On the Nature of Immersion During Study Abroad: Some Participant Perspectives

The Valcourt program founded in 1990 with the aim of supplementing existing semester and academic-year programs available through Collegiate University and providing an opportunity for students with as little as two semesters of language instruction to study in France. In this article, perspectives from Molise and Ashley, who along with five other participants from Collegiate, agreed to serve as informants in a qualitative research project which sought to understand–from their point of view–the transition they were making from language learning in an American classroom to language use in Valcourt and back again. The resulting data show, among other things, how truly unique each participant’s perspective can be, even when backgrounds seem similar.

[1]  S. Wilkinson,et al.  Study Abroad from the Participants' Perspective: A Challenge to Common Beliefs , 1998 .

[2]  B. Lafford,et al.  Getting Into, Through and Out of a Survival Situation: A Comparison of Communicative Strategies Used by Students Studying Spanish Abroad and ‘At Home’ , 1995 .

[3]  Barbara F. Freed.  What makes us think that students who study abroad become fluent , 1995 .

[4]  Laura Miller,et al.  Folklinguistic Theories of Language Learning , 1995 .

[5]  Marsha A. Kaplan.  French in the Community: A Survey of Language Use Abroad. , 1989 .

[6]  Anna De Fina,et al.  The ethnographic interview , 2019, The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Ethnography.

[7]  Michael R. Laubscher.  Encounters with Difference: Student Perceptions of the Role of Out-of-Class Experiences in Education Abroad , 1994 .

[8]  Barbara F. Freed.  Language Learning and Study Abroad , 1995 .

[9]  R. Brecht,et al.  Qualitative Analysis of Second Language Acquisition in Study Abroad: The ACTR/NFLC Project. NFLC Occasional Papers. , 1993 .

[10]  Meryl Siegal,et al.  Individual Differences and Study Abroad: Women Learning Japanese in Japan , 1995 .

[11]  C. Goodwin,et al.  Abroad and Beyond: Patterns in American Overseas Education , 1988 .

[12]  J. Carlson,et al.  Study Abroad: The Experience of American Undergraduates , 1990 .

[13]  Milton J. Bennett.  Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity , 1993 .

[14]  R. Carroll,et al.  Cultural Misunderstandings: The French-American Experience , 1988 .

[15]  Livia Polanyi,et al.  Language Learning and Living Abroad: Stories from the Field , 1995 .

[16]  Richard D. Brecht,et al.  Predictors of Foreign Language Gain during Study Abroad. NFLC Occasional Papers. , 1995 .

[17]  H. Giles,et al.  An intergroup approach to second language acquisition , 1982 .

[18]  Assessing the Gain in Oral Proficiency from Summer Foreign Study. , 1991 .