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Article In: Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education: Online-First Articles

Context and contact in the development of oral proficiency

The case of Chinese learners of English studying for a degree at home and abroad

ORCiD logo with link | The University of York
 | East University of Political Science and Law
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Abstract
Seventy-two Chinese learners of English participated in the study, 33 in the United Kingdom and 39 in China. Each completed seven tasks in English and a language contact questionnaire, once at the start of their master’s program and once six months later. The seven tasks assessed overall oral proficiency and the linguistic knowledge and processing that underpin speech production. Small statistically significant differences were observed across the contexts at Time 2 on the three linguistic processing tasks, when performance at Time 1 was controlled for. Interestingly, the more the learners studying in the United Kingdom reported using the target language, the more slowly they completed the sentence inflection and agreement task, while the more the learners studying in China reported using the target language, the more quickly they completed the task. Type of language contact (i.e., reading, writing, speaking, or listening) is explored as a possible explanation for this novel finding.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Language development during study abroad
    • 2.2The role of language contact and practice
  • 3.The present study
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Context and participants
    • 4.2Context of study
    • 4.3Data collection
      • 4.3.1IELTS-style speaking task
      • 4.3.2Productive levels test
      • 4.3.3Word associates test
      • 4.3.4Picture-naming task
      • 4.3.5Grammar ability finder
      • 4.3.6Sentence inflection and agreement task
      • 4.3.7Sentence transformation task
      • 4.3.8Background and language contact questionnaire
    • 4.4Data analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Descriptive statistics
    • 5.2Intragroup change
      • 5.2.1Intergroup differences
    • 5.3Relationship between language contact and language development
      • 5.3.1Intergroup differences in language contact
      • 5.3.2Relationship between language contact and language development
      • 5.3.3Intergroup differences in different types of language contact
      • 5.3.4Relationship between different types of language contact and language development
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Impact of study abroad on language development
    • 6.2The role of language contact and practice
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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