32, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 36-41 To the Editor Search

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STUDY abroad is quickly becoming a common element of the undergraduate curriculum. During the 1994-95 academic year alone, 84,403 American college students left the United States to spend a semester or longer studying in another country, and the numbers are continuing to swell ("More U.S. College Students"). Now perhaps more than ever, Americans are starting to recognize the advantages of an immersion experience in another cultural and linguistic environment, often expecting to achieve fluency and cross-cultural understanding within a year or less. In part, this folk wisdom about the "magic" of study abroad coincides with the results of current research in the field, as Barbara Freed notes in describing the thrust of her recent volume, Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context: "The findings reported [. . .] add new empirical support to the long-held popular belief in the power of the study abroad experience to convert neophyte language learners into ‘fluent' speakers of a second language" ("Researchers"). In fact, many projects, both large- and small-scale, have revealed that, as a group, study-abroad participants tend to make (and perceive themselves to have made) significant gains in language proficiency and in general cultural knowledge during their time overseas, particularly in comparison with peers who remain at their home institutions (e.g., Brecht, Davidson, and Ginsberg; Carlson, Burn, Useem, and Yachimowicz; Hoff; Lafford). Where gains did not turn out to be statistically significant, some researchers have hypothesized that the testing instruments used may not have been sufficiently sensitive to measure actual progress (e.g., Freed, "Language Learning"; Milleret), seemingly indicating the strength of our beliefs in the power of study abroad.

In addition to reporting general tendencies of international program participants as a whole, many of these statistical studies have also identified a variety of personal factors that seem to affect overseas learning, such as age, gender, predeparture proficiency level, previous language learning and immersion experiences, aptitude, and types of language contact within the host community, among others (e.g., Brecht, Davidson, and Ginsberg; Freed, "Language Learning"), suggesting that under the surface of the general trends may indeed be great variation among individual students' experiences and outcomes. This underlying complexity of the overseas experience, which is not easily tapped in studies involving large sample sizes, is explored in a growing number of case studies that examine a foreign sojourn from the perspective of the participants (e.g., Kline, "Literacy" and "Social Practice"; Pellegrino; Siegal). The research project that prompted this essay is one such qualitative investigation involving a group of seven undergraduate women who embarked on a summer study-abroad program in France for either one or two months. The purpose of this essay, however, is not to report the research findings of this case study in any systematic way. Interested readers can refer to several other sources for a more detailed explanation of the study's design and findings (Wilkinson, "Conversation" and "Study Abroad") and for additional interpretations of the data (Wilkinson, "Immersion"). The aim here is rather to bring to light several broad questions that have emerged from conducting this project--questions for which we do not yet have complete answers but that seem essential to a holistic understanding of the study-abroad experience.

Perhaps the most disconcerting observation revealed in this particular case study was a stark mismatch between the promises implied in the program recruitment literature and the actual experiences of the participants overseas. Yet, these programmatic claims are not at all incompatible with popular beliefs and research findings on the outcomes of a stay abroad. In fact, they provided widely accepted answers to common questions about what one can expect the results of an overseas sojourn to be. It is unlikely that the difficulties reported here are completely idiosyncratic or without parallels in other programs. Hence, in contrasting the programmatic and participant views in one particular case, this essay also seeks to expose several pitfalls that may resonate with other programs and to raise open-ended questions that may encourage further inquiry into the complexity of study abroad.

Background Information on the Case Study

Collegiate University's¹ summer study-abroad program in Valcourt, France, was founded in 1990 with the aim of supplementing existing semester and academic-year programs and providing an opportunity for students with as little as two semesters of language instruction to study in France. Administratively, the program is a joint effort between Collegiate University and the Institut International d'Etudes Linguistiques (IIEL), a language school for international students, in Valcourt. Through a faculty adviser, Collegiate takes responsibility for recruiting participants, helping them fill out the necessary application forms, and escorting them to Valcourt. The IIEL then arranges student housing, provides all formal instruction, and offers optional day excursions on the weekends for an additional fee. There is no representative of Collegiate University present in Valcourt during the students' stay. A member of the IIEL staff has been designated as a contact person for Collegiate students; however, when asked, the participants did not seem to recognize anyone in this role.

