Perspectiva clientes

The goal of this current study was to understand what students do when they study abroad, by taking a microscopic look into the interactions of students during a short-term study-abroad program. The first research question asked about the students’ interactions outside of the classroom. The 13 participants were a subgroup of a group of 50 students that participated in many afternoon and evening activities together. I found that most of students’ interactions were with their groupmates. Furthermore, the students attended classes from Monday to Thursday and, during the three-day weekends travelled with fellow groupmates to other Spanish cities or European countries. For these reasons, the majority of the participants spent a large percentage of their time outside of the classroom and outside of the host home with other U.S. students from their home university.

Participant #01’s interaction contrasted with that of the majority. He began his sojourn with a mission to isolate himself from his groupmates and completely immerse himself in the city of Santander. He was not completely successful; however, he was one of the only participants to create deep and lasting friendships with local Spanish university students. Participant #01 also befriended the monitor for the group, developing a friendship that involved excursions not associated with the home university. Moreover, P#01 said that, without the opportunity to meet the monitor, finding and building friendships with locals would have been challenging.

The second research question specifically addressed the students’ interactions with host families. To answer this question, the students recorded 20 to 30 minutes of

mealtime conversation with their families once a week for each of the five weeks. I analyzed these recordings to find common conversation topics and identify the initiator of these topics. I also looked at host family characteristics to identify how they affected the resolution of breakdowns in conversation and the turn-taking patterns of the conversations. Moreover, I asked participants to share about their interactions with host family members outside of mealtime and outside of the home.

The results showed that there were five main topics of conversation all students discussed at some point during the five weeks. Food was the most frequent topic of conversation, followed by students’ future or travel plans. The students took full advantage of their weekends to visit other places in Europe; thus, almost 15 percent of the conversation topics were about places they planned to visit, or their afternoon and evening plans with friends. The third most popular topic was related to the host family. This topic involved discussion of the host family’s history, grandchildren, or places they had visited in Spain or the world. Eight percent of the overall conversation topics were about local traditions, festivals, customs, and places to visit. As the students became acclimated to the city, the host families explained the local customs and also suggested many places for the students to visit.

The students’ past was the fifth most popular topic of conversation. During these discussions, students shared the experiences they had visiting other countries or other cities in Spain. They talked about activities they did the day before with their groupmates after class. Additionally, I found that the host family members dominated the conversation, becoming the most frequent initiators of conversation topics. Host family members introduced 66 percent of the topics of conversation while the students only introduced 28 percent.

The characteristics of the host families were varied. Eight out of the nine host homes contained someone who spoke English. This individual was either another university student from the U.S. or a young professional family member that spoke English. Because of the presence of these English speakers, resolutions to breakdowns in conversations often involved the use of English. Fourteen percent of the breakdowns used English to resolve problems, whereas only 10 percent used negotiation of meaning. By analyzing face-to-face interviews and mealtime recordings, I established that the majority of the breakdowns occurred due to lexical gaps. Thirty-two percent of recasts were for lexical mistakes, and 34 percent of the time students asked for help with a lexical item.

Family characteristics also affected turn-taking practices. Host family members produced 62 percent of the turns, and students produced 38 percent of the turns. The data varied significantly by individual participant, but the results of the group showed that backchanneling was the largest category for students, followed by five-word turns that included a verb. The third largest category was one-word turns that were words, most of the times answers to a specific question and not utterances, as is the case with backchanneling. This data revealed that students were constantly giving verbal signs to host family members to let them know that they understood what was being said. The large number of one-word turns leads me to conclude that students were engaging in the conversations by responding to many questions. Furthermore, the number of five-word turns points to the fact that students also contributed to the conversation from time to time.

I also investigated interactions between host families and students outside of mealtime conversations. I discovered that a minimal amount of student—host interactions took place outside of the home. Only two students reported doing an activity with their host family outside of the home. Inside the home, however, watching TV with the host

family was an activity that hosts and students most often did together. Seven of the 11 host families watched TV with their students at some point during the five-week sojourn. Cooking was another activity that students shared with their host family. Three participants shared their experiences of learning to cook Spanish dishes with their host mother. All of the students reported feeling at home with their host families, but the idea that students would become pseudo-family members and would participate in activities with the families in and outside of the home was not supported by this data.

Finally, the third research question focused on the role of technology in student interactions while abroad. The face-to-face interviews and survey results uncovered an interesting pattern. The students brought at least two different electronic devices with them to Spain: a U.S. smartphone, a laptop or tablet, and a Spanish “go” phone. Furthermore, students reported that they did not experience a lapse in social media use. They all continued to use Facebook regularly. I examined the data for evidence of the people the students interacted with while using social media and mobile applications. The analysis revealed that all but one student used social media primarily to interact with groupmates and friends and family in the U.S. Only P#01 mentioned using Facebook to interact and communicate with his new Spanish friends.

The results of this dissertation are very telling. Gone are the days when students go abroad and are completely disconnected from their L1, thrust into the target community to survive and thrive. When I first studied abroad in 2001, I had to find a place that sold phone cards to then go to a phone booth and call home, or I had to go to a locutorio— a local-phone calling place—and communicate my need to call the U.S. with the clerk. Some of my fondest memories are the hours I spent at the local Internet café, where I went to use the Internet and socialize with the attendant and other locals. When I made plans to travel to another city, I had to physically go to the bus or train station and

communicate my need for a ticket in the target language. I also remember spending hours in my host mother’s kitchen, watching her cook and talking about different recipes and Spanish food. I also remember buying a little alarm clock/radio and going to sleep listening to Spanish tunes playing on the radio station based in Las Canarias.

Unfortunately, because of technology, today the majority of these practices are extinct. Via Internet access, students can accomplish these tasks without having to use the target language and without having to interact with an actual human being. The local radio stations now play more music in English than they do in Spanish, and student—host family relationships are, for the most part, surface relationships. Regrettably, even though study abroad has drastically changed, and the idea of 100 percent immersion is out-of- date, our assumptions about study abroad and what students do when abroad have not changed. Because of this disconnect, the chapter that follows will discuss the different factors that shaped this study-abroad program and affected the way in which the students interacted. I will also discuss prospective modifications and recommendations to the current study-abroad practices to facilitate and create more opportunities for students to have meaningful interactions with native speakers, which will in turn aid students’ language acquisition.

CHAPTER 5—DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION