [I went, I remember, on the second day I think, I went to X beach alone … The driver was saying something to me that I didn’t understand. I give him the money, he asks something else and I don’t understand if he’s going to take the money and I don’t know if he’s going to give me the ticket]. (Kate/Bus driver) Nonetheless, these students saw the FMEs as key moments whereby they were faced with a choice of either retreating or seizing the occasion to fill gaps in their knowledge so that their new lives in France could proceed more smoothly. Caroline recognised the administrator as “quelqu’un d’utile [someone useful].” Both Caroline and Kate noted particular measures that they took to improve their language as a result. Caroline highlighted lack of knowledge of specific terms which led directly to her decision to learn: “demander aux autres ou consulter sur l’internet [asking others or using internet].” Kate took immediate action and deliberately sat beside French speakers on the beach following her bus journey, as we see in [4]: [4] Je me suis installée à côté de dames qui ont parlé toujours français et j’ai écouté tout le temps et après elles sont parties j’ai changé de place [I sat down beside some ladies who spoke French and I listened all the time and after they left I changed places]. (Kate/Bus driver) In [5], despite expressing a feeling of trauma post-encounter, Ursula acknowledged that the experience emphasised the stark necessity of persistence: [5] Je sais que j’ai besoin de parler avec des Français je pense que si tu as besoin de faire quelque chose et tu n’as pas un autre choix tu dois faire ça sans penser que ça te posera un problème tu dois juste faire et comme ça [I know that I need to speak to French people. I think that if you need to do something and you have no other choice you have to do it without thinking that it will cause you problems. You just have to do it]. (Ursula/Administrator) Facilitating the transformation of an encounter with a constraining environment into a utilised affordance and thus a positive language learning moment are learner-internal issues of agency and effort. These three learners had a desire to study abroad. For example, Kate explained

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“j’ai toujours eu cette idée d’aller à l’étranger [I have always had this idea of going abroad].” Moreover, the decision to study abroad was their own. However, the path to SA was not an easy one as learners highlighted difficulties with visas, vaccinations, finance, and academic grades. In addition to investing on a practical level, these learners displayed openness towards a new culture. For example, Caroline relates in [6] how she looked for films that would increase her awareness of language and culture pre-departure: [6] Je veux chercher des informations intéressantes sur les Français … voir les films par des films français [I want to look for interesting information on French people … to watch French films]. (Caroline) Thus desire, tenacity, and openness help to turn a potentially constraining encounter into a utilised affordance. Instead of dissuading the students, it highlighted gaps in their knowledge that they knew they must fill if their stay were to be successful. It also facilitated the formation of strategies which led to the emergence of future affordances and successful language learning experiences throughout SA. This is exemplified in the narrative of Ursula who noted that the experience of feeling out of her depth both linguistically and culturally gave rise to a change in communicative strategies [7], which accordingly facilitated future positive engagement: [7] Ici tu as besoin d’être plus ouverte plus communicative si tu veux régler tes problèmes [here you have to be more open, more communicative if you want to sort out your problems]. (Ursula) Turning to Evelyn, we see the emergence of a rejected affordance in a similar environment. Evelyn rejected the affordance as a possible language learning moment and persuaded a peer with linguistic and cultural experience to complete it. When considering her social history, a number of factors emerge which may explain this rejection. Although she had been to France a number of times, she had experienced it as an extension to English culture; the places visited had been geographically close to England and the tourist facilities primarily Anglophone. Living in France was very different from being on holiday and she constantly compared it negatively to England: [8] Pour moi la culture les personnes les accents sont différents aussi je n’ai pas réalisé les écoles n’ont pas beaucoup de facilities des ressources dans mon université en Angleterre c’est super [For me the culture the people the accents are different. As well, I didn’t realise that the schools don’t have a lot of facilities or resources—in my university in England the resources are fabulous]. (Evelyn)

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Evelyn’s investment in being in France was minimal. She noted the ease with which English students could engage with mobility (see [9]) and expressed little openness towards the new culture stating that it was simply too far (geographically, symbolically) from her comfort zone: “c’est trop loin de Calais ici [it’s too far from Calais here].” [9] Ce n’est pas un grand problème pour les étudiants anglais à cause du gouvernement nous donner d’argent [It’s not a big problem for English students because the government gives us money]. (Evelyn) Encounters were persistently referred to by Evelyn as moments that involve “peur” [fear] and people who were “affreux” [awful] (although this word was denied when given as a recast by the interviewer). Negativity was renewed and confirmed in her narrative, and affordances were consistently rejected. The paradoxical nature of Evelyn’s situation is evident: She has come to France in order to “améliorer ma langue mes compétences ma confiance aussi mon CV [to improve my language my skills, my self-confidence and my CV]”; yet her narrative consistently displays a lack of willingness to engage in the co-construction of affordances that become language learning experiences. The landlord/lady environments encountered by Charlie and Edith were also potential barriers to language learning moments, as difficulties understanding the learners in French prompted a switch to English. However, Charlie managed to exert her agency over the environment by refusing to speak English, thus shaping the affordance so that it suited her needs: [10] je pensais que je parle super bien français mais … j’ai parlé avec mon propriétaire je lui ai expliqué quelque chose mais il avait l’air que il n’a pas compris ce que j’ai dit et après il m’a dit “can you speak English” [I thought that I spoke French really well but … I spoke to my landlord and I explained something to him but he appeared not to understand what I had said and afterwards he said “can you speak English”]? INTERVIEWER: et tu parlais anglais avec lui [And you spoke English with him]? CHARLIE: non je continue à parler français parce que je sais que si … je rencontre des problèmes il faut les surmonter sinon je progresse pas [No I continued to speak French because I know that if … I encounter problems it is necessary to overcome them otherwise I won’t progress]. (Charlie/ Landlord) CHARLIE:

Charlie engaged her “internal resources” (Kordt, 2018, p. 143) such as self-belief in her language skills, her strong desire to be there and her openness to new cultures to shape the affordance. Her landlord’s perception of her Chinese ethnicity as a marker of identity as a user of English led her to

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resist, continuing to speak French and causing the landlord to accommodate his speech to her needs. This was not the case for Edith, [11], who was unable to activate her agency to mediate the situation, leading to a denied affordance: [11] Je suis arrivée la propriétaire de l’appartement était là mais elle parle l’anglais mieux [I arrived, the landlady was there but she spoke English better]. (Edith/Landlady) By taking an unpaid sabbatical from work in England to study in France at an older age, Edith had perhaps invested more than others; she had also displayed a desire to be there. However, her status as a native speaker of English with limited resources in French allowed the landlady to deny her agency and thus exclude her from a language learning opportunity. The pervasiveness of English as a lingua franca has long been documented as a barrier to access to use of other TLs (Ife, 2000; Mitchell et al., 2017). This denied Edith the agency to co-construct an affordance which initially led to a feeling of demotivation: [12] Je voudrais parler français plus et je le trouve un peu bizarre que je ne parle pas beaucoup avec les Français et je suis en France [I would like to speak French more and I find it a little strange that I don’t speak a lot with French people and I am in France]. (Edith) However, being denied access to an affordance during the FME allowed Edith to draw on the internal factors shaping her reasons for coming to France. Taken together with the emotional and financial investment in the move, this drove her to co-construct positive affordances within different environments for the remainder of her sojourn. She exercised her agency by reading novels and watching films: “la télévision et j’essaie de lire les plus simples romans [television and I try to read the most simple novels].” And she claimed, in contrast with reminisced experiences: “Je sais parler plus en français maintenant [I manage to speak more French now].” Nonetheless, Edith still conveyed a passive stance and her narrative served to reify the apparent inevitability of not getting enough occasions to use and make progress in French. Absent Environments The absence of language learning environments did not prove a deterrent to participants Kim and Karen who succeed in shaping affordances where none were immediately presented. They made the choice to create the situations and thus create an environment where language learning opportunities could emerge, see [13] and [14]:

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[13] C’était difficile un petit peu de dépasser cette borne de commencer à parler le français même si tu connais des choses dans ta tête quand tu commences à parler il y a cette blocage dans ta gorge et tu dois vraiment dépasser ta zone de confort pour commencer pour initier la conversation avec des natifs qui parlent français comme leur langue native [It was a bit difficult to overcome the barrier of speaking French even if you know the things in your head when you start to talk there is a blockage in your throat and you really must get outside your comfort zone to start to initiate conversation with natives who speak French as their native language]. (Kim/Passersby) [14] Je pense pas que j’utilisais les phrases que j’ai appris dans les manuels du français Popova Kazakova et cetera c’était différent mais je m’inquiétais pas du tout j’étais prête j’ai j’essayais de poser des questions très claires et ils m’ont bien compris donc tout se passait très bien voilà la première conversation [I don’t think I used the phrases that I learned in my French textbooks Popova Kazakova et cetera, it was different but I wasn’t worried at all. I was ready and I tried to ask very clear questions and they understood me well so the first conversation went well]. (Karen/Shop assistant) Kim and Karen were clear in their intentions to speak French and take control of the situation. By being prepared and initiating the conversation, they were able to manipulate the environment in such a way that would allow future beneficial affordances to emerge. Once more, their ability and willingness to do so were mediated through their desire to be there, their openness and the investment they had made. Conducive Environment Cathy experienced the only environment which could readily be described as conducive or outwardly facilitative towards a positive interaction. On a superficial level, the interaction had all the features of a positive language learning moment which could encourage the learner to engage further. As she had no access to Google Maps, Cathy asked a passer-by for directions; she described him as “gentil” [kind], noting that “il parle lentement avec patience” [he speaks slowly with patience]. However, while the affordance was perceived, it was not accepted as a language learning opportunity and did not lead to future co-construction of affordances. Like Evelyn, Cathy had made little investment presojourn. She admitted the choice to study abroad was not made by her: “mon père veut me faire étudier en France [my father wants me to study in France].” Her preparations for SA involved no more than “assister quelques entretiens et donner des argents [attending a few interviews and paying money].” Additionally, her openness to new experiences was curtailed by her preferences for computer-mediated communication and staying at home. She acknowledged: “En Chine je sors pas aussi je reste chez moi toujours aussi [I don’t go out in China either, I

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always stay at home].” Being in France strengthened that position as it was not deemed acceptable, in pre-Covid-19 days, to wear a mask in the street: “Ici on ne porte pas des masques [here no one wears masks].” In short, Cathy exercised her agency to withdraw from face-to-face engagement with the French language. Face-to-face interaction was not part of her life in China and would not easily form part of her life in France.