Two types of living arrangements are available to participants: room and partial board (breakfasts and dinners) with a French host family or the substantially less expensive single room in a university dormitory. All seven informants in this case study requested a host family with the aim of increasing their chances for interaction with French people.

In addition to housing options, participants were also given a choice on the length of their stay. Four weeks abroad in June earned them four credit hours of French at Collegiate; extending their stay for an additional four-week session in July doubled the transferred credits to eight. These credits were used to replace the next appropriate French class in the student's course of study at Collegiate, regardless of placement level at the IIEL.

All participants in the program agreed to serve as informants in the research project. Following ethnographic conventions, data collection took a wide variety of forms, including interviews, observations, questionnaires, and document analyses. Spanning eight months, including one month overseas, the study produced a sizable corpus of qualitative data, only a small portion of which is cited here. Although the stories of many different informants might equally well be used to illustrate the concerns that have led to the questions raised here, the experiences of two participants in particular will serve as typical examples of the group.

Heather Fogelman and Ashley Crawford each had an academic interest in the study of French: Heather was a French major, and Ashley had declared a minor in the language. Likewise, both were embarking on Collegiate University's summer-abroad program in Valcourt, France, from a position of experience with international travel. Heather had already participated in a four-week exchange program in France when she was sixteen years old. On the basis of that immersion stay, she had a mental list of concrete objectives for her time in Valcourt: she planned to make lists of new vocabulary words and expressions and study them, to initiate conversations instead of speaking only when spoken to, and to ask for clarification when she did not understand rather than feign comprehension. Ashley's linguistic goal was to learn to speak French more "fluently," by which she meant "not hav[ing] to stop and think about grammar rules." Like Heather, she, too, had traveled extensively. In particular, she had spent many vacations in the Dominican Republic, where she had formed lasting friendships. "It sure changes your perspective to meet people," she observed, and she hoped that through the Valcourt program she would also be able to experience France and French culture as more than "just a tourist." In short, both women seemed to be well prepared and well motivated to reap linguistic and cultural benefits from a study-abroad experience.² The contrasts between their expectations, which reflected program advertising, and their actual experiences raise questions that merit further investigation and that deserve attention when (re)designing study-abroad options.

Contrast 1: Cross-Cultural (Mis)Understanding

Wherever you choose to study abroad, you will [. . .] develop an understanding of and appreciation for a culture different from your own.

--Collegiate Education Abroad Handbook

"French people are so obstinate!" was Ashley's conclusion after trying to return a malfunctioning hair dryer purchased days earlier at Monoprix. Although she no longer had the receipt, Ashley was certain that an exchange would be possible, comparing Monoprix with Wal-Mart or K-Mart in the United States. To her surprise, the saleswoman would not budge in her refusal to accept the faulty item. "I was so mad!" recalled Ashley. "I told her, 'The customer is always right.' And you know what she said? She said I was crazy!"

What Ashley did not realize was that she had unknowingly bumped against a cultural difference in not adhering to French norms for the role of the customer. According to Raymonde Carroll, in France "the employee holds a certain power over the client" (89), such that the customer is "at the mercy" of the clerk for service and information (90). Unaware of these differing "rules" for client-salesperson interaction, Ashley came to the only plausible conclusion within her frame of reference--namely, that the French person was at fault for her "obstinate" deviation from expected (in other words, American) behavior.

Such cultural misunderstandings were actually a daily occurrence for many program participants, plaguing even the most basic exchanges and ultimately leading to negative stereotyping, as one of Heather's recollections further illustrates:

I was really turned off by a lot of people in Valcourt. Like, I would be walkin' to class, and I would go to smile to somebody--you know, I normally do that--and the ladies would just like really have a big frown on their face, and they'd just stare you up and down. Everybody did it, and so I just started, you know, glaring back at 'em all. I don't know, maybe a lot of people are like that, but it seems to me--like, I know this is a college campus, but you can walk down the street and never have seen a person before and be like, "Hey," or just smile or anything. Nobody ever did that [in Valcourt].

