A major rationale for study abroad (SA) from the perspective of second language acquisition is the presumed opportunity available to sojourners for naturalistic second language (L2) "immersion". However, such opportunities are affected by variations in the linguistic, institutional and social affordances of SA, in different settings.…

At a recent TeCoLa3 project conference, Colpaert (2017) declared: "there is not enough evidence to suggest that technology has a direct effect on learning, not even virtual worlds. No, not even games… My hypothesis is… that the added value of technology depends on the designs of your learning environment on the one hand… and what I will talk…

The year 2017 saw the publication of one of the strongest endorsements of language education on record: "America's Languages: Investing in Language Education for the 21st Century" (henceforth "America's Languages"). Commissioned by a bipartisan group of members of Congress and authored by the Commission on Language Learning of…

This article is based on a case study I presented at the elearning Symposium 2014 and focuses on an undergraduate project which had received the Teaching Enhancement and Student Success Fund at the University of Manchester two years before. The project was conceived as an outreach activity complementing the final year core language classes and…

Short-term study abroad programs of less than a semester are becoming increasingly popular among undergraduate students in the United States. However, little research has examined the changes in students' cultural sensitivity through their participation in such programs or what factors may predict growth and improvement in such areas. This study…

The interdependence of language and culture highlights the need to find methods for second language students to acquire cultural information and practices. This article reviews definitions of culture posited by anthropologists and language educators and discusses problems related to the recent paradigm shift from "small "c" and big…

This article examines the role of linguistic and sociolinguistic factors in the second language (L2) acquisition of Spanish vibrants. The data consist of 2 sets of recordings from 37 students enrolled in a Spanish pronunciation class. The statistical program VarbRul was used to analyze 7,597 samples. The vibration (simple or multiple) and the…

In 2007, eleven diverse undergraduate students from Texas spent a month in Mexico on a study-abroad program sponsored by the School of Education at their university. A central goal of the program was to facilitate pre-service teachers' ability to articulate a critical understanding of the needs of second language (L2) learners in their future…

Some second language (L2) learners return from study-abroad experiences (SAEs) with seemingly no change in their L2 ability. In this study we investigate whether a certain level of internal cognitive resources is necessary in order for individuals to take full advantage of the SAE. Specifically, we examine the role of working memory resources in…

Among the coursework offered to preservice teachers at the first author's institution in 2007 was the course "Second Language Acquisition" (SLA). This course was designed to develop multicultural awareness by introducing the theory and practice of second language acquisition and helping future teachers become familiar with the struggles…

This study compared the amount of the second language (L2) use and linguistic gains made by students in three short-term language immersion programs: (1) traditional study abroad, (2) service-oriented study abroad, and (3) foreign language (FL) housing. These were chosen because they represent three distinct program types, providing students with…

This multiple case study examines language-focused instruction in 3 university Spanish literature classes to examine the students' and instructors' perspectives on language learning in this context. The classes were studied for a semester through observations, instructor interviews and stimulated recalls, and student questionnaires. Among the…

This article explores international student teaching (IST) within the narratives of a prospective language teacher from the midwestern region of the United States. With a focus on one participant, the case study highlights significant factors that relate to the IST experience in Ecuador. A corpus generated from verbal protocols collected over a…

The primary aim of this study was to assess the impact of a curricular intervention on study-abroad students' use of language- and culture-learning strategies and on their acquisition of requests and apologies. The intervention consisted of a brief face-to-face orientation to learning speech acts, a self-study guidebook on language and culture…

This paper takes a specific university Department of Romance Languages as a case study to examine how the measures it adopted in view of increasing enrollment in Spanish in the nineties coincide with the recommendations in the MLA's 2007 report; it also examines how they have fared after some 12 years of implementation, advances explanations for…