Patricia Romero de Mills Rosamond Mitchell Nicole Tracy-Ventura

1. Language Assistantships and Student Exchange: A comparison of students’ linguistic development during different residence abroad programmes. Patricia Romero de Mills Rosamond Mitchell Nicole Tracy-Ventura

2. LANG-SNAP (2011-2013) LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS ABROAD PROJECT.

3. Overview LANG-SNAP Project: General background Emerging themes from oral interviews: The Students’ exchange programme (Erasmus) –vs- Language Assistantships Questioning common beliefs: Is there an activity which is ‘better’ for language development abroad? Questions risen by the mixed-methods research design Discussion

4. LANG-SNAP: Background information A research project looking into how learners’ knowledge and use of the L2 develops during a year abroad. Longitudinal research design (23 months: Pre, during and after the period of residency abroad) Participants are undergraduate students of Modern Languages, specialising in Spanish or/and French, undertaking residence abroad as part of their degree.

5. LANG-SNAP: Background information A research project looking into how learners’ knowledge and use of the L2 develop during a year abroad. Longitudinal research design (23 months: Pre, during and after the period of residency abroad) Participants are undergraduate students of Modern Languages, specialising in Spanish or/and French, undertaking residence abroad as part of their degree.

6. Preliminary findings to be discussed today 16 students (7 Teaching Assistants, 9 Erasmus*) 4 interviews per student in the TL (pre and during YA) 1 reflective interview in English (Time 3 abroad) Total number of interviews explored: 80 64 oral interviews in the TL 16 reflective interviews in English

7. LANG-SNAP: Data collection period

8. LANG-SNAP: Data collection period

9. Emerging themes from oral interviews

10. The impact of the chosen scheme on language development during residence abroad. “YOU WON’T LEARN MUCH SPANISH IF...”

11. Samples obtained from the Oral Interviews conducted in May 2011 (Pretest). These are replies to the question “What activity will you be doing abroad and why did you choose it?” Teaching Assistants: *Translated into English for this presentation “[...] because in this way you are surrounded by Spanish all the time, but at a university very often you are with other English-speaking people, and you will not speak Spanish if you are with other English people”* (O151aNTV, 05:28) “[...] because I think that if I live in a smaller town then I will learn more Spanish because there wouldn’t be any English –speaking people to talk to” (O170aNTV, 11:02) “[...] normally English students live with other English people, but I don’t want to do that because it would be too easy to speak English every day and that is not very helpful to improve my Spanish” (O161aEDR, 12:18)

12. Samples obtained from the Oral Interviews conducted in May 2011 (Prestest) Samples obtained from the Oral Interviews conducted in May 2011 (Pretest). These are replies to the question “What activity will you be doing abroad and why did you choose it?” Erasmus: “I’m going to study at a university to maximize the opportunity to speak in the classes and things like that [...] in comparison... I think if I taught it would be mostly in English than in Spanish, so this is better for me”* (O152aNTV, 04:17) “[because] I want to live in a big city... And to meet other Erasmus students and their friends in Spain... But I want to live with Spanish people ... because if you only have Erasmus friends the temptation to speak only English is too big” (O163aEDR, 08:38) “[...] I thought about teaching, but I thought it would be more useful to speak to students of my age and go out with them and all that rather than speaking to children in English, because I can already speak English!” (O156aSSF, 03:58)

13. Illustrative examples extracted for the oral interviews (Pretest, Rounds 1 and 2) “I WOULDN’T HAVE LEARNED MUCH IF...”

14. Samples obtained from the Oral Interviews conducted in May 2011 (Prestest) Samples obtained from the Oral Interviews conducted in Nov 2011 and March 2012 (Rounds 1 and 2). “[...] I find it difficult to understand when they are speaking and that’s something I want to improve... I think that when you are a language assistant it is more complicated than when you are an Erasmus student because you are not with Spanish students all the time.. If you work in a school you are with teachers who are older than you and it’s difficult to make friends with them ” (TA:O161bNTV, 11:02) “If I had chosen to be an Erasmus student I think I would be with the Erasmus all the time, but you won’t learn Spanish if you speak English all day. So I don’t think my Spanish would have improved as much as it has today” (TA: O167bNTV, 18:39) “I want to improve my Spanish... more... I will try to speak more Spanish at university during the day, because there are some [Spanish-speaking] people, in my classes... but there are many English and it’s hard... [in another class] the majority are Erasmus and English is... People want to talk to you in English and it’s hard” (Er: O168cNTV, 16:17)

15. But... won’t you? “YOU WON’T LEARN ANY SPANISH IF...”

16. ELICITED IMITATION* • Measure of general proficiency • participants listen to a sentence stimulus and then repeat orallywhat they hear • 30 items with syllable length ranging from 7 to 19 syllables • 5 point scoring rubric (0-4, perfect repetition), they can score a max. of 120 points. *Borrowed from Ortega et al (in preparation)

17. Elicited Imitation

18. Social Networks Questionnaire • Targets five contexts (Work/university, home life, general and organized free time, virtual activities) • Given all three times abroad • Asks about language used with each person, how they met, amount of time spent together • And asks them to list the top 5 people they interact the most with.

19. Languages spoken with Social Network (SN) membersRound 1 (November 2011)

20. Time 2 Languages spoken with Social Network (SN) membersRound 2 (March 2012)

21. Language Assessments

22. EI Results, case-by-case comparison:

23. Time 2 Languages spoken with Social Network (SN) membersRound 2 (March 2012)

24. ‘Top five’ people students report they interact the most with:

25. Thank you for listening. P.Romero@soton.ac.uk DISCUSSION

26. References • COLLENTINE, J. 2009. Study Abroad Research: Findings, Implications and Future Directions. In: LONG, M. H. & DOUGHTY, C. J. (eds.) The Handbook of Language Teaching. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell •  DEKEYSER, R. 2010. Monitoring processes in Spanish as a second language during a study abroad program. Foreign Language Annals, 43, 80-92. • KURATA, N. (2007). Language choice and second language learning opportunities in learners’ social networks: A case study of an Australian learner of Japanese. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 5.1-5.18 • LANZA, E. & SVENDSEN, B.A. (2007). Tell me who your friends are and I might be able to tell you what language(s) you speak: Social network analysis, multilingualism, and identity. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11, 275-300. • SMITH, L.R. (2002). The social architecture of communicative competence: a methodology for social-network research in sociolinguistics. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 153, 133-160. • WIKLUND, I. (2002). Social networks from a sociolinguistic perspective: the relationship between characteristics of the social networks of bilingual adolescents and their language proficiency. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 153, 53-92.