Again, according to Carroll:

When one American passes another on the street, in the middle of the day and in a neighborhood not known to be dangerous, there is a good chance, if one exchanges glances with the other, that he or she will smile or nod, or even say hello to the stranger. [. . .] This often surprises French visitors to the United States. As a respectable, gray-haired man said to me, "If I were younger, I would think all these pretty girls were giving me the eye. [. . .] They seem like such flirts when they smile at you like that. [. . .] If this were France . . .". (30)

Without a native French perspective on their experiences, it seems that the participants could only interpret their encounters through American lenses, arriving logically at the conclusion that the French were "obstinate" or "unfriendly" (see Laubscher). Clearly then, exposure to cultural differences during an overseas stay does not necessarily translate into the cross-cultural understanding promised in the Collegiate Education Abroad Handbook. But if cultural learning gains are not always a direct result of an overseas sojourn, then what is the relation between study abroad and the development of cross-cultural understanding? How does it evolve when it does occur, and what kinds of circumstances surround its nonoccurrence when students fail to make progress?

The potential complexity of answers to these questions begins to surface when one considers that the students in this study were all housed with host families, yet they still lacked the native-speaker input that might help them understand the French point of view--an observation that leads to the next contrast.

Contrast 2: The Host Family (Dis)Advantage

Family stays: housing in carefully selected families including breakfasts and dinners are strongly encouraged (100FF/day). Single dormitory rooms also available (approx. $160/mo., plus university cafeteria meals approx. $12/day).

--Valcourt program information sheet

Ashley knew that her housing situation might fall short of her expectations for a "carefully selected family" when her hosts failed to pick her up at the train station upon the group's arrival. A few days into her stay, Ashley's suspicions were confirmed when she asked her host's permission to spend the evening out with friends. She reported her host mother's reply: "I don't care if you don't come back for five days!"

"She never really said that much [to me]," Ashley recalled of her host in a retrospective interview. "And every time she'd say something and I'd say, 'Comment?', she would just say, you know, 'Oh, never mind. It doesn't matter,' and wouldn't repeat it. I mean, obviously she wanted me to speak French, and if I didn't understand it on the first time, you know, that was too bad." Ashley summarized her anxiety at the end of her stay with the following words: "I always feel very uncomfortable in the house--even sitting in my room with the door shut, I feel very uncomfortable."

Like Ashley, Heather also spoke of feeling "uncomfortable," despite the fact that she "loved" her French family, because, as she explained, "you really are on your own. It was like I was a tenant. I had a key; I had my own room; I had all my own stuff. I could eat dinner with them if I liked, but I didn't have to." Dinner tended to be a particularly awkward time, as Heather recalled:

When we would be sitting at the table or something, and they would be talking directly to me, I could start, you know, I could start to understand them 'cause I'd get the gist of how it was going, and of course, they slowed everything down, and everything was fine. And then, you know, like in the middle of a sentence, they'd say something to each other or something, and I couldn't understand it. I don't think I ever once understood one thing that they were talking about to each other. It was like, you know, having a secret language to talk about someone who was in the room.

Herbert De Ley, in his analysis of stranger anxiety among American students in France, points out that host families can ironically complicate, instead of easing, cultural adjustment:

The traditional famille d'accueil rationale that students learn French more effectively if dispersed far from their fellow Americans, in different parts of the site city, alone in their "French families" [. . .] also means students live in enforced, more or less intimate contact with a subculture ruled by its own unfamiliar economy and mores. From the point of view of stranger anxiety, the famille d'accueil may not be a situation in which the student feels "at home," but rather a particularly complex example of the difficulties of the foreign environment. (842)

Such seemed to be the case for both Ashley and Heather, in whose eyes the advantage of a home stay did not seem to offset the problems. Thus, if, contrary to popular belief, the host family situation does not always constitute the most beneficial living arrangement for all study-abroad participants, then what role do housing arrangements play in shaping participants' experiences overseas and their interpretations of them? What impact does predeparture preparation have on students' expectations for their lodging and its contribution to their overall contact with the host culture? What role does housing play in students' choices and experiences concerning target language use? In this particular study, it was in the area of language learning in particular that a third contrast emerged between aspirations and actual experience.

Contrast 3: (Un)Impressive Linguistic Progress

The fastest way to become fluent in a language is to live in the host country with a family that has limited English skills and in an area that attracts few English-speaking tourists. The French language program at Valcourt was established to provide this ideal environment for intermediate French students who want to make a quantum leap in their oral language proficiency.

