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Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education
Vol. 5:2 (2020) ► pp.175–207

Linguistic and motivational changes of a German adolescent student in New Zealand

 | Zurich University of Teacher Education
This paper reports on the findings of a 15-year-old German girl’s motivational and linguistic experiences during her one-semester study abroad (SA) in New Zealand. Chiara primarily interacted in social settings with either locals (e.g. homestay) or other Germans (e.g. school breaks). This paper investigates the nature of her second language (L2) learning motivation in different social settings, as elicited in interviews, reports and blog entries; and the dynamics of her oral L2 development, as captured in six interviews. The findings show that Chiara’s L2 motivation was highly situational: she only made significant efforts in L2 use when she considered the specific social setting valuable for reaching non-linguistic goals and when it validated her sense of self. The linguistic findings, measured in language complexity, accuracy, lexis and fluency (CALF) demonstrated that Chiara improved her already highly functioning oral skills during SA – especially fluency and accuracy – despite inconsistent L2 interactions.
Keywords: high school study abroad, oral second language development, complexity, accuracy, lexis, and fluency, language learning motivation, language learning contexts
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Motivation
    • 2.2CALF and study abroad
  • 3.The study
    • 3.1The New Zealand context
    • 3.2Participant and SA programme
    • 3.3Instruments and procedures
      • 3.3.1Quantitative data and analysis
      • 3.3.2Qualitative data and analysis
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Motivation
      • 4.1.1Motivational orientation
      • 4.1.2Behavioural motivation
      • 4.1.3Attributional motivation
    • 4.2L2 development
      • 4.2.1Grammatical complexity
      • 4.2.2Accuracy
      • 4.2.3Lexical diversity
      • 4.2.4Fluency
      • 4.2.5Direct speech
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Motivation
    • 5.2L2 development
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 7 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sar.18013.sau
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