27.1483, Review: Applied Ling; Socioling: Kinginger (2015)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1483. Tue Mar 29 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.1483, Review: Applied Ling; Socioling: Kinginger (2015)

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Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 15:59:26
From: Aurora Salvador Sanchis [auroras at utexas.edu]
Subject: Language Learning and Study Abroad

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-2784.html

AUTHOR: Celeste  Kinginger
TITLE: Language Learning and Study Abroad
SUBTITLE: A Critical Reading of Research
PUBLISHER: Palgrave Macmillan
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Aurora Salvador Sanchis, University of Texas at Austin

Reviews Editor: Robert Arthur Cote

SUMMARY

In this monograph, Language Learning and Study Abroad: A Critical Reading of
Research, Celeste Kinginger provides an extensive overview and evaluation of
the research carried out in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA)
within the context of study abroad experiences. The author provides a
historical exploration of the prior research in this area, which began at the
end of the 20th century, to raise a critical awareness among language
educators, study abroad program organizers, and policy makers of the strong
relationship between study abroad and language learning. The book is divided
into six chapters, guiding the reader from the early stages of research on
language learning in the study abroad context to the most contemporary trends
in the field.

Chapter 1, “Situating Language Learning in Study Abroad,” introduces and
establishes the concept of study abroad that is adopted in the succeeding
chapters of the book. Kinginger defines study abroad as “a temporary sojourn
of pre-defined duration, undertaken for educational purposes” (page 11). This
definition includes those sojourns where students pursue a foreign degree or
qualification or when study abroad fulfills or enriches a home-based degree.
However, as Kinginger points out, the target groups embraced for the majority
of research studies are European exchange students, Asian students learning
English abroad, and English-speaking students, mainly from the United States,
Canada and Australia, who go abroad to study a language or other subjects. 

In chapter two, “Measuring Language Acquisition,” Kinginger surveys early
research on study abroad, which is linked to the rise of SLA as an independent
field of study. Researchers sought to determine the effectiveness of study
abroad through a utilitarian point of view in which learners were treated as
concrete products. The author explains how proficiency tests, such as the Oral
Proficiency Interview (OPI) and the Cloze Test, were implemented in order to
holistically measure students’ success in SLA. Additionally, these assessments
served to justify for program administrators and policy makers that study
abroad was a worthwhile investment. However, researchers did not come to a
general agreement about the validity of these qualitative approaches in
accurately evaluating the linguistic benefits of study abroad. Tests like the
OPI and Cloze could not successfully measure the natural use of language and
the subtle changes in the communicative repertoires of language learners
abroad. This motivated researchers to redefine the concept of proficiency by
investigating individual domains. 

Chapter 3, “Domains of Communicative Competence,” examines a new model of
language learning, communicative competence, that was established in the 70s
and 80s in response to the previous SLA perspective of language proficiency
that was deemed inadequate for sufficiently gauging student language
proficiency in are areas that students in a study abroad context commonly show
improvement. Instead of analyzing a final and general product, researchers
began to observe specific aspects of language ability separately. Kinginger
differentiates four domains of communicative competence: (i) linguistic
competence, (ii) actional competence, (iii) sociocultural competence, and (iv)
strategic competence. Linguistic competence refers to the ability to
manipulate the formal features of the language: grammar, vocabulary and
phonology. Traditional studies of SLA, focused on general linguistic gains
during study abroad, have produced mixed results. However, when scholars have
analyzed specific components of linguistic competence, they found a
significant long-term contribution to the language learning process. In
contrast to linguistic competence, actional competence consists of more
contextual and meaningful knowledge. Actional competence and within it,
discourse competence, is related to speech acts (the speaker’s interpretation
and production of the language) and with the selection and sequencing of that
language. With respect to this domain, the study abroad context provides
students with a significant advantage over students with only experience in a
traditional classroom setting. Kinginger explains that students, during their
sojourn abroad, observe and participate in a wide variety of authentic
linguistic actions, to which they would not have access in a regular language
classroom. However, actional competence is difficult to assess since students
do not necessarily desire to model native-like behaviors that they have
observed, which therefore makes measuring their success in terms of acquired
speech acts very challenging. In this sense, there is an element of choice for
language users regarding speech acts, through which they can build their own
identities. As for discourse competence, different methods have been used to
study cohesion, deixis, and conversational structure. Conclusions from these
studies described the study abroad experience as a valuable environment for
developing overall discourse competence.