Discussion Regarding the first research question, we see that for the most part, within this subset of international students, learner-internal factors and agency seem to play a greater role than environmental factors in co-constructing affordances. In nine out of ten cases, participants are able to exert agency in such a way that the environment accommodates them. However, it should be noted that enacting agency is not always in favour of language learning. Whereas Kim, Kate, Karen, Ursula, Christine, Charlie, and Caroline are willing to endure “times of awkwardness” (Allen, 2010, p. 18) for the benefit of language learning, Edith and Cathy choose to opt out. The data show how agency can be enacted differentially to co-construct affordances that “pushed certain learners’ linguistic abilities” (Allen, 2010, p. 18), or allowed the participants to withdraw from language learning. Only one participant, Evelyn, has an experience whereby the force of the environment (English as a lingua franca) could eclipse that of learner agency in the emergence of an affordance. Turning to the second research question, the retrospective interviews facilitated an exploration of the link between the affordance co-constructed during an FME and the emergence of and interaction with future affordances. As noted by Kordt (2018), “learning environments … should lead to the emergence of additional affordances for learners, enable them to actively seek out new affordances in future” (p. 140). This was certainly the case for eight out of ten participants in the study who experienced the FME on the affordance level of utilised, shaped or denied. The seven participants who co-constructed, shaped, or utilised affordances, continued to seek out new opportunities throughout their sojourn. Charlie, for example, went on to live and socialise primarily with French students, while Karen adopted the habit of having coffee with and chatting to classmates in order to access language learning opportunities. However, it is interesting to note that a denied affordance during the FME did not necessarily result in the learner retreating from contact. Edith, whose interaction in French was limited by her status as an Anglophone, managed nevertheless to shape future affordances by changing her environment (moving house) and drawing on internal resources which led her to seek out new media though which to access the language. Finally, we consider the learners who did not seem to engage with language learning encounters: Cathy and Evelyn. The affordances during their

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FMEs were perceived yet rejected. What they have in common is a lack of engagement shaped by internal factors such as lack of investment, agency, and desire to open up to a new culture. Cathy continued to communicate primarily by Internet. And while certain peers made positive affordances through everyday commercial interactions, she sought a website where she could buy clothes, thus diminishing her need to seek local embeddedness involving face-to-face interactions outside the classroom: “Je veux acheter des vêtements ici mais je sais pas où quels magasins je peux y aller et quelle application je peux utiliser [I want to buy clothes here but I don’t know where, which shops I can go to or what application I can use].” Evelyn made no reference to attempts to speak French or get involved in activities throughout her stay. It seems as if the culture shock she experienced as described earlier had become an ongoing stress factor amplified by the physical and symbolic distance from her home. In sum, there appears to be a link between affordance level during FME (regardless of the particular environment) and subsequent engagement with the language. When a learner fails to fully engage with the environment and co-constructs a perceived or rejected affordance, it may be an indicator of future lack of emergence of and engagement with affordances more generally. Furthermore, given that accounts of FMEs are retrospective, these may in turn be shaped by subsequent events or retellings which serve to reify FMEs as a form of justification for a particular stance or (lack of) engagement. Williams (2012) contends that affordances are “in the first instance, personal” (p. 109) and that “[d]eveloping, realizing and expanding your repertoire of affordances … constitutes, in large part, who you are and who you become—in short, your identity” (p. 108).

Conclusion In this chapter, we have focused on events that are reported as first memorable encounters (FMEs) with the TL and speakers thereof. A narrative reading of students’ accounts is used to gain knowledge of affordances in a way that cannot be done through more objective (external, impersonal) measures of language contact. Using data from interviews with international students, we have contributed to the very small body of empirical studies which have operationalised the concept of affordance and applied it to SA. We agree with previous research from both a theoretical and applied perspective that viewing interaction in terms of affordances allows much more nuanced insight into the learner experience than the concept of input, for example (Aronin & Singleton, 2012; Larsen-Freeman, 2015). We have provided evidence that a systematic study of affordances highlights the importance of a learner’s internal resources and agency in shaping their contact with the language. In short, the majority of the participants felt able to interact with the environment in such a way that it aided language learning. Even when environmental factors such as the ubiquity of English

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as a lingua franca combine to override the learner’s autonomy, if the learner has the desire and internal resources in conjunction with considerable personal and financial investment in the SA, they can change the environment and forge new affordances. From a theoretical perspective, the study has also facilitated an exploration of the concept of affordances. Unlike the model proposed by Aronin and Singleton (2012), our findings point to rejection of any rigid description of an affordance located in the interior of a Sierpinski triangle (Aronin & Singleton, 2012, p. 324) where the parameters of learner, language, and environment are equal and fixed. Instead, the data point to a more dynamic, amorphous conceptualisation of affordances whereby the parameters continuously shift depending on the complex interplay between learner and environment. In conclusion, the current study adds to a growing body of research which questions applying objective measures to interaction with the TL in the SA context. Understanding how learners engage with the language, as the study has demonstrated, requires an analytical tool which goes beyond merely counting the number of interactions or the time spent. Objective measurements of exposure to the language do not address the quality of interaction, nor its outcomes. Considering engagement with the language through the lens of multilevel affordances provides invaluable insight into how learners as whole people (Coleman, 2013) interact with dynamic environments. In particular, the exploration of FMEs as affordances co-constructed by learners sheds light on the individual factors which help explain why some learners, despite what we might take to be objectively beneficial exposure to the language, may emerge with less engagement and vice versa. Understanding what students typically do in their L1 would also be beneficial (cf. the case of Cathy above). Ultimately, we could even define an affordance profile for students, and see how this fits with their input profile (Ågren et al., 2014) and with their language development as benchmarked objectively. For example, some students may have a high exposure to the L2 but this may come with lower or less-beneficial affordances. And, conversely, there might be students who do not have a particularly high level of exposure but who engage actively to provide constructive affordances.

Notes 1 Peers were second-year masters students, working in pairs, for whom the project formed a part of their coursework assignment. 2 All interview extracts are given in French with English translations. Extracts have been edited from the original TCOF conventions (https://repository.ortolang.fr/ap i/content/tcof/12/TCOFConventions2017.pdf) to improve readability (removing false starts, repetitions, pauses, etc.). It should be noted that they are in L2 French and have not been “nativised.” Participants have been given pseudonyms.

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Motivations and Social Integration of Mobile Students Experiences of Short-Term International Mobility Students at a Lithuanian University Inga Gaižauskaitė, Irena Žemaitaitytė and Lora Tamošiu-nienė

Introduction Student mobility is a key aspect of the internationalisation of higher education (HE). Hudzik (2011) underlines the importance of integration of international students for comprehensive internationalisation, which requires a degree of openness in national HE systems and “lowering boundaries to the international trade of ideas and people” (p. 13). Studies reveal benefits of international study mobility for exchange students as well as host institutions and countries. However, study abroad (SA) includes challenges such as adapting to new ways of studying and living, building a new network of friends, and becoming integrated into local communities (Arkoudis et al., 2019; Dervin, 2009). There are a variety of reasons why students decide to choose SA, which can be personal, academic or professional (Lesjak et al., 2015; Oliveira & Freitas, 2016). Motivations may be linked to a particular destination as students tend to choose countries with widely spoken languages. Thus within Europe, Spain, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy attract the main flows of international students (Mikulás & Jitka, 2019). Although Lithuanian is an old Indo-European language, its use is mainly restricted to Lithuania, with around 4 million speakers (Department of Lithuanian Studies, n.d.). Moreover, Lithuania joined the European study and student mobility space relatively recently, launching the Erasmus+ programme in 1999 following the restoration of independence in 1990 (Švietimo mainų paramos fondas, 2017) and joining the European Union in 2004. Bulajeva and Hogan-Brun (2014) highlighted that in the early 1990s, HE in the Baltic states was projected as a “national affair, aimed at strengthening national cultures and languages” (p. 319). Thus, initially, internationalisation of HE had to deal with challenges stemming from national language protectionist approaches (Bulajeva & Hogan-Brun, 2014). Želvys (2006) noted that internationalisation of HE was potentially more beneficial for the English-speaking developed

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countries than smaller, less developed countries, or countries speaking less widely used languages. Additionally, promotion of lingua francas may be perceived as a threat in minority language contexts (Cots et al., 2014). Even though Lithuanian has not been able to compete with more widely used languages (primarily English), policy changes which recognised the importance of student mobility for the quality of HE in Lithuania have fostered a flow of incoming students (Bulajeva & Hogan-Brun, 2014). While some countries solved the tension between pressure to introduce English as a medium of instruction (EMI) and the role of local languages in HE by a policy of parallel language use (Kuteeva, 2014), Lithuania’s internationalisation policies focused on the promotion of student and staff mobility as well as strengthening Lithuanian studies in foreign countries (Bulajeva & Hogan-Brun, 2014). The ratio of incoming to outgoing Erasmus+ programme students increased from 1:9.8 in academic year 2001– 2002 to 1:1.8 in 2015–2016 (Jakštys, 2016; MOSTA, 2012). Moreover, in their study of EMI programmes across Europe, Wächter and Maiworm (2014) listed Lithuania among the top ten countries in terms of the share of HE provided in English. An analysis of destination cities of European exchange students in 2012–2013 (Van Mol & Ekamper, 2016) listed Vilnius among the top 50 destination cities thus confirming Lithuania’s developing place on the map of exchange destinations. This chapter looks at Lithuania as a relatively young destination for international student mobility, focusing on data from one Lithuanian university. Internationalisation is among the university’s main strategic priorities. In 2018–2019, 631 incoming and outgoing students participated in study exchanges; France, Spain, Italy Turkey, Germany, and Portugal were the main provider countries (MRU, 2019). The university has developed a support system for incoming students, including pre- and post-arrival information services, an induction week, and a mentoring programme involving local student volunteers. Elective English and Lithuanian language classes are offered to incoming students. Though the main instructional language is Lithuanian, each faculty prepares a list of courses available in English. Moreover, the university has developed several degree programmes that are fully English-medium; in 2019, there were nine such programmes (MRU, 2019). Here we focus on experiences of incoming short-term exchange students (i.e. those sojourning for up to 12 months), and explore the following research questions: 1 2 3 4

What are the key motivations to join a short-term international mobility programme? How do students choose Lithuania as their destination country? How does the process of social integration happen during mobility? What are the main perceived gains?

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Literature Review Massey and Burrow (2012) found that short-term exchange students were motivated by “a very strong desire for a cross-cultural learning environment, followed by a distinctive academic opportunity, and finally, a unique social experience” (p. 50). Other studies have highlighted crosscultural learning, gaining new experiences and development of foreign language among key motivators (Caudery et al., 2008; Krzaklewska, 2008; Lesjak et al., 2015; Rodríguez González et al., 2011). Factors related to personal and professional development (Cairns et al., 2018), meeting new people and studying away from home (Lesjak et al., 2015) are also important. It is recognised that motivations of student mobility are multifaceted, and the process of choosing a destination is complex (Cairns et al., 2018; Massey & Burrow, 2012). Cost of living and distance remain relevant (Beine et al., 2014; Rodríguez González et al., 2011; Vossensteyn et al., 2010); Lesjak et al. (2015) find availability of natural attractions and sights, safety and security to be important characteristics of mobility destinations. Language is also an important factor, with sojourners preferring locations using major languages (Mikulás & Jitka, 2019; Rodríguez González et al., 2011). However, the increasing availability of EMI can increase the range of attractive destinations (Martin-Rubió & Cots, 2016). Numerous studies have revealed that, in general, mobility experiences are perceived positively in terms of cross-cultural learning, personal and professional development, foreign language development, development of international social networks, and future employability (Amendola & Restaino, 2017; Cairns et al., 2018; Hadis, 2005; Kalinauskaitė & Jonuškaitė, 2018; Vaicekauskas et al., 2013). However, long-term mobility has a more lasting impact on students than short-term mobility (Dwyer, 2004). Students may also experience a variety of challenges, including lack of social support, acculturative stress, lower well-being, language difficulties (Alharbi & Smith, 2018; Kalinauskaitė & Jonuškaitė, 2018; Rienties et al., 2014; Smith & Khawaja, 2011) or delays in graduating (Amendola & Restaino, 2017). Social and academic integration can have positive effects on students’ overall satisfaction with mobility (Merola et al., 2019). However, integration of exchange students into local communities may be limited because of lack of contacts with locals or lack of “a common language” (Dervin, 2009, p. 7), leading to segregation between domestic and international students (Arkoudis et al., 2019; Mas-Alcolea and Purroy, Chapter 5 this volume; Rienties et al., 2011). The study reported here sheds additional light on sojourners’ motivations, destination choice and integration challenges, from the perspective of a lesser-studied smaller destination country.

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Research Methodology The university under study conducts a continuous feedback survey of incoming students (i.e. an online questionnaire at the end of their stay), and data was thus available for a five-year period (2013 to 2017). The sample was self-selected as participation was voluntary. Among the 899 respondents, there were 45.5% male and 56.5% female students, evenly spread across different faculties. In this chapter, we focus on responses to two relevant questions from this questionnaire (see exact wording in the text below). We also conducted four focus group (FG) discussions (Barbour, 2007; Liamputtong, 2011) with short-term exchange students during their stay. For participant selection, we followed principles of voluntary participation and variety. Among the 32 participants there were 24 female and 8 male students aged from 18 to 26 (mean age = 21). The majority (n = 25) came for one study semester, others for two semesters (n = 6) (no data for one participant). Among the FG participants, we had students coming from 16 countries (19 participants from EU countries, and the rest coming from other European and Asian countries). Twenty-seven of the FG participants came from nine different study fields (all in social sciences and humanities); there were no study field data for the remaining five participants. The majority were bachelor level students (n = 25), and four were master level students (no data for three participants). We conducted FGs in English during November–December 2019, close to the end of the students’ exchange. All participants were provided with written informed consent forms clearly defining their role in the research, the principles of their participation and responsibilities of researchers. Following a flexible FG scenario (Gaižauskaitė, 2012), each discussion lasted 60–90 minutes, and all were audio-recorded and fully transcribed (resulting in a corpus of over 26,000 words). Qualitative analysis was carried out using an open-coding strategy (Benaquisto, 2008), coding meaningful segments of the transcribed texts, and further sorting them into emerging categories and themes (Hennink et al., 2011). The data presentation which follows is organised according to these themes and categories (in combination with the quantitative data where applicable). For example, under the theme of motivations for mobility, we identified the motivation category Experience a Change which includes subcategories Change of Living Environment, Change of Study Environment, and Change of Culture. However, in line with our qualitative approach, we do not present quantitative distributions of participants across categories. Our main aim was to identify the general range of responses rather than focus on or compare diverse groups of students. Our findings are supported with extracts from FG discussions. Where necessary, participants’ original utterances have been adjusted for

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readability (marked as inside the quotations, e.g., “I do not any Lithuanian friends” or < … > where material has been removed).

Findings Motivations for Short-Term Mobility Figure 7.1 presents findings from Survey Question 1, “Please tick the main reasons (up to 3) for participating in exchange programme.” The results reveal that the key mobility motivation was personal and general, i.e. to gain new experience. Other reasons (~40% of respondents) were linked to intercultural experience (getting to know a new culture and traditions, living in a foreign country), travel, and improving professional English language. Academic and professional motivations seemed to be less important, while learning Lithuanian language was considered by less than 5% of respondents. Among open-ended Other responses (n = 21), one-third indicated that their motivation was externally induced, i.e. SA was a compulsory requirement of their home study programme.

Figure 7.1 Pooled Responses (2013-2017) to Survey Question 1: “Please tick the main reasons (up to 3) for participating in exchange programme”

FG participants provided more in-depth insights into motivations for becoming exchange students.

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Experience a Change FGs revealed subcategories among the aspired changes or new experiences: CHANGE OF LIVING ENVIRONMENT

[1] I just wanted to change something. Place of my living for not long period. (FG3P9) CHANGE OF STUDY ENVIRONMENT

[2] I thought it would be nice to change environments for study. (FG2P2) CHANGE OF CULTURE

[3] I would like to live in something completely different. So, discover a new culture, < … > people completely different by me. (FG4 P2)

Improve English Language Although the feedback survey specified professional English, FG participants seemed to aspire to practise and improve their English in general, and this aspiration emerged repeatedly across the different FGs: [4] My expectation is to learn English because I’m not the real English speaker < … > So it’s coming here into the country is really good way to learn English. (FG1P10) Developing (International) Social Connections Meeting new people, and expanding the network of social connections, in particular internationally, was an important reason for short-term mobility. Independence and Self-Development Regarding independence as a motive for SA, participants mentioned willingness to experience challenges or go out of their comfort zone, as well as willingness to grow as a more self-dependent person. Some participants were hoping to clarify their future: [5] I just wanted to see if I was able to be out of my comfort zone. And I was lost with my studies and everything. So, Erasmus was my answer for my problem. (FG3P6) Travel Travel is generally expected from mobility, and some participants specified that an exchange programme made travelling easier. For example, for

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participants from non-European countries, getting a student visa was easier, and this allowed them to travel around for a relatively long period of time. Externally Induced Mobility For some students, the primary impetus came from external sources: MOBILITY AS A MANDATORY STUDY REQUIREMENT

Both FG discussions and the feedback survey confirmed that short-term mobility was obligatory for some students. However, such students would also introduce other motivations: [6] I have to do an Erasmus in my studies. < … > I’m not sad to have the experience < … > but it’s kind of involuntary. (FG3P5) IMPORTANT OTHERS

Encouragement of family, friends, or teachers was also mentioned. Usually this followed positive mobility experiences of important others, which promoted an interest in mobility among our participants: [7] My sister did Erasmus < … > and she told me I really needed to go for Erasmus because it’s really amazing experience and it’s really good for you, for your languages, for meeting friends, for traveling. (FG2P1)

Repeated Mobility Motivation for SA can stem from previous mobility experiences: [8] When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to study it for four months in . < … > it was a great experience for me and they said okay I can do it again < … > I had this opportunity and so I decided to go. (FG4 P2) “Random” Mobility FGs revealed cases when a student does not acknowledge any clear SA motivation: [9] Actually I’ve never thought about mobility. I don’t know why I’m here . But I am glad. I just took my documents to my home university and < … > I am just here. (FG3P4)

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Choosing Lithuania as a Destination Country We further explored students’ choice of Lithuania as their destination. Question 2 in the feedback survey offered a choice of “main reasons” for choosing the host institution, and respondents could select up to three of these. A majority of respondents indicated the possibility to study in English (59.8%); 35.7% indicated recommendations from the students who had formerly studied at , and 25.8% selected comparatively low level of cost of living. Almost half (46.9%) selected interested in the culture and history of Eastern European countries, which may indicate some interest in Lithuania as a country. However, FGs clarified that Lithuania as a destination country is not necessarily a motivated choice, and participants’ considerations included the following: Limited Mobility Options FG participants repeatedly reported that their home university or their study programme had limited options among exchange destinations. Lithuania also could be called a “consolation country,” accepted as the next available destination following a rejection from a Western European country. The data did not show that students who came to Lithuania were disappointed, but rather revealed another layer of decision-making: [10] And there were programmes that we have in our university < … > one of them we have in Germany, one of them in Lithuania. Had refused for Germany and now I am in Lithuania. (FG3P1) We found similar write-in responses in the feedback survey (Q2), e.g., Lithuania was a “second ‘safe’ option for me—new and not demanded destination”; “it was difficult to get to some Western country.” English Language Lithuania was appealing to students because of the availability of EMI programmes. During FGs, we found several aspects related to English language: NO REQUIREMENT FOR KNOWLEDGE OF LOCAL (I.E. LITHUANIAN) LANGUAGE

[11] < … > in my university I can choose Germany, France and Russia in Europe, and also Lithuania. But France, < … > I need to submit the French proof. And Germany also, I need to speak German and Russia, I also need to speak Russian. And Lithuania – English. So, I choose Lithuania. (FG3P3).

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NO REQUIREMENT OF OFFICIAL PROOF OF ENGLISH PROFICIENCY

[12] And also for other countries that our university < … > offered < … >, in Lithuania we didn’t need to make some tests, like IELTS and TOEFL. (FG3P9) AVAILABILITY OF A SPECIFIC STUDY PROGRAMME IN ENGLISH

[13] < … > just Lithuania, actually, for my case because it was the only university that has mind to speak English . (FG1P1)

A number (n = 14) of Other responses in the feedback survey (Q2) referred to the variety of courses in English, and/or to their compatibility with respondents’ main study programme. Some participants also considered Russian language when choosing Lithuania. For example, one participant believed that knowing Russian would make her stay in Lithuania easier: [14] Here a lot of people speak Russian. Maybe I thought that it will be more easier for me because I was really bad in English. (FG3P7) However, the Russian minority in Lithuania is relatively small (4.5% of the population: Oficialiosios Statistikos Portalas, 2020) and Lithuanian is the only official language. Thus, the usability of Russian is limited, which Russian-speaking FG participants (n = 6) also noticed during their stay. Distance from the Home Country For some participants, the long distance from the home country was an advantage of Lithuania, whereas for others, proximity was an advantage: [15] And it’s far from Portugal. So, I choose Lithuania . (FG3P6) [16] I chose Lithuania because it’s near from . (FG2P6) Cost of Living Participants consider Lithuania as a country with a lower cost of living compared to other destinations: [17] And it’s cheap compared to Germany or … Denmark. (FG3P2) Recommendation Other students’ mobility experiences can influence the decision: [18] And my brother actually did Erasmus last year here < … > in Vilnius. And I visit him and I love the city. So, I definitely choose Vilnius. (FG3P6)

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Interest in Lithuania or the Region FG discussions showed that typically participants did not have clear knowledge about Lithuania when choosing their destination. However, we could distinguish three types of participants based on how (lack of) knowledge shaped their decision-making: participants who had a specific interest in Lithuania or the region, participants whose motivation was curiosity about the unknown [extract 19] (perhaps based on knowledge about Lithuania’s past in the Soviet Union, and as a relatively new country in the European Union: [20]), and participants who simply lacked knowledge about the country [21]: [19] And I would like to go to something completely different. So, discover a new culture, thinking, < … > people completely different by me. And so I said, okay Lithuania could be a good choice. And I did not know anything about this country < … > I know that it exists, but I don’t know where. (FG4P2) [20] I know that < … > it is in Europe, and I know that < … > it was under the < … > Soviet Union, but I was not sure about what I was going to do, you know, like I didn’t have idea about the people, the traditions of this country. (FG4P2) [21] I never imagine going to be in Lithuania in my life. So, I didn’t know anything about it. (FG1P6) Social and Academic (Non)Integration FGs confirmed that students experienced barriers to integration within the university as well as local communities (see Figure 7.2). Their social networks mainly consisted of other international students with few Lithuanian ties. During discussions, students initially said they had met “a lot of” new friends; however, when asked specifically about Lithuanian friends, the mentions were “one,” “two,” “I don’t have Lithuanian friends,” etc. Making friends with Lithuanians was frequently described as “impossible,” “not possible,” “hard.” Some participants expressed disappointment: [22] I thought I would be more outside of the Erasmus bubble. < … > I kind of wanted to make some Lithuanian friends < … > That didn’t happen. (FG3P5) Local (Lithuanian) Students Curriculum design was a barrier to academic and social integration with local students, as was their limited interest in international students: [23] < … > all of my courses are only Erasmus people. . < … > ok, maybe there’s one course where there’s one Lithuanian person. (FG3P6)

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Figure 7.2 Social and Academic Integration of International Students Into Different Social and Academic Communities

[24] The same. I do not any Lithuanian friends. In my class < … > I have like Lithuanian people, so we speak; but they stay with Lithuanian, not with Erasmus students. (FG3P6) Some participants described diverse experiences with local student mentors: [25] Actually, yes . I have a Lithuanian friend because of … she is my mentor. And she < … > teaches a lot every day. Even yesterday. We went to Lithuanian restaurant and we taste everything. Like the pink soap. Again . Cepelini, everything. And it’s good to know . (FG3P6) [26] Because I have no Lithuanian friends or … Like, okay, I have one mentor but like we see each other once a month … < … > and that’s it. And yeah, like I have no access to the … to the culture. (FG3P8) International Students Academic and social integration with other international students was much more successful: [27] But sometimes I don’t really feel like a part of Lithuania. I feel more a part of like < … > Erasmus group here. (FG2P3)

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Academic Staff Participants reported in FGs that international students experienced a level of academic integration with their teachers. Because of smaller numbers of students than in their home universities and differences in teaching culture, they were able to form closer academic relationships with their teachers: [28] The professors that I have so far, they are actually accessible to work with. (FG2P4) Local Community Beyond the university, the social and linguistic characteristics of Lithuanians were perceived as barriers to social integration. SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS

Lithuanian people were frequently referred to as “cold,” “distant,” “closed,” “grumpy,” “not smiling,” “distanced,” etc. Though such impressions were repeated across FGs and participants, students from Southern European countries expressed their feeling in a stronger manner, e.g. as a “shock,” whereas some Japanese participants said they did not feel a big difference, that the culture of social interaction was similar to Japan or even that young people were more friendly in Lithuania than Japan. Sojourners reported different strategies when dealing with perceived social “delimitation”: either they invested effort to try to overcome the barrier, or they mostly interacted with other international people. Some students were more proactive, however, and tried to learn and use Lithuanian language: [29] I have one cashier at the and < … > when I’m there with my family always talking English and she’s like … She was just sitting there and just doing the , registered the product. And then when I started learning this Lithuanian, I was just talking to her in Lithuanian. And now she just … every time I come she has the biggest smile ever < … > It’s like really like warms my heart. (FG4P1) LINGUISTIC CHARACTERISTICS

Lithuanian is not related to other European languages (except for Latvian), and it is seen as a “hard language” to learn (US Department of State, n.d.). This means that students who come for short-term mobility most probably do not speak any Lithuanian upon arrival, and are unlikely to learn the language fast enough during SA to be able to speak efficiently. Thus, they have to rely on the knowledge of foreign languages (primarily English) among local people in order to communicate efficiently in their everyday life.

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However, participants experienced a variety of situations where they were not able to use English with local people: [30] I don’t know, like okay, in the shop I have to think … find the things for myself because the people from the shop cannot help me . (FG3P9) Some participants expressed a rather strong expectation that everyone should be able to speak English. This belief may also have strengthened linguistic and consequently social distance between international students and the local community. The Role of Languages during Mobility in Lithuania Three languages were linked in FG discussions to students’ motivations, expectations, and experiences in Lithuania, namely, Lithuanian, English, and Russian. Lithuanian Lithuanian played a minor role among the motivations for choosing Lithuania as exchange destination, and there was limited interest in learning it during SA. The participants who chose to attend Lithuanian language courses (one or two in each FG) did so for pragmatic reasons (e.g. their home university required them to learn a local language, they thought the basics of the language would be useful in everyday life, or because credits for Lithuanian classes contributed to their SA study plan) rather than because of a strong interest in language or culture. The main reasons limiting students’ motivation to learn Lithuanian language were academic or linguistic. Academic reasons included cases where the home university did not give credits for local language classes, unavailability of language classes at suitable times or simply the desire to concentrate on more academic content: [31] According to my study plan from my university I don’t need to choose any languages < … > I am just pay more attention for my < … > specialisation. (FG3P10) Linguistic limitations stemmed from the fact that mobility students already had to adjust to a changed linguistic environment involving EMI, and thus, they did not want to start learning one more foreign language. English Improving their English was among sojourners’ primary motivations. However, like other studies (Dewey, 2007; Pinar, 2016), our research showed that

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improvement in English did not happen automatically. Though participants mostly agreed that English was the main language used in the study environment and daily interactions among international students, they also commented on how interaction with co-nationals may prevent improvement in English. Thus, some students proactively shaped their English-speaking social environment: [32] < … > I really wanted to improve it . But < … > A lot of French are here. < … > So I was escaping to not speak French with them. So yes, I can say that I improved my English, but I think it’s not for everyone. I mean people are staying with people from their home countries. (FG3P8) Russian Those participants who had Russian as their mother tongue or knew Russian, considered it to be a useful language in Lithuania. Though Russian does not have any official status in Lithuania, the country was still associated with Russian, mostly because of its Soviet past. One participant said she tried to learn Russian before coming to Lithuania as she believed that Russian was common in all former Soviet countries. However, participants who knew Russian could be cautious about using it: [33] I knew that Lithuanian people speak Russian. But I didn’t know is it ok for Lithuanian people to speak Russian. So in some shops in the first months I didn’t know which language should I speak. English or Russian or … . (FG3P1) Another participant noticed age-related differences: [34] But I noticed that younger generation speaks English. < … > But older ones Russian. So you need two . See their age . (FG3P7) Gains through Short-Term International Mobility The perceived gains mainly corresponded to participants’ motivations for mobility, and largely reflected gains reported in the general international literature. They repeatedly mentioned the development of a network of international friends, the experience of an independent life away from home, and increased self-confidence, adaptability, and resilience. The opportunity for real-life practice of English language was among the predominant benefits perceived by participants. Some participants also reflected they had overestimated their level of English before arriving; overall, most FG participants mentioned gains in English as their key achievement during mobility:

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[35] I think I improve my English cause in we study English just for examination and just reading, listening, writing and … < … > Speaking – no. But here I speak English a lot. So, yeah. (FG4P3) The opportunity to reflect on future plans was another important mobility gain, for example, to decide what or where to study in the future. For some participants, SA was clearly a step toward longer-term mobility (cf. Tyne and Ruspini, Chapter 2 this volume). However, some others (despite positive mobility experiences) reconsidered their options at home and decided to continue studying there instead of going abroad again. Participants also reflected that mobility had made them more open, and more sensitive towards cultural differences. They felt they had learned to interact with diverse people, learned more about other cultures, and became more confident with intercultural interactions and communication. However, these reflections were not focused on Lithuania. Similarly, while participants reported quite extensive travels during SA, it seemed that these did not centre within Lithuania. Instead, they considered Lithuania as a good base to easily visit the region. One participant reflected on missed chances to travel around Lithuania, but reported an impressive regional travel experience: [36] Maybe I didn’t travel a lot for … Lithuania. Because I wanted to go to Kaunas and Palanga. But weather wasn’t so good and < … > every time something happened. < … > I’ve already visited 10 countries < … > Baltic countries, Belarus, Germany, Poland, Austria, Slovakia, Finland, Norway. (FG3P1)

Conclusions The study has shown that primary motivations for student mobility to Lithuania are similar to those found in other studies (Caudery et al., 2008; Krzaklewska, 2008; Lesjak et al., 2015; Massey & Burrow, 2012; Rodríguez González et al., 2011): gaining new experiences and living a change; improving English language; and different aspects of cross-cultural learning. Forming new social connections and personal development were also important, while academic and professional development were by comparison left in the background. Both survey data and FG discussions showed that a number of students who came to Lithuania were also motivated to travel in the wider region. Compulsory mobility also played a role; it is worth further exploring its implications for students’ perceptions of their mobility experiences. (See further discussion of compulsory programmes in Chapters 10, 11, and 15.) Our study has shown that SA in Lithuania is primarily attractive because of the availability of a variety of courses taught through English. Moreover, incoming students are not required to have Lithuanian language knowledge, and

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for some participants this was among the deciding factors. In line with the findings of Beine et al. (2014) and others, cost of living and distance from home country are also considered when choosing the destination country. Lithuania can be attractive because of a relatively low cost of living (as perceived by some participants). However, considerations about distance were rather contradictory: for some, proximity was important whereas others chose Lithuania because it was the most distant destination. It is noteworthy that FG participants also considered “cultural distance.” Students from Western European countries (e.g. Portugal, Italy) perceived Lithuania as “culturally different” mostly because of associations with the Soviet past. However, participants from former Soviet Union states (e.g. Russia, Ukraine) maintained a perception that Lithuanian would be culturally similar, thus making the SA experience easier. Finally, some students had not made a motivated choice, but were in Lithuania because of a lack of exchange agreements with other countries, because their study subjects were available in English only at the university under study, or because placements in their first-choice countries were not available. In general, Lithuania as a destination country was mostly pragmatically defined and a rather “blind” decision for many of our FG participants. They had little knowledge about the country before mobility, some of which could also be misleading (e.g. an expectation of using Russian as a daily communication language). These findings could be useful when preparing pre-arrival information packages to better inform exchange students not only about academic matters but also about the country itself, which could potentially reduce difficulties upon arrival. While English was an important motivator, Lithuanian, on the contrary, did not play a major role as an attracting factor prior to mobility. Although there were participants who attended Lithuanian language classes, they did so because of pragmatic considerations rather than interest in the language. Lithuanian could be more attractive if these classes were more compatible with students’ main studies (e.g. if credits for these classes were accepted in the exchange study plan). The international student “bubble” effect (Cairns et al., 2018) was manifest in our study. Social and academic integration of short-term mobility students was restricted to the international student community, and they perceived academic, social, and linguistic barriers to integration with local communities. Here, the student mentoring programme could be an effective solution if further developed; a closer relationship with a mentor provided one exchange student with a sense of inclusion into the local community. Curriculum design changes, or revision of instructional methods, may also be needed to foster integration of local and exchange students in the academic setting. Nonetheless, participants expressed highly positive dispositions about their mobility experience, assessing it as “amazing,” “great,” “best choice of my life” or “the best experiences of my life” (as commonly found in other studies, e.g. Kalinauskaitė & Jonuškaitė, 2018). The gains from the mobility experience corresponded to the motivations. Development of international

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social connections, gains in English language, intercultural competence, and personal development were among the key perceived gains. Our study showed that Lithuania is similar to other destinations from the perspective of student motivations and exchange experiences, even though it is a relatively new, linguistically and in some regards culturally distinct destination. Though the primary motivations are not directly related to Lithuanian language and country, a clearer focus on pull factors can be beneficial for the development of incoming student flows. However, social and academic integration into local communities needs more attention to increase the quality of the exchange for all (including the local community) and potentially foster destination loyalty.

References Alharbi, E. S. & Smith, A. P. (2018). Review of the literature on stress and wellbeing of international students in English-speaking countries. International Education Studies, 11(6), 22–44. https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v11n6p22 Amendola, A., & Restaino, M. (2017). An evaluation study on students’ international mobility experience. Quality and Quantity, 51, 525–544. https://doi.org/10. 1007/s11135-016-0421-3 Arkoudis, S., Dollinger, M., Baik, C., & Patience, A. (2019). International students’ experience in Australian higher education: Can we do better? Higher Education, 77, 799–813. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0302-x Barbour, R. (2007). Qualitative research kit: Doing focus groups. Sage. https://doi. org/10.4135/9781849208956 Beine, M., Noël, R., & Ragot, L. (2014). Determinants of the international mobility of students. Economics of Education Review, 41, 40–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. econedurev.2014.03.003 Benaquisto, L. (2008). Open coding. In L. M. Given (Ed.), The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 582). Sage. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/ 9781412963909 Bulajeva, T., & Hogan-Brun, G. (2014). Internationalisation of higher education and nation building: Resolving language policy dilemmas in Lithuania. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(4), 318–331. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01434632.2013.874431 Cairns, D., Krzaklewska, E., Cuzzocrea, V., & Allaste, A. A. (Eds.) (2018). Mobility, education and employability in the European Union: Inside Erasmus. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76926-4 Caudery, T., Petersen, M., & Shaw, P. (2008). The motivations of exchange students at Scandinavian universities. In M. Byram, & F. Dervin (Eds.), Students, staff and academic mobility in higher education (pp. 114–130). Cambridge Scholars Press. Cots, J. M., Llurda, E., & Garrett, P. (2014). Language policies and practices in the internationalisation of higher education on the European margins: An introduction. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(4), 311–317. https://doi. org/10.1080/01434632.2013.874430 Department of Lithuanian Studies. (n.d.). The Lithuanian language. www.lsk.flf.vu. lt/en/department/courses/lithuanian-language/

