Do participants’ L2 reading skills, vocabulary and proficiency level improve after undertaking a SA experience in an ELF country?

During the last decades, there has been a massive growth in the popularity of Study Abroad (SA) experiences. Consequently, there are many students participating in a SA programme every year. In 2017, for example, more than 400.000 travelled to a foreign country to practise an L2 (European Commission). Due to the impact of internationalisation and the role of English as a lingua franca, it is no longer necessary to travel to an English-speaking country when the students’ goal is to practise their English skills. Therefore, there are many students travelling to non-Anglophone countries, such as Denmark or Germany, with the objective of improving their L2 English skills (English as a lingua franca Study Abroad, ELFSA) (Koylu, 2016). The present study attempts to investigate if English (L2) can be improved in an immersive context where it is used as a lingua franca. More specifically, it examines whether participants improved their L2 reading skills, vocabulary knowledge and general proficiency after a semester-long SA experience in several ELF countries. The participants in the study (n= 21 Catalan/Spanish bilinguals) were administered the Oxford Quick Placement test, two reading tasks, the Updated Vocabulary Levels Test, a written task, and an online questionnaire (to measure how different individual variables affected their learning outcomes).The analyses indicate that, despite individual variation, the ELFSA context seems to be beneficial for L2 improvement especially when it comes to L2 vocabulary and general proficiency. European Commission. (2017). (https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/4e5c3e1c-1f0b-11e9-8d04-01aa75ed71a1) Koylu, Z. (2016). The Influence of Context on L2 Development: The Case of Turkish Undergraduates at Home and Abroad. PhD Diss., University of South Florida: The USA.