--Valcourt program brochure

"I was just so surprised that you could be in France for a month and really not speak French that often," Ashley recollected. "I mean, I probably spoke about maybe three sentences a day in French with my family, you know, 'I'm leaving. I'll be home later,' or during dinner, 'Pass the so-and-so.' I never really spoke."

Indeed, English remained the primary language of communication for most informants outside the classroom, despite the predeparture belief that participation in the Valcourt program would ensure a "quantum leap" in their French oral proficiency. For Heather, the need to express herself freely in her own native language was heightened by her grief over the death of a close friend shortly before her departure for Valcourt:

I made really good friends over there [from Collegiate]. We always met, you know, between classes or for lunch, and we always spoke English. I told you before that I didn't know if I liked that so much. And in a way, I think for my total overall, like, improvement, I didn't like it. But at the same time, having all the things that happened before I went to France and my state of mind, I think that I really needed someone who I could, you know, communicate those thoughts to and the way I felt. If I wouldn't have been able to get my thoughts out, you know, it would have been really difficult.

Ashley expressed a similar need to process her host family difficulties within a home language context: "I mean, if I hadn't formed the friends that I did, I don't know what I would have done--curled up in my room or something. I wouldn't have had any fun at all."

This tendency to congregate with American peers and speak English is what prompts many study-abroad administrators to share Rouben Cholakian's view that programs should "put the emphasis on keeping American students apart," since, in so doing, "the well-motivated and resourceful student soon understands the value of conversing with the natives and avoiding compatriots" (22). De Ley cautions against this strategy, however, arguing that the social networks among American students overseas are ironically an essential component of host culture integration. In the face of potentially threatening cultural and linguistic differences, compatriot association allows for what Dennison Nash calls a sort of "adaptive division of labor, [. . .] mak[ing] the problem of individual adaptation less difficult" (qtd. in De Ley 844).

Although it is tempting to blame student "laziness" for all failure to make linguistic and cultural learning gains, the data in this case study do not support a generalized deficiency view of the Valcourt participants. To be sure, most study-abroad students, like most of us in general, are lazy some of the time, and a few are lazy all of the time. However, Ashley and Heather did not choose peer congregation over total immersion because they were insufficiently motivated or lacked resourcefulness. They chose the company of other Americans because for them the benefits of being able to express their feelings freely outweighed the potential costs of not achieving personal and programmatic goals.

There is clearly a need to reexamine the relation between study abroad and language learning. While recent research has already defined many factors that seem to have predictive value in anticipating the amount of linguistic progress a participant is likely to make (e.g., Brecht, Davidson, and Ginsberg), the role of the students' perspective in language learning remains largely untapped. What factors do students consider when deciding which language to use and which contacts to pursue? Which circumstances enable and even encourage participants to take greater linguistic risks? What role do planned and impromptu support systems play in shaping students' choices and behaviors concerning language use? By taking the students' point of view into account, we can no longer assume that failure to make significant language and cultural learning gains or to integrate into a host family is solely the fault of the participant; rather we are compelled to explore some of the complex questions of study abroad, even if they are not easily addressed. To dismiss such questions as "too big" or "unanswerable" will only permit the continued propagation of study-abroad clichés, such as those represented in the Valcourt program literature, which will inevitably lead to frustration on the part of study-abroad participants and administrators alike when personal and programmatic expectations are not met.

Clearly, well-articulated expectations and goals by both the programs and the participants are desirable. However, when such aspirations turn out to be unrealistic or when there is a mismatch between program and participant aims, significant problems can arise. The friction that resulted in the Valcourt program has given rise to a number of questions that may hold ramifications for overseas program design and recruitment. To summarize, what links exist between study abroad and the development of cross-cultural understanding and target-language competence? How do students make linguistic and social decisions in the relationships they choose to cultivate overseas? What role does housing play in shaping participants' choices and experiences? How do various sources of emotional support influence students' behavior and perceptions in the foreign environment? And how might seminars and individual advising prior to departure further shape participants' expectations for and interpretations of their experiences abroad?