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Dervin, F. (2009). The Others as impediments to “integration” into Finnish society: The case of exchange students in higher education. Research on Finnish Society, 2, 19–27. www.finnresearch.fi/5_dervin_2009.pdf Dewey, D. P. (2007). Language learning during study abroad: What we know and what we have yet to learn. Japanese Language and Literature, 41(2), 245–269. https://doi. org/10.2307/30198037 Dwyer, M. M. (2004). More is better: The impact of study abroad program duration. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 10, 151–163. https://doi. org/10.36366/frontiers.v10i1.139 Gaižauskaitė, I. (2012). The use of the focus group method in social work research. Social Work: Academic Papers, 11(1), 19–30. https://www3.mruni.eu/ojs/socia l-work/article/view/503/466 Hadis, B. F. (2005). Why are they better students when they come back? Determinants of academic focusing gains in the study abroad experience. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 11, 57–70. https://doi.org/10.36366/ frontiers.v11i1.151 Hennink, M., Hutter, I., & Bailey, A. (2011). Qualitative research methods. Sage. Hudzik, J. K. (2011). Comprehensive internationalization: From concept to action. Association of International Educators. http://ecahe.eu/w/images/1/1f/Comprehen sive_Internationalization_-_NAFSA.pdf Jakštys, R. (2016). Lietuvos švietimas skaicˇ iais 2016. Studijos [Lithuanian education in numbers 2016. Studies]. MOSTA. https://strata.gov.lt/images/leidiniai/Lietuvos_ svietimas_skaiciais_2016_Studijos.pdf Kalinauskaitė, R., & Jonuškaitė, G. (2018). Erasmus+ impact on participants of higher education and vocational education and training [Report]. Švietimo mainų paramos fondas [Education Exchanges Support Foundation]. Krzaklewska, E. (2008). Why study abroad? An analysis of Erasmus students’ motivations. In M. Byram, & F. Dervin (Eds.), Students, staff and academic mobility in higher education (pp. 82–98). Cambridge Scholars Press. Kuteeva, M. (2014). The parallel language use of Swedish and English: The question of “nativeness” in university policies and practices. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(4), 332–344, https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2013.874432 Lesjak, M., Juvan, E., Ineson, E. M., Yap, M. H. T., & Axelsson, E. P. (2015). Erasmus student motivation: Why and where to go? Higher Education, 70, 845–865. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10734-015-9871-0 Liamputtong, P. (2011). Focus group methodology: Principles and practice. Sage. http s://doi.org/10.4135/9781473957657 Martin-Rubió, X., & Cots, J. M. (2016). Englishisation at a global space: Students and staff making sense of language choices. Language and Intercultural Communication, 16(3), 402–417. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2016.1168051 Massey, J., & Burrow, J. (2012). Coming to Canada to study: Factors that influence students’ decisions to participate in international exchange. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, 49(1), 83–100. https://doi.org/10.1515/jsarp-2012-6177 Merola, R. H., Coelen, R. J., & Hofman, W. H. A. (2019). The role of integration in understanding differences in satisfaction among Chinese, Indian, and South Korean international students. Journal of Studies in International Education, 23(5), 535–553. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315319861355

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Mikulás, J., & Jitka, S. (2019). Statistical analysis of study abroad experiences of international students in five major host countries of Europe. Journal of International Students, 9(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v9i1.262 MOSTA. (2012). Lietuvos švietimas skaicˇ iais 2012. Studijos [Lithuanian education in numbers 2012. Studies]. https://strata.gov.lt/images/documents/stebesena/studijos/ lietuvos_svietimas_skaiciais_2012_studijos.pdf MRU. (2019). Mykolo Romerio universitetas [Annual report]. https://www.mruni. eu/mru_lt_dokumentai/apie_mru/dokumentai/2019_mru_veiklos_ataskaita.pdf Oficialiosios Statistikos Portalas [Official Statistics Portal]. (2020). Lietuvos gyventojai (2020m. leidimas). Gyventojų skaicˇ ius ir sudėtis [Lithuanian population (edition 2020). Population and its composition]. https://osp.stat.gov.lt/lietuvos-gyventoja i-2020/salies-gyventojai/gyventoju-skaicius-ir-sudetis Oliveira, A. L., & Freitas, M. E. (2016). Motivations for international academic mobility: The perspective of university students and professors. Educação em Revista, 32(3), 217–246. https://doi.org/10.1590/0102-4698148237 Pinar, A. (2016). Second language acquisition in a study abroad context: Findings and research directions. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 18(2), 83–94. http:// dx.doi.org/10.14483/calj.v18n2.9204 Rienties B., Grohnert T., Kommers P., Niemantsverdriet S., & Nijhuis J. (2011). Academic and social integration of international and local students at five business schools: A cross-institutional comparison. In P. Van den Bossche, W. Gijselaers, & P. Milter (Eds.), Building learning experiences in a changing world: Advances in business education and training (Vol. 3, pp. 121–137). Springer. https://doi.org/10. 1007/978-94-007-0802-0_8 Rienties, B., Luchoomun, D., & Tempelaar, D. (2014). Academic and social integration of master students: A cross-institutional comparison between Dutch and international students. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51(2), 130–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2013.771973 Rodríguez González, C., Bustillo Mesanza, R., & Mariel, P. (2011). The determinants of international student mobility flows: An empirical study on the Erasmus programme. Higher Education, 62, 413–430. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9396-5 Smith, R. A., & Khawaja, N. G. (2011). A review of the acculturation experiences of international students. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 35(6), 699–713. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2011.08.004 Švietimo mainų paramos fondas [Education Exchanges Support Foundation]. (2017, 13 February). Lietuva kartu su visa Europa švencˇ ia programos Erasmus+ 30-metį [Together with the whole Europe, Lithuania celebrates the 30th anniversary of Erasmus+ program]. https://www.smpf.lt/lt/lietuva-kartu-su-visa-europa-svencia -programos-erasmus-30-meti/ US Department of State. (n.d.). Foreign Language Training. https://www.state.gov/ foreign-language-training/ Vaicekauskas, T., Duoba, K., & Kumpikaite-Valiuniene, V. (2013). The role of international mobility in students’ core competences development. Economics and Management, 18(4), 847–856. https://doi.org/10.5755/j01.em.18.4.5686 Van Mol, C., & Ekamper, P. (2016). Destination cities of European exchange students. Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 116(1), 85–91. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00167223.2015.1136229 Vossensteyn, H., Beerkens, M., Cremonini, L., Besançon, B., Focken, N., Leurs, B., McCoshan, A., Mozuraityte, N., Huisman, J., Otero, M. S., Bótas, P. C. P., & de

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Wit, H. (2010). Improving the participation in the ERASMUS programme. Directorate-General for Internal Policies of the European Parliament. https://www.europa rl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=IPOL-CULT_ET(2010)438603 Wächter, B., & Maiworm, F. (Eds.). (2014). English-taught programmes in European higher education. The state of play in 2014. Lemmens Medien GmbH. https:// www.lemmens.de/dateien/medien/buecher-ebooks/aca/2014_english_taught.pdf Želvys, R. (2006). Internacionalizacijos iššu-kiai Lietuvos aukštajam mokslui [The challenges of internationalization for Lithuanian higher education]. Acta Pedagogica Vilnensia, 17, 140–146. https://doi.org/10.15388/ActPaed.2006.17.9693

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Peer Interactions and Second Language Learning The Contributions of Social Network Analysis in Study Abroad versus At-Home Environments Michał B. Paradowski, Andrzej Jarynowski, Karolina Czopek and Magdalena Jelin´ska

Introduction Social networks play a vital role in individuals’ achievement, including second language acquisition (SLA). While the importance of learners’ social network configuration has been recognised by many study abroad (SA) researchers, and some studies have attempted to recreate students’ social networks as graphs, so far few have operationalised the interaction networks in a quantifiable manner that would allow measuring their influence on L2 progress. Unlike studies focusing on the micro level of individual participants’ ego networks (e.g. Dewey et al., 2012, 2013; Zappa-Hollman & Duff, 2015; Gautier, 2019), we show how and why peer learner networks can be examined in their entirety. This approach permits two levels of analysis: individual contacts (micro level) and the whole network structure (meso level). SA student networks may provide many opportunities for out-of-class communication in the target language (TL, L2), with intensive, contextualised input and “pushed output” (Fernández-García & MartínezArbelaiz, 2014), but the high degree of variation in L2 progress reported in existing studies (e.g. Kinginger, 2009; Isabelli-García et al., 2018) calls for closer investigation into the interactional behaviours favouring or inhibiting L2 development. In this chapter we demonstrate how the computational and anthropological tools of Social Network Analysis (SNA) can contribute to the understanding of the influence of peer interaction dynamics and social graph topology (structure of the network) on measurable outcomes among SA sojourners in comparison to stay-at-home students. In particular, we focus on the moderating role of the social network (mesoscopic explanatory variable)—in turn influenced by engagement with the TL culture (macroscopic explanatory variable)1—on L2 progress (microscopic response variable).

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Networks and Learner Behaviour Learning from a social network perspective is perceived as a social and collective outcome of conversations, shared practices, and interpersonal connections (Brown & Duguid, 1991). Learners, embedded in such networks, share and actively construct knowledge through ongoing exchanges and collaborations (Cohen & Prusak, 2001). Peer networks also remain an important source of community support (Pinquart & Sörensen, 2000; Zhu et al., 2013). Scientific interest in the relationships between learners in a group and the repercussions thereof led to the development of research methods that could recreate the makeup of the group. In the 1930s, Moreno (1934, 1937) laid the foundations of sociometry, a method of reconstructing group structure through information on different types of relationships between the members, such as amity, trust, or popularity. Later, researchers supplemented sociometric enquiry with graph theory accompanied by mathematical and statistical indices. In this way classical sociometric study evolved into computational analyses of student networks (Wasserman & Faust, 1994), allowing for example for investigations of the influence of classroom networks on learning outcomes.

Social Network Analysis A social network is a way of representing various kinds of relationships or dependencies (depicted in the form of links/edges;2 Jarynowski et al., 2019) between persons (actors/agents, rendered as nodes), for instance learners. Networks can be ego-centric (Lizardo, 2017), when a respondent is only asked about her/his contacts (alters), or net-centric sociograms (complete networks), which are the combination of several ego networks and thus also include alter-alter links (see Figure 8.1). In this chapter, we focus on the full network approach, because such networks of interactions of individuals over time allow for a better apprehension of processes such as SLA. We are also primarily concerned with networks consisting of the students themselves, who are the most important network members within study groups. However, other significant stakeholders such as teachers, partners, family, and friends may also need to be taken into account. Networks are usually considered from the perspective of functional and structural social theories. In the former, networks form and evolve to play roles in society, and of greatest interest are the processes taking place through them, such as language acquisition; in the latter, networks are the outcome of social acts, and they (the networks) themselves are the most important. Social networks representing different roles combine to form multilayered structures (multilayer/multicontext networks). Temporal Networks and Their Evolution Most SLA researchers use static projections of networks. However, social networks are temporal objects and evolve in terms of both links and nodes.

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Figure 8.1 Interactions in One Class Group of Students Learning Polish in an Intensive Summer Course Note: Link thickness (weight) reflects interaction frequency. Arrows reflect direction of interactions, whether incoming or outgoing.

It is possible to analyse students’ longitudinal networks in a series of snapshots. In the case of SLA, usually each student community forms in phases (initiation, early and late stages). For example, initially any two people who know each other form a dyad. In this first phase many new links form. In the early stage the network is consolidating and triangle closure (structural balance) processes take place (if person A is connected with B and with C, it is likely that persons B and C will also form a link in the future). In the late stage, group members may join or leave, but the dynamics are much slower. At each stage of their evolution, networks can be described by their density, which counts the fraction of observed links out of all the possible links (in a hypothetical fully connected graph, where everybody would be connected to everybody else). Well-connected groups tend to be more efficient at solving team tasks (Simon et al., 2015).

Methods and Measures Computational SNA Ego-network information, which for us is only the first step in recreating the connected social graph, can be collected using a number of techniques: picking contacts (alters) from a list provided, annotating contacts from memory, or drawing the contact network by placing alters on circles of intimacy. The most popular form of annotating interactions between study participants is a paperand-pencil self-reported survey, which usually yields a directed weighted

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network. Such a network contains information about the direction of the interaction, i.e. whether it is a one- or two-way relationship, together with the intensity (weight) of this interaction. Recent years have witnessed an increased application of Internet-based self-report surveys. Network Properties: Centrality and Community Structure Gauging the importance of nodes (e.g. persons) with respect to the number and weight of links to others as well as the particular structure of those linkages is possible owing to a battery of measures referred to as network centralities, which can influence actor (person) attributes such as test achievement (e.g. Grunspan et al., 2014). The most commonly applied centrality measures are (see Table 8.1):





(Weighted, Out-/In-) Degree Centrality: The number of a node’s outgoing, incoming, or overall links (with weights); Closeness Centrality: The node’s average inverse distance to all other nodes, reflecting so-called structural centrality; Betweenness (Mediating/Flow) Centrality: The number of times a node lies on the shortest path between other nodes, gauging the importance of a given node in information flow; PageRank Centrality: A score based on a node’s connections and these connections’ connections. It calculates the importance of a node based on the importance of its alters. It is relatively well-known because the algorithm was used by Google to order search results.

