Assessing Study Abroad effects on adult L2 Mandarin fluency development

Abstract Summary

Abstract :

This paper investigates fluency development during Study Abroad (SA) among a group of adult L2 Mandarin learners, to illustrate the complex range of linguistic and pedagogic factors affecting the development of communicative interactional competence during SA (Kinginger 2011, Sanz & Front-Morales 2018). Pedagogically, many Mandarin teachers may use rote-learning (Jin & Cortazzi 2006), rather than communicative teaching approaches, creating challenges for developing successful interactional fluency for many L2 Mandarin learners when transferring from an instructed to an immersed environment. This study examines a) effect of task (monologue vs dialogue; rehearsed vs unrehearsed), and b) effect of time (pre vs post-SA), in a year-long case-study of SA effects on temporal fluency for ten intermediate-level students of Mandarin from a UK university. Our measures of speed, breakdown and repair (Skehan 2003) aimed to evaluate how fluency may vary from the least interactive task (rehearsed monologue) to the most interactive (unrehearsed dialogue), testing the hypothesis that the most interactive task would show most benefit from SA (Segalowitz 2010). Scores before SA showed many task differences, which significantly reduced after SA (p< .05 on most measures); however, dialogic and monologic performance remained different after SA, and predicted improvements on dialogic interactional fluency were not robustly found. We discuss theoretical and empirical implications for future research to further inform our understanding of the interconnecting factors affecting L2 Mandarin fluency development during Study Abroad.







Kinginger, C. (2011). Enhancing language learning in study abroad. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 31, 58-73.







Jin, L. & Cortazzi, M. (2006). Changing practices in Chinese cultures of learning. Language, Culture & Curriculum 19(1), 5-20







Sanz, C. and Front-Morales, A. (eds.) (2018). The Routledge Handbook of Study Abroad Research and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge.







Segalowitz, N. (2010). Cognitive bases of second language fluency. New York: Routledge.







Skehan, P. 2003. Task-based instruction. Language Teaching, 36(1). 1–14.

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