The third component of competence is sociocultural competence, and within this
area, communicative competence, which can be described as the speaker´s
knowledge of the rules and expectations that govern the social contexts of
speech. The research on sociocultural competence suggests that there are
certain aspects of language that are not accessible in a classroom setting;
therefore, study abroad offers a unique opportunity to develop students’
linguistic repertoires and to raise their awareness of the possible
repertoires they can utilize to navigate within their new language and
culture. Finally, Kinginger addresses strategic competence, which refers to
the skills that learners have to resolve communication difficulties.
Researchers have tried to create varied taxonomies of communication strategies
that are consciously used by learners to compensate imperfect knowledge of the
linguistic rules. However, these studies do not show consistent results, so
further studies are needed to better understand how students conceive
strategic language while they are abroad. Taken together, research on each of
the competencies demonstrates that study abroad has a positive impact on
general communicative competence. At the conclusion of the chapter, Kinginger
calls for the need for future studies to start acknowledging the value of
student’s individual views. Students might choose to appropriate or not their
communicative resources with the standards in the local community and to adopt
or reject local meanings within their own repertoires. Either option would
impact their learning abroad.  

In Chapter 4, “Communicative Settings for Language Learning Abroad,” Kinginger
examines three major settings in study abroad where students are supposed to
have greater language- mediated time, which should result in increased
proficiency. Educational institutions provide general and/or language
instruction during the study abroad period, and the academic success of their
students has been found to depend on more than just the students’ own
intentions or desires to learn. Two critical external factors that affect SLA
are the way in which the students are received by the institutions abroad and
whether or not they learn how to interpret and adapt to the academic practices
of these institutions. Moreover, Kinginger points out that it is also
important that educators inform students in advance about the cultural
differences that they will encounter in order for them to be prepared and make
the most of their stay.

When students study abroad, there is a range of options for living
accommodations, including a homestay, student dorms of the hosting
institution, and independently secured apartments, among others. Of these, the
homestay is the place of residence where most studies have turned their
attention. In general, research supports the fact that it is advantageous for
the student to have a homestay as a part of the study abroad sojourn over
other possible accommodations. However, many factors can hinder this
experience from being a positive one that contributes to the SLA process. The
variables that can affect a student’s homestay experience —for instance, the
reception that a student receives by the family, the options to engage with
the family in their lives, and the quality of the linguistic and cultural
input received— can all determine whether or not a homestay residence is a
conducive environment for optimum language learning. Finally, in this chapter,
Kinginger explores how study abroad promotes interaction with native speakers
in informal contexts. While this interaction is deemed positive, assessing
learner gains in these settings is inherently challenging due the casual
nature of these encounters and research to support these claims has mainly
measured the time-on-task based on student reports and diaries. Kinginger
reveals that the diversity of the results obtained has led researchers to
conclude that they need to look deeper into the aspects and details of the
experiences abroad in order to find out not only what students learn but also
how they use their experience for learning. 

Chapter 5, “Language Socialization and Identity,” reviews studies that focus
on identity formation in study abroad settings during socializing encounters.
Kinginger first presents a variety of second-language socialization studies
that indicate the quality of students’ encounters abroad and the attitudes
that they adopt in relation to their host communities, based on recordings of
dinnertime conversations. Although this research shows the significant value
of such encounters for learning language and sociocultural meanings, sometimes
the scope of learning can be limited. Host families might adopt specific
varieties of the language or choose to use what is referred in the literature
as ‘foreigner talk’, restricting the authenticity of the learning contexts.
Kinginger then presents other studies that analyze the position that students
adopt, with respect to the communities abroad, when they encounter conflicts
related to gender and race stereotypes. The way that students negotiate the
differences between cultures will influence their level of engagement in the
community and, therefore, their language learning.