With the exception of Betweenness, links can be weighted and directed. Very often, most of the nodes can form a coherent subgraph (the giant component), Table 8.1 Most Commonly Used Centrality Measures Exemplified on Data from a Karate Club Network (After: Zachary, 1977: Node sizes and values correspond to the given centrality) Degree

Betweenness

Closeness

PageRank

Out: number of links to alters In: number of links from alters All: sum of out+in

Number of times the node lies on the shortest path between other nodes

Inverse distance of the node to all others

Number of links to the node weighted by attraction and centrality of linkers

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or fall into separate components, in which the nodes are connected to one another. The most central nodes lie in the core and the least central ones on the periphery of the network. Apart from centrality metrics, nodes can also be assigned different roles and positions (Ferligoj et al., 2014). A Hub is (one of) the most central node(s), a Star has many incoming links, a Bridge is a node linking various communities, a Broker has high betweenness, while Leaves are peripheral (connected to the rest of the network only by single links). Persons/nodes may be grouped in different ways. A dyad is a pair of nodes connected only with each other; a triangle (2-triangle … n-triangle) is a situation where two nodes A and B share the same friend C (and so on), a clique or cluster is a group of nodes where everybody is connected with everybody else, and a community (Fortunato, 2010) is a subset of the network such that links among member nodes occur more often than links with the rest of the network. Qualitative (Mixed-Methods) SNA As part of the general debate concerning the value of mixed-methods research, the potential of combining qualitative and quantitative methods has also been advocated in network research (Crossley, 2010; Edwards, 2010). Network structure, which is the main concern in quantitative SNA, provides limited information on the dynamics and variability of network ties, or on how these ties are conceptualised by the research participants. Therefore, the study presented in this chapter employs a mixed methodology. The most common qualitative methods in SNA include ethnography and in-depth interviews. The former was used for instance by Bott (1957) to study family networks, and the latter by Heath and colleagues (2009) to investigate whether decisions about (non)participation in higher education may be influenced by networks of family and friends. Qualitative SNA also developed more specific network-related tools, such as participatory mapping, where the participant is asked to draw the ego-network directly (Emmel, 2008), and walking interviews, in which the participant walks the researcher around their neighbourhood, offering insight into the spatiality of their network (Emmel & Clark, 2009). Anthropological perspectives also make use of focus groups as well as different types of observation.

Social Networks and L2 Acquisition in the Context of Study Abroad Social network influence seems particularly consequential in the context of SLA, especially in SA. Immersion in the target culture is thought to provide favourable conditions for advancing L2 development, as it increases opportunities for interaction and hopefully L2 use with both L1 speakers and other TL users (J. A. Coleman, 2015; McManus, 2019), leading to enhanced oral proficiency (Freed et al., 2004; Isabelli-García, 2006) and fostering the acquisition of sociolinguistic and sociocultural knowledge (Freed, 1995).

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Research has provided insight into the types of social networks learners engage in while abroad and, consequently, the types of input available to them (Dewey et al., 2012; McManus et al., 2014; Gautier & Chevrot, 2015; Dewey, 2017; McManus, 2019), as well as the relationship between social networks and L2 acquisition (Baker-Smemoe et al., 2014; Mitchell et al., 2017). Fraser (2002) and Whitworth (2006) indicated that learners who participate in various social activities during SA such as football teams, internships, music bands, etc. demonstrate further progress in L2 than those limiting their interactions to instructional settings. Dewey and colleagues (2012, 2013) indicated that SA participants who are involved in a wider variety of social activities through L2 have better-developed social networks and become more proficient. Baker-Smemoe and colleagues (2014) similarly found greater language development among learners who are members of many different social groups and have closer relationships with expert users of TL. The development of more extensive social networks (and subsequently greater progress in L2) in turn seems to be observed among learners with higher motivation (Isabelli-García, 2006, 2010).3 Thus, existing studies indicate that social networks may play an important role in promoting L2 use and L2 gains. However, despite the interest among SLA and SA scholars, these studies focus mainly on communication with host families and other members of the local culture, and do not operationalise the contacts in a way that would allow for a reconstruction of the connected, directed social graph and subsequent computational analyses of the impact of its structure and interaction dynamics on language development. While the social network measures hitherto applied in published studies do sometimes allow visualising the ego networks of the participants, they again do not attempt to recreate the connected social graph, so that the ego networks obtained are necessarily undirected, and tend to only look at L2 interactants. Zappa-Hollman and Duff (2015) offered an elegant visualisation of the individual network of practice of a Mexican student in Canada, but the relationships were neither quantified nor broken down into individual interactions. Sabawi and Yıldız’s (2015) sample (n = 11) was too modest to allow statistically significant conclusions, and only looked at each student’s contacts without reconstructing the graph of relations or applying a computational network analysis. Recently, Gautier (2019) adopted a longitudinal approach with three data collection points in a study of language learners in France, using measures such as density and centrality as well as cluster analysis, but again looking at undirected and unweighted graphs. More in-depth investigation combining quantitative and qualitative research methods is needed to fully explain the nature of social network influence on L2 progress during SA (Dewey et al., 2012; Isabelli-García et al., 2018; Borràs & Llanes, 2019). In the following sections we illustrate how an SNA approach can contribute to the understanding of the influence of peer outof-class interaction dynamics and social network topology (structure) on measurable outcomes among SA sojourners in comparison to stay-at-home students.

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An Illustrative Study In what follows, we illustrate the potential of the above-discussed methodology of computational (quantitative) and anthropological (qualitative) SNA in investigating the moderating role of the social network in L2 progress. The selected findings reported in this chapter constitute part of a broader research project carried out among students observed in two contexts: SA and at-home (AH) (see Paradowski et al., 2021). For an overview of the project see Table 8.2. The former group consisted of 332 learners of Polish as L2 during two different (2017 and 2019) 4-week-long intensive summer courses taught in Warsaw, Poland. The courses offered 15 class-hours per week, plus 45 hours per week of extracurricular activities (e.g. film screenings, translation workshops, lectures, or board games). The participants were grouped in classes according to TL entry level, from A0 to C1. The AH cohort consisted of 40 first-year students of an Applied Linguistics undergraduate programme at a large public university in Table 8.2 Study Sample and Measures SA Context

At-Home Context

Population

332 international students following an intensive 4-week summer course in Polish; two different years 13 teachers of Polish

Sociometric Characteristics

53% female Mean age: 27 Main L1s: German 15.4%, Chinese 10.2%, Russian 8.4%, English 6.6%, Georgian 3.9% Motivation: studying in Poland 31%, interests 18.1%, family reasons 13%, work 11.7%

Quantitative Measures

332 questionnaires identifying individual ego-networks and measuring the influence of personality and group factors on language attainment 193 pre- and posttests of students’ TL competence

Qualitative Measures

9 interviews with course participants 13 interviews with course teachers

23 first-year undergraduate Applied Linguistics students majoring in Japanese (JA); 17 first-year undergraduate Applied Linguistics students majoring in Swedish (SV); 2 teachers of Swedish 80% female Mean age: JA majors: 20;8; SV majors: 20;2 L1s: Polish 92% (other: Ukrainian, French, Russian, Czech, English) Motivation: interests 42%, available study minor 17%, TL culture 15% 40 questionnaires identifying individual ego-networks and measuring the influence of personality and group factors on language attainment (including 23 in a longitudinal format) TL competence throughout and at academic year end 7 interviews with course participants Focus group interview 2 interviews with course teachers

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Poland. The programme includes a first foreign language (English, French, Spanish, German, or Russian) and a second foreign language (English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Swedish, Japanese, or Polish Sign Language). The groups chosen for the study were learning Japanese (23 students) and Swedish (17 students) as FL2 with ten 45-minute classes per week. At the moment of conducting the research, after one year of classes, the participants’ TL level had increased roughly from A0 to B1. Quantitative data was obtained via questionnaires distributed at the end of the course (for SA participants), or at the end of the academic year (for AH participants). The questionnaire was designed to measure the influence of individual and group factors on language outcomes and included items concerning communication in different (out-of-class) contexts and languages as well as psychosocial variables. The participants were also asked to fill in a proprietary ego-network questionnaire, where they declared the direction, intensity, and language(s) of communication with every other group member. Participants’ entry and final grades and tests4 were utilised to measure L2 progress. The data were coded into an SPSS spreadsheet. Statistical (multiple and single regressions, correlations, multidimensional scaling, etc.) and network analyses were conducted in R and the igraph package. The main method of qualitative enquiry employed was semi-structured interviews. These were conducted with both SA (nine individual interviews) and AH students (seven individual interviews, four focus group participants). The SA interviewees were all from the 2019 cohort, from varied national backgrounds; their TL levels ranged from A1 to C1. At their request, seven interviews took place in English and two in Polish. The AH interviewees were all majors in Swedish, and were interviewed in L1 Polish. The participants were asked, among others, to what extent they had used TL and interacted with their classmates in out-of-class contexts, how they assessed the level of intra-group integration, and how they conceptualised their own TL progress. Additionally, the focus group interview scrutinised the interaction dynamics between the participants, as well as their perception of the influence of peer networks on language learning. To compensate for the lack of an observation component (present e.g. in Paradowski et al., 2012), in both contexts interviews were also carried out with the teachers who had witnessed the formation of the participant networks and their subsequent dynamics both in and out of class. Overall, 15 teachers were interviewed, including two AH teachers of Swedish, and 13 SA teachers. The teachers were asked about the character of student interactions (especially in the context of naturally occurring communication), the structure of the networks formed throughout the course (with potential cliques and communities), and TL progress made both on the individual and group levels. They also provided information on voluntary TL use by the students during class breaks and social activities. The qualitative data obtained from the students and teachers were transcribed and analysed using the R package RQDA. The interviews were subjected to a thematic analysis. After an identification and coding of data relevant to the

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research questions, codes referring to the same phenomenon were grouped together into categories (themes). Interrater checks were conducted to ensure reliability of the coding. The common themes identified in the student interviews were: TL use, influence of interactions with classmates on TL progress, atmosphere among classmates, language progress, motivation, TL learning methods, and TL learning problems. There were also themes unique to only one of the cohorts, such as the influence of immersion on TL progress in the SA group. Altogether, 14 themes were developed. In the teacher interviews, 54 codes were grouped under 10 themes, including individual progress, group progress, working with the group, influence of interactions between classmates on TL progress, individual engagement in lessons, TL use, group integration, and differences between intensive summer courses and school-year courses.

Results Network Properties and TL Progress Here we provide only a summary account of the quantitative analyses; more details are available in Paradowski et al. (2021). This analysis revealed significant nontrivial relations between structural network properties and subjective and objective progress in the L2 in the SA scenario. Firstly, we found a statistically significant positive correlation between TL progress and Weighted Out-Degree Centrality (number of an individual’s outgoing interactions) in the Polish-language (TL) communication network [0.2], corroborating the importance of L2 production, and a negative correlation with Betweenness Centrality (popularity or control) in total communication [−0.1]. Interestingly, high Weighted In-Degree Centrality was associated with slower progress in Polish (suggestive of the detrimental influence of in-group popularity; J. S. Coleman, 1961). The influence of the network was strongest in the domains of pronunciation and lexis, where the simplest measure of Weighted Out-Degree Centrality in the TL positively correlated with progress, while Betweenness in total (all-language) communication was significantly anticorrelated. Combined with the detrimental impact on SLA of a high In-Degree, this suggests that for language acquisition, the topology of the network matters more than properties that are more important for processes such as information flow (cf. the social diffusion of linguistic innovation; Paradowski & Jonak, 2012). In the At-Home cohort of learners of Japanese and Swedish, there were no statistically significant relations between network centralities and TL progress. The Structure of the Learner Networks While quantitative SNA showed the importance of the topology of the learner networks for language progress during SA, the qualitative component yielded information on how this structure emerged. In the SA context, the main criteria that influenced network formation among the students were nationality and/or