To be sure, the experiences of two or seven or even a hundred students cannot provide generalizable, definitive answers to such broad, open-ended questions. But this ambiguity is also precisely the point. When we ask questions that seek linear, causal relationships, one-to-one correlations, and yes-no answers, we may find interesting information, but we risk overinterpretation of the results into absolutes and guarantees, such as the statements made in the Valcourt program literature. If we pose questions that allow for multiple, complex, individualized responses, we may not find complete answers, but we will be more apt to honor the reality of the study-abroad experience as unique and dynamic, shaped through myriad personal backgrounds, opportunities, and choices. This line of inquiry may also prompt us to develop models of study abroad that build in flexibility and careful advising for diverse individual styles, experiences, and goals. At the very least, it will caution us against the sort of "false advertising" that may boost participation numbers but at the cost of disappointments that could have a long-lasting negative effect on students' worldviews and future interest in international contacts.

Notes

²Additional descriptive information about the Valcourt summer program and about Heather and Ashley can be found in the summary tables in the appendix.

Works Cited

Carlson, Jerry S., Barbara B. Burn, John Useem, and David Yachimowicz. Study Abroad: The Experience of American Undergraduates. Westport: Greenwood, 1990.

Carroll, Raymonde. Cultural Misunderstandings: The French-American Experience. Trans. Carol Volk. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988. Trans. of Evidences invisibles: Français et Americains au quotidien. Paris: Seuil, 1987.

Cholakian, Rouben. "Study Abroad: Paris." ADFL Bulletin 23.2 (1992): 20-25. [Show Article]

De Ley, Herbert. "Organized Programs of Study in France: Some Contributions of Stranger Theory." French Review 48 (1975): 836-47.

Freed, Barbara F. "Language Learning in a Study Abroad Context: The Effects of Interactive and Noninteractive Out-of-Class Contact on Grammatical Achievement and Oral Proficiency." Linguistics, Language Teaching, and Language Acquisition: The Interdependence of Theory, Practice, and Research. Georgetown: U Round Table on Langs. and Linguistics 1990. Ed. James E. Alatis. Washington: Georgetown UP, 1991. 459-77.

------, ed. Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context. Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1995.

Hoff, Roma. The Miracle Happens 'Over There': Tracing the Development of the Productive Skills of Two Study Abroad Students. ERIC, 1986. ED 270 994.

Kline, Rebecca R. "Literacy and Language Learning in a Study Abroad Context." Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 4 (1998): 139-65.

------. "The Social Practice of Literacy in a Program of Study Abroad." Diss. Pennsylvania State U, 1993.

Lafford, Barbara A. "Getting into, through, and out of a Survival Situation: A Comparison of Communicative Strategies Used by Students Studying Spanish--Abroad and 'at Home.'" Freed, Second Language 97-121.

Laubscher, Michael L. Encounters with Difference: Student Perceptions of the Role of Out-of-Class Experiences in Education Abroad. Westport: Greenwood, 1994.

Milleret, Margo. "Assessing the Gain in Oral Proficiency from Summer Foreign Study." ADFL Bulletin 22.3 (1991): 39-43. [Show Article]

"More U.S. College Students Are Taking Courses Abroad." New York Times 2 Dec. 1996: A9.

Pellegrino, Valerie A. "Social and Psychological Factors Affecting Spontaneous Second Language Use during Study Abroad: A Qualitative Study." Diss. Bryn Mawr Coll., 1997.

"Researchers Say Study Abroad Is Key to Learning Languages." Chronicle of Higher Education 7 Feb. 1997: A45.

Siegal, Meryl. "Individual Differences and Study Abroad: Women Learning Japanese in Japan." Freed, Second Language 225-44.

Wilkinson, Sharon. "Foreign Language Conversation and the Study Abroad Transition: A Case Study." Diss. Pennsylvania State U, 1995.

------. "On the Nature of Immersion during Study Abroad: Some Participant Perspectives." Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 4 (1998): 121-38.

------. "Study Abroad from the Participants' Perspective: A Challenge to Common Beliefs." Foreign Language Annals 31 (1998): 23-39.

© 2000 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.

Appendix

Profiles of Sample Participants

Program Profile

ADFL Bulletin 32, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 36-41

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