Finally, in Chapter 6, “Interpreting Research on Language Learning in Study
Abroad,” Kinginger provides a summary of research reviewed in the book and
points out the limitations of contemporary research in the field. Language
learning abroad had originally been based on the holistic construct of general
proficiency but has evolved to address more communicative and specific
approaches that give value to the relationship between learners’ identities
and language gains. Although the interest in research on language learning
abroad has increased considerably, literature on this topic still presents
many limitations in scope and design. Kinginger notes that most of the studies
appear to be uncoordinated and are carried out by individuals or small groups,
following the general trends of SLA and applied linguistics. Additionally, the
vast majority of the projects have focused on U.S.-based students and have
used holistic and standard assessment tests to measure learning gains in the
abroad context. Many domains of language competence are under-represented,
such as language literacy, social and pragmatic dimensions, sociolinguistic
variation, and different communicative settings. Kinginger concludes with an
exhortation to researchers to expand the scope of participants, to adopt more
representative models of language, and to describe more carefully the design
chosen for the study abroad programs. The author underlines the need for
improvements in these specific areas of research within this field in order to
better inform policy makers and language educators of the value of study
abroad for language learning. 

EVALUATION

Overall, this book provides a very good and concise overview of the general
trends in research of language learning during study abroad experiences, from
its origins to the most recent findings. The precise and methodical writing
style that the author uses makes the book very approachable and accessible for
the intended audience: researchers, educators, and policy makers. Chapters 1
and 6 provide an extensive overview of seminal studies in the field but also
discuss the limitations and gaps in both previous and current research of SLA
during study abroad. These chapters are extremely useful for researchers
aiming to conduct new studies in this discipline. Chapters 2 and 3 will be
most helpful to educators and policy makers to refine their expectations in
terms of language gains in the study abroad programs based on the different
language competencies and to design new proficiency tests accordingly.
Finally, educators designing and leading study abroad programs will find
Chapters 4 and 5 extraordinarily valuable, since these chapters shed light on
the advantages and disadvantages of study abroad, such as authentic social
encounters, living with a host family, and cultural differences and
stereotypes.

This work strongly contributes to the emerging field of language learning in
study abroad contexts by providing a solid theoretical framework that can
benefit future researchers. Kinginger draws together much of the research
conducted in the field from a historical and critical point of view. All of
the key concepts are thoroughly explained without falling into redundancies,
which makes this work a useful tool, not only for experts in the field, but
also for those who might be interested in learning more about this topic.
However, although the book acknowledges the importance of sojourns abroad for
individuals, it does not provide much information about the profile of the
participants in the studies mentioned. Such information could have been very
useful since the aim of the book is not only to summarize and evaluate the
research done in the field, but also to provide practical information to
improve and implement new study abroad programs. With the little information
provided about the participants, it can be assumed that, until now, research
has concentrated on monolingual learners abroad. Future research should
examine the experiences of bilingual and heritage language learners in the
study abroad context, populations that have been overlooked in the literature.

The division in thematic chapters makes the book very readable and the
information easily accessible. Furthermore, every chapter begins either with a
personal story of the author’s experiences abroad, or a short review of a book
or movie related to the main theme of the chapter. These kinds of
introductions draw the reader into the chapter in a more interactive way and,
and at the same time, set the basis for the chapter’s topic. Then, within each
chapter, shorter subsections are included to address different subtopics.
These divisions of the chapters render the presentation of content organized
and fluid. One critique is that the index does not show any of these chapter
subsections, which makes it difficult for the reader to find them or to even
know that some of the subjects in the subsections will be addressed.

To conclude, educators, researchers and policy makers can definitely take
something valuable away from this book. Kinginger presents an objective source
of the research done in the field of language learning abroad and evaluates
its benefits and limitations, paving the way for further studies in the field.
One last issue that arises is that future publications should expand the scope
of the audience targeted in the research on learning in the study abroad
context. A book that raises awareness of the challenges and benefits of study
abroad will clearly be worth-while reading for potential sojourners, helping
them make the most of their time abroad.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Aurora Salvador Sanchís is a Ph.D. student in Iberian and Latin-American
Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a MA in Hispanic
Studies from the University of Washington and she currently works as a Spanish
instructor at UT Austin. Her main research interests are second language
acquisition and bilingualism in the U.S.





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