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sharing a lingua franca. Both the interviewed students and their teachers identified smaller clusters which formed within the class groups, with the exception of one class described as exceptionally well-integrated as a whole. The members of this group socialised intensively after hours, also attracting students from other classes. The students and teachers explained the exceptional activeness of this group with the following factors: (i) low number of students (n = 7), (ii) linguistic experience and strong motivation, (iii) after-class socialisation from the very beginning of the course, and (iv) each student coming from a different country (Kazakhstan, Mexico, Ukraine, Iraq, Lithuania, France, and Saudi Arabia: see Extract [1]): [1] But I just have to say that it is an exceptional group, exceptionally well-integrated. Maybe because it wasn’t numerous, but culturally diverse, they are really well-integrated and I think it also influenced their progress. However, there were two or maybe even three people who have more linguistic experience; one person said they were an interpreter, the other I think had studied linguistics. So it also influences the speed of language learning. [F, teacher, translated from Polish5] In the remaining SA course groups, the subgroups were formed on the basis of homophily, which was either nationality-based: “I guess it’s natural that you stick to your home country” [M, 25] or language-based: “We made our own little German-speaking corner” [F, 26]. These findings illustrate the homophily hypothesis postulating that individuals strive for the least possible effort required for communication and therefore tend to interact with people of similar characteristics (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954; McPherson et al., 2001). Interestingly, this kind of language segregation could be observed not only in the SA, but also the AH contexts. While the members of the AH group assessed their level of intra-group integration favourably, especially in comparison with other language groups in their study programme, drawing on the combination of both quantitative and qualitative data we detected the formation of three subgroups within their group. These formations are shown in Figure 8.2. The top right cluster (darker squares) and top left cluster (lighter rectangles) were picked out by the interview participants; the bottom (dark circles) cluster, potentially Russian-speaking, was detected from the ego-questionnaire data, but found no reflection in the interviews and focus group, suggesting it may have been “invisible” to the participants in the qualitative research. This bottom cluster consisted of two Polish and two Ukrainian students. Students belonging to the other clusters as well as the teachers characterised this clique as gathering the most withdrawn, quiet, and shyest students, not a cohesive group of friends. One member of this cluster stated that she did not socialise with the (Swedish majors) group at all, but that she had recently developed a closer relationship with one peer because they participated in an out-of-class event together.

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Figure 8.2 Clusters Identified among AH Students

Homophily can also be observed in the other two clusters (top left and top right), but here it is based not on nationality or L1, but on participation in other courses. The interviewees—students and teachers alike—claimed that the students who knew each other from the FL1 track spent time together during breaks and both in and outside Swedish classes, see [2]: [2] There were such 4-student cliques. But it also depended on language B [track]; I had the impression that people who studied together and were in this group, they stuck together … There is a big group with German [track], and [another] with Spanish [track]. [F, teacher, translated from Polish] However, it is important to point out that five out of the nine members of the largest cluster who were interviewed did not identify themselves as belonging to this larger group; instead, they mentioned two or three students

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with whom their relationship was particularly strong. This points to the complementary nature of quantitative and qualitative SNA, as the former provides information on the whole network, while the latter enables a closer examination of the strongest links. The TL-Speaking Network Layer As shown by the quantitative analysis, for the SA students the strongest influence of the network (number of students’ social ties) was observed in progress in pronunciation and lexis. However, we could expect even more extensive language gains had the network of TL communication been stronger among the participants than was revealed by SNA (compare for example the networks shown in Figure 8.1). The interview data helped us understand why the TL (Polish)-speaking network was not as strongly developed as, for instance, the English-speaking one. Firstly, three out of the seven participants interviewed in the SA course pointed out that the students often sought contact with their conationals, with other classmates speaking their L1, or with people who fluently spoke another shared language, as in the case of a Turkish student living in Germany: [3] It just didn’t occur to me … to be speaking Polish with Germans. I’ve been living in Germany for 4 years and … I just wouldn’t come up with speaking Polish. And for them it’s also weird, they all speak German to each other anyways, because they’re Germans. [F, 26] Nationality was also identified by the teachers as the main criterion dividing the classes into subgroups. Even if cross-cultural network connections were made within groups, this mainly happened thanks to English serving as a lingua franca. Another reason for avoiding TL use with peers was the students’ conviction that their (own) level was too low to meet the ultimate goal of informal conversation, which after all is not practising the TL, but rather socialising, getting to know one another, or exchanging complex thoughts and feelings: [4] For me it’s really hard to be in a setting where I’m not fluent in a language and still try to speak it, to socialise with people. It just doesn’t happen. For me that’s not socialisation, it’s not fun, you know? … Because I don’t wanna think about talking. I just wanna focus on content. [F, 26] Moreover, since 47% of the students in the SA course were on either A1 or A2 CEFR levels, lack of speaking practice could have been caused by high anxiety (Paradowski et al., 2015). The only interviewee who used the TL to a large extent in all contexts was a student in the highest-level (C1) group. He was also one of only two participants who requested that the interview be conducted in the TL. Other participants were theoretically

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aware of the importance of practising speaking skills, but did not walk the walk during the course: [5] I think [speaking in the TL is] actually necessary to do, because if you don’t speak with others, you don’t get to really use what you learnt and you don’t learn to have new things and if you only learn with yourself you have very compromised understanding of how the language works … So I think that’s absolutely necessary to talk to other people to learn the language … I mostly speak with people I ever travelled with here, and they mostly speak German and I speak with my roommates … And the people in my class, we also mostly use English when we talk, because it’s just the universal thing that everybody already speaks. So if something is to clarify [sic], so then we’re just there, because it’s easier. [F, 18] This is an exemplary instance of a value-action gap (or belief-behaviour gap), which leads to a discrepancy between the declared beliefs and the actual practices of individuals (Godin et al., 2005). Finally, we note briefly some differences between the functions of social networks for AH and SA groups. The AH students emphasised multiple functions of their peer student network, seeing its role in terms of friendship, and mutual support and learning in different contexts: during classes, via virtual communication, in informal meetings, etc. The SA students referred more consistently to their peer learner network as a platform to communicate and practise the TL (even though most did not turn their declarations into practice). Both cohorts failed to use the TL for similar reasons.

Conclusions Cumulative evidence has shown that SA in the TL-speaking culture does not always lead to substantial language learning. Peer interactions in the narrow sense of communication as well as in a wider sense of social capital can boost TL acquisition. However, competing processes may confound the beneficial influence of the network. Dewey et al. (2013, p. 87) assert that while meaningful social interactions are significant, “there is not yet a definitive answer regarding what factors influence social interaction most, how best to prepare learners for these interactions, or how to foster interaction during residence abroad” and emphasise the need for additional research in this area; a necessity reiterated in a state-of-the-art review on language learning in SA contexts (Isabelli-García et al., 2018). Justly so: while the extant studies have signalled the importance of social interactions for L2 development and sometimes hypothesised trends, they have formulated no concrete hypotheses on the exact patterns and dynamics of the interactions and their influence on language learning outcomes.6

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More approaches to SLA are needed that will be able rigorously to operationalise and map students’ social embeddedness from the perspectives of both themselves and their alters (both other students, as in this study, but also significant other contacts), and explain the observed relationships in a coherent model. The methodology of computational SNA (measuring the impact of centrality metrics on L2 improvement) and anthropological SNA (describing the group dynamics) outlined in this chapter has the potential to bridge this gap and explore more deeply and systematically the relationships between social interaction dynamics and L2 development.

Acknowledgements The authors’ research is sponsored by SONATA-BIS grant No. 2016/22/E/HS2/ 00034 from the National Science Centre of Poland. AJ, KC and MBP acknowledge support from COST Action 15109 “European Cooperation for Statistics of Network Data Science (COSTNET),” and MBP also from COST Actions 15130 “Study Abroad Research in European Perspective (SAREP)” and 18232 “Mathematical Models for Interacting Dynamics on Networks.” We wish to thank Polonicum and Institute of Applied Linguistics directors, instructors and students for facilitating and/or taking part in the study, the editors for the opportunity to contribute to this volume, and Michał Wilczewski as well as the anonymous reviewers for their detailed helpful commentary.

Notes 1 The examples provided in this chapter come from a larger project (PEERLANG: How Peer Interaction Mediates Second and Third Language Acquisition from a Social Network Perspective). 2 Links/edges can be directed, i.e. indicate whether the relationship between individuals is a one- or two-way (in/out vs in+out) connection. In undirected networks the links do not have a direction and it is assumed that all relationships are reciprocal. 3 Researchers in social networks in SA/SLA do however acknowledge that frequency of L2 interaction and progress in proficiency might be influenced by variables other than network membership, such as initial language proficiency, length of time abroad, or amount of time spent using the target language (Dewey et al., 2014). 4 The protocol used obtained IRB clearance. 5 Interviews with all the SA and AH teachers and the AH students were conducted in Polish and subsequently translated. Among the SA students, two participants asked for the debriefing to be carried out in Polish; the other seven interviews were carried out in English. For all interviews, verbatim transcription was used. 6 But see Paradowski et al. (2012).

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Self-Efficacy in Managing Intercultural Interactions as an Outcome of Participation in the Erasmus Programme Evidence from German Exchange Students in the UK Gianna Hessel

Introduction Student mobility plays a key role in the internationalisation of higher education (HE) in Europe and has come to feature strongly in the internationalisation strategies of European states and their HE institutions. Against this background, there has been strong research interest not only in the foreign language (L2) learning outcomes of study abroad (SA) (discussed here in Chapter 3), but also in its potential to promote growth in intercultural competence (e.g. Borghetti & Beaven, 2018; Jackson, 2017; Vande Berg et al., 2009), as well as other relevant personal development outcomes such as enhanced creativity, critical thinking, and changes in personality (e.g. Cai & Sankaran, 2015; Lee et al., 2012; Zimmermann & Neyer, 2013). The present study adds to this line of research by investigating the impact of participation in the Erasmus programme on students’ self-efficacy in managing intercultural interactions, a key factor in self-motivation to engage with others in contexts of diversity.

Literature Review Theoretical Review Intercultural competence has come to be regarded as a key competence for life and work in increasingly diverse social contexts (e.g. Huber & Reynolds, 2014; UNESCO, 2013). Yet, the construct itself remains much-debated. The currently most widely adopted models converge in proposing a multidimensional construct with cognitive (knowledge and awareness of self and other, and of interculturality), affective (attitudes, motivation and emotions regarding self and other), and behavioural (skills in relating) components (e.g. Byram, 1997; Deardorff, 2006; Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009). These models of intercultural competence have been critiqued on several grounds, such as

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being biased towards individualistic, essentialist, and/or largely apolitical perspectives (e.g. Dervin, 2018; Holliday, 2010; Wahyudi, 2016). They also tend to reduce self-motivation to engage in intercultural interactions to openness, interest, and curiosity, disregarding motives that are associated with an individual’s fundamental need for competence (Deci & Ryan, 1985). In other words, doubts regarding one’s ability to handle intercultural interactions may compromise motivation for engagement even in the presence of interest and curiosity. One such example is exchange students who despite having an affinity with the host country and being open to new experiences may still be reluctant to interact with “locals.” For Bandura (1995), “there are countless attractive options people do not pursue because they judge they lack the capabilities for them” (p. 7). Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s beliefs about their “capabilities to organise and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura, 1997, p. 3), or more simply, individuals’ beliefs about what they are able to do. Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) holds that self-efficacy plays a central role in how people think, feel and motivate themselves regarding specific activities (Bandura, 1986). This includes what kind of activities are pursued, how controllable or threatening these are perceived to be, how much effort is expended on them, whether individuals persist in the face of obstacles, and how much stress and anxiety is experienced during their execution. Thus, some (but not all) of the emotions experienced in anticipation of, or during an activity will arise from the individual’s perceptions of their own abilities. Higher levels of self-efficacy are associated with more positive emotions such as curiosity, interest, joy and confidence, and fewer negative emotions such as tension, anxiety, stress and frustration (Bandura, 1997), affecting not only self-motivation to pursue an activity, but also the individual’s psychological state during performance, and performance outcomes including further growth in self-efficacy. For exchange students, self-efficacy in managing intercultural interactions may reflect students’ beliefs regarding their abilities to successfully develop relationships with students and staff at their host university, as well as with individuals met outside it. SCT would predict that self-efficacy in this domain will be an important factor in how students feel about engaging in intercultural interactions, how inclined they are to engage in them, to what extent they experience positive or negative emotions during intercultural interactions, as well as their actual and self-perceived outcomes, such as intercultural learning, L2 skills development, and the perceived quality of relationships. In an earlier study (Hessel, 2014), self-efficacy in managing intercultural interactions measured at the start of SA was significantly and positively associated with students’ overall satisfaction with their international student contacts abroad, and with perceptions of interactions with host nationals. Conceptually, intercultural interactions may be regarded as instances of social interactions in which one or several of the interactants’ identity

