CLIC Research Projects

Measuring gains from study abroad

Dr. Kate White

Even though “it is generally assumed that study abroad should confer greater benefits because students have greater access to native speakers” (Segalowitz & Freed, 2004, p. 174), an ongoing problem with study abroad research is the operationalization and measurement of students’ interactions with native speakers. First, it is difficult to keep track of how much students actually interact with speakers of the target language. Second, it is difficult to measure how these interactions affect students’ abilities in the second language. Also, there are remaining questions regarding the mechanisms of change in student performance due to study abroad, as well as why and when these changes occur (Anderson, 2012, p. 24; Taguchi, 2015, p. 5).

The focus of this project is twofold. First, to develop materials that will allow: 1. measurement of students’ conversational and interaction- based gains abroad; 2. measurement of students’ exposure to native speakers abroad; and 3. measurement of cognitive change due to study abroad. Second, to implement these measures during study abroad in summer 2016. The overall goal is to improve our ability to measure what happens for students during study abroad in these three areas: gains in interactional competence, amount and type of interactions with native speakers in various contexts, and changes in cognitive abilities in the second language.