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markers, such as gender, age, social class, profession or nationality, are perceived as being “different” by at least one of the participants. As all individuals hold an abundance of constructed group memberships (e.g. being female, middle-aged, Hungarian …), such differences are involved in all social interactions, but they will not always become salient or be considered significant. Accordingly, self-efficacy in intercultural interactions becomes a relevant motivational force only in situations where interlocutors are aware of such differences (through cues such as language or physical appearance), and their confidence regarding anticipated challenges for interaction comes into play. The uncertainty inherent in intercultural interactions regarding the meaning of verbal and nonverbal behaviours may give rise to negative emotions such as confusion, frustration, anger and resentment (e.g. Matsumoto & Hwang, 2015; Yoo et al., 2006). These negative emotions may undermine mental processes such as perspective taking, critical thinking and self-reflection, and jeopardise success in relating and growth in intercultural sensitivity, as well as other positive psychological outcomes, such as sojourners’ intercultural adjustment (e.g. Matsumoto et al., 2005). Increasing students’ levels of self-efficacy is one way of reducing negative emotions experienced during intercultural interactions and promoting positive outcomes. While (self-perceived) language skills must play a role in self-efficacy in managing intercultural interactions during SA, the latter is not conceptualised in relation to skills in any specific language; intercultural interactions may occur in the students’ L2/3/X, or indeed in their L1. With the same population of advanced learners of English, Hessel (2014) found that self-efficacy in managing intercultural interactions and self-efficacy in conversing in English emerged as distinct factors that were only moderately correlated. Similarly, students’ self-efficacy in intercultural interactions was only moderately correlated with their actual levels of English proficiency. Thus, it cannot be assumed that high levels of FL proficiency will automatically translate into feeling efficacious in intercultural interactions. Impact of Participation in SA on Students’ Self-Efficacy There are strong theoretical grounds for hypothesising that participation in SA programmes should affect students’ sense of self-efficacy in managing intercultural interactions. According to Bandura (1997), individuals gather information on their personal efficacy from four principal sources, including enactive mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and their bodily and affective states. Enactive mastery experiences are described as being most influential “because they provide the most authentic evidence of whether one can muster what it takes to succeed” (Bandura, 1997, p. 80). However, the impact of these performances on the individual’s sense of selfefficacy depends on their interpretation as successes or failures, as well as on how they are processed in memory (e.g. recognising successes vs. dwelling mostly on failures). Similarly, physiological and affective states attaching to

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performances may raise or lower self-efficacy, depending on their interpretation. For example, bodily signs such as sweating or a racing heart, when interpreted as personal inadequacies rather than as common symptoms of arousal, may lower self-efficacy in response to performance. Thus, self-efficacy beliefs are both products and producers of performance experiences. In the context of SA, engagement in intercultural interactions will provide students with an abundance of diagnostic information concerning their ability to interact with diverse others. Ideally, participation in SA would lead to a series of enactive mastery experiences: achieving communication goals, making friends, feeling accepted within a diverse student community, all have the potential to boost students’ self-efficacy in this domain. Similarly, failure to build friendships, difficulties experienced in social interactions, and perceived social isolation may have adverse effects. Moreover, feelings of disorientation, low mood, fatigue, and psychological stress that may occur during transitions into different sociocultural environments (Ward et al., 2001) may negatively affect both students’ social contact experiences and their interpretations of them. To date, no large longitudinal study has examined self-efficacy in managing intercultural interactions as an outcome of participation in SA. Previous studies have noted self-perceived gains in confidence regarding contact and interaction with “locals” or other sojourners abroad, as well as in social interactions at the host university or work placement (e.g. Dwyer, 2004; Jackson, 2010; Kinginger, 2008; Murphy-Lejeune, 2002; Steinwidder, 2016; Vogt, 2016). Such growth has been observed mostly in qualitative case studies of individuals, or in end-of-programme surveys. However, retrospective participant self-assessment alone is strongly limited in validity as it may be biased by positive affect generated through the SA experience as a whole, as has been observed, for example, with end-of-programme self-assessments of linguistic progress (e.g. Sutton et al., 2007). Case studies on the other hand cannot determine whether growth in self-efficacy observed in certain individuals can be expected for programme participants more widely. This question is particularly important when considering possible interventions to support student development. There is also a number of larger studies that have investigated the growth of self-efficacy during SA programmes (including Erasmus) in other, closely related domains including communication self-efficacy (e.g. Milstein, 2005), foreign language (L2) self-efficacy (e.g. Cubillos & Ilvento, 2013; Hessel, 2016; Tanaka & Ellis, 2003; Trenchs-Parera & Juan-Garau, 2014), and general self-efficacy (e.g. Jacobone & Moro, 2015; Nguyen et al., 2018; Petersdotter et al., 2017). The majority of the studies published observed self-efficacy growth, even among participants on very short SA programmes (e.g. Fiedler & Kremer, 2017). However, as they typically do not include comparison groups or fail to establish their comparability with the SA participants (e.g. comparing students without intentions to study abroad), it is impossible to ascertain whether the observed growth in self-efficacy is an outcome of participation in SA. It is evidently conceivable that students

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open to intercultural experiences, such as self-selecting SA participants, will also be inclined to seek out intercultural interactions and might similarly develop self-efficacy on the (presumably increasingly diverse) home campus. Based on the evidence available, this long-standing competitor hypothesis cannot be rejected. Purpose of the Present Study and Research Questions The present study examines growth in self-efficacy in managing intercultural interactions as an outcome of participation in Erasmus SA programmes lasting one term or one academic year, using a specifically developed survey instrument. A carefully selected comparison group of peers who had applied for Erasmus placements during the same academic year but continued to study at home serves to distinguish the effects of SA from growth in selfefficacy that may occur through additional life experience gained outside of SA. A follow-up survey was included in order to examine the sustainability of SA effects after students’ return home. As Plews (2016) notes, “we know relatively little about participants’ re-entry into the domestic sphere and the ongoing, perhaps reconfigured or even diminishing, real and perceived linguistic and intercultural effects of SA after returning home” (p. 2). The following research questions guided the study: 1

2

How does students’ self-efficacy in managing intercultural interactions develop during SA for one academic year (SA group 1) or one academic term (SA group 2), and how does the SA participants’ development compare to that of Erasmus applicants who continue to study at their home universities (AH group)? How do students’ levels of self-efficacy develop after their return to the home country, and how does the returnees’ development compare to that of students in the AH group?

Method Participants The participants were 106 L1 German-speaking students studying a variety of academic subjects at 31 different universities in Germany. All had applied for Erasmus exchanges with UK partner institutions and were recruited through the universities’ Erasmus offices. Of the 106 participants, 40 chose to study in the UK for one academic year (SA group 1), and 41 students for one semester (SA group 2).1 In addition, 25 students who had applied for an Erasmus study placement in the UK, but had either been unsuccessful, or had withdrawn their application and continued their studies in Germany, formed the comparison group. SA applicants or “potentially mobile students” are known to be more comparable to SA participants than students without SA intentions,

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most importantly perhaps in their motivation and confidence to live and study in a foreign country (Van Mol & Timmerman, 2014). Students in all three groups had learned English for 8–9 years at school. Their overall English language proficiency was B2 to C1, as established through self-reported IELTS/TOEFL/CAE test scores and a C-test conducted at baseline. The selection criteria for Erasmus placements in the UK were not standardised in Germany at the time, which helped to reduce systematic variation between successful and unsuccessful applicants. As shown in Table 9.1,

Table 9.1 Participant Background Characteristics at Baseline (pre-SA) Variable

SA group 1

SA group 2

AH group

N

40

41

25

Mean age

22.16 (SD = 1.30) 7 (17.5%)/ 32 (80.0%) (1 (2.5%) unspecified) 14 (35.9%)

22.22 (SD = 1.36) 14 (34.1%)/ 25 (61.0%) (2 (4.9%) unspecified) 11 (28.2%)

22.08 (SD = 2.42) 5 (20.0%)/ 20 (80.0%)

F (2,98) = .63, p = .563 χ² (2) = 3.81, p = .149

7 (28.0%)

4.63 (SD = 1.72)

4.11 (SD = 1.27)

4.72 (SD = 2.46)

χ² (2) = 1.15, p = .561 F (2,98) = 1.19, p = .310

2.07 (SD = 0.50)

1.90 (SD = 0.53)

1.86 (SD = 0.43)

F (2,90) = 1.50, p = .229

Social Sciences, Business, Law: 18 (45.0%), Arts, Humanities: 10 (25.0%), Education: 6 (15.0%), Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Computer Science: 5 (12.5%), (unspec.: 1 (2.5%))

Social Sciences, Business, Law: 16 (39.0%), Arts, Humanities: 7 (17.1%), Education: 8 (19.5%), Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Computer Science: 7 (17.1%), (unspec.: 3 (7.3%))

Social Sciences, Business, Law: 11 (44.0%), Arts, Humanities: 9 (36.0%), Education: 5 (20.0%)

χ² (12) = 6.68, p= .547

Male Female

SES [receiving BAföG]* No. of terms studied pre-SA Academic achievement [as selfreported GPA: 1-6]** Academic subjects studied by participants

Between-group differences

* Socioeconomic status (SES) was captured by whether participants were in receipt of government financial support (BAföG) ** Prior academic achievement on a scale from 1 (highest) to 6 (lowest)

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there were no significant between-group differences in participant background variables tested at baseline, including age, gender, family socioeconomic status, number of terms studied at university, and prior academic achievement (selfreported GPA). A gender imbalance towards females applied to all groups. Upon entry into the study, participants were just over 22 years of age and had completed their second year (4 terms) at university with a GPA2 of 2, on average. Around one-third of students in each group were in receipt of needs-based financial support from the German government. Social Sciences were the most popular discipline in all groups, followed by Arts and Humanities, Education, Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Computer Science. (However, the comparison group had lost all five natural scientists by the time of the post-return survey.). Concerning institutional support pre-SA, 71% of the SA participants reported attending a general preparatory event (allgemeine Vorbereitungsveranstaltung) for outgoing students, 13% attended an event with country-specific information (landesspezifische Vorbereitungsveranstaltung), 29% participated in a preparatory English language course, 7% in a language tandem, and 2% reported receiving intercultural skills training. No data is available on specific in-programme support at the host university, which is considered a weakness of the study. As for post-return support, 87.5% of students in SA group 1 and 75.6% of students in SA group 2 reported not being aware of any such support at their home universities. Instrument The Self-Efficacy in Managing Intercultural Interactions scale for tertiarylevel students (see Appendix) is an 18-item scale which was developed based on Jerusalem and Klein-Heßling’s (2002) social self-efficacy scale, Furnham and Bochner’s (1982) social situation questionnaire, Fan and Mak’s (1998) social self-efficacy scale for students, SA research in the HE context and the literature on self-efficacy. Following Bandura (2006), the scale items represent different facets of the same activity domain, inquiring into students’ self-efficacy in intercultural interactions in varied contexts, including initiating social contact (items 1–7), building friendships (8–11), social interactions in the context of academic studies (12–14), coping with ambiguity in social interactions (15–16), and living together (17–18). Participants rated their perceived efficacy in each context on an 11-point scale (in German), ranging from “cannot do at all” (kann ich überhaupt nicht) to “can do very well” (kann ich sehr gut). Item content was adapted to fit the context of German students with an interest in SA in the UK. Thus, for example, the scale features nationality as an identity marker that tends to be particularly salient in exchange students’ accounts of relating to other students abroad. The scale was piloted several times, and its factor structure and reliability were also re-established with the current sample.

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Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ² (120) = 1595.55, p