Anglophone Students Abroad

Identity, Social Relationships, and Language Learning

Rosamond Mitchell, Nicole Tracy-Ventura, Kevin McManus

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351762298
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Lingue

Anglophone students abroad: Identity, social relationships and language learning presents the findings of a major study of British students of French and Spanish undertaking residence abroad. The new dataset presented here provides both quantitative and qualitative information on language learning, social networking and integration and identity development during residence abroad.

The book tracks in detail the language development of participants and relates this systematically to individual participants' social and linguistic experiences and evolving relationship. It shows that language learning is increasingly dependent on students' own agency and skill and the negotiation of identity in multilingual and lingua franca environments.

1 Introduction

1.1 Sojourning abroad in an age of global English

The worldwide expansion of higher education today has been accompanied by greatly increased student mobility. Without including exchange students in the count, around 4 million altogether, just under 2% of the world student population, went to study for a degree abroad in 2012 (UNESCO, 2014). Much of this mobility involves students with sufficient personal resources leaving their home educational setting to study for a first degree or a higher degree in a country where higher education institutions are seen as having better academic/scientific resources (i.e., what Teichler (2015) calls “vertical” mobility). And much of this international student traffic is targeting the university systems of the developed Anglophone world more specifically. In 2012, just five countries hosted almost half of the world total of mobile students (UNESCO, 2014): the United States (18%), the United Kingdom (11%), France (7%), Australia (6%) and Germany (5%). Increasingly, also, in addition to this flow of students toward traditionally Anglophone institutions, the push toward internationalization and recruitment of international students is promoting the use of English as medium of instruction (EMI) in non-Anglophone higher education settings (Dimova, Hultgren, & Jensen, 2015; Kirkpatrick, 2014; Wächter & Maiworm, 2014). English is widely encountered as a lingua franca for informal as well as professional communication in higher education, in EMI settings and beyond (Byram & Dervin, 2008; Haberland, Lonsmann, & Preisler, 2013; Kalocsai, 2011), and English is the leading language of concern in discussions about student mobility, internationalization and intercultural learning (Sharifian, 2012).

This book deals with the new world of internationalizing higher education, but not as it directly affects students moving to Anglophone contexts. Instead, our focus is on the more uncommon case (in modern times at least) of students moving in the opposite direction – that is, students from a traditionally Anglophone institution (a British university) undertaking an extended sojourn abroad, and doing so with L2 learning as a major objective.

Our participants have inherited a long-standing tradition of language learning abroad, yet they are acting counter to broad international trends. De Swaan (2001) has proposed his so-called “world language system” to account for contemporary patterns of multilingualism and second language acquisition. For him, the languages of the world are hierarchically arranged in terms of status, which can be peripheral, central or supercentral. L2 learning is accordingly asymmetrical, with learners most predisposed to acquire a relevant language which is superordinate to the language(s) they know already. Thus for example, Quechua speakers in Peru will be motivated and expected to learn Spanish in addition (but not the reverse); Cantonese speakers in southern China are expected to learn Mandarin; Arabic speakers in southern France or the Paris banlieue are expected to learn French. In all these cases, speakers of a (locally) peripheral language are learning a more central one. In this system, of course, English has the status of hypercentral language, with hundreds of millions of learners worldwide, including speakers of the 100 or so central languages in De Swaan’s system. It is unsurprising that in contemporary discussions of multilingualism, lingua franca usage, and translanguaging (Breidbach, 2003; Canagarajah, 2013; Garcia & Wei, 2014; Jenkins, 2015), English is the central case.

Given the status of the English language today, in this world language system, it is also unsurprising that Anglophone young people are reluctant language learners (Lanvers, 2016). For the United States, Kinginger (2009) describes language teaching as a “marginalised pursuit” (p. 12). While federal efforts since the 1970s have tried to promote language learning in support of both economic competitiveness and national security (Kolb, 2009), the number of US citizens reporting that they speak a language other than English remains relatively unchanged at around a quarter of the population, and around 8% of college students enroll for any foreign language course (Rivers & Robinson, 2012). In the UK, only a minority of secondary school students continue with foreign language learning up to age 16 (48% in 2015: Tinsley & Board, 2016). Levels of proficiency achieved among British schoolchildren in school-taught languages are generally low (European Commission, 2012). In higher education, a very small minority of students undertake degrees in languages (3% in 2010–2011: British Academy, 2013), though more than twice that number follow language programmes alongside other degrees, perhaps compensating for perceived deficiencies in their earlier schooling (British Academy, 2014). British students persisting with languages are predominantly white, female and middle class (Lanvers, 2016).

Along with their relative reluctance to pursue language learning, British students are also reluctant sojourners abroad (King, Findlay, & Ahrens, 2010). For example, in 2013–2014, around 15,500 British students in total took part in all branches of the European Erasmus student mobility scheme (which targets students in all disciplines). This was less than half the number of participants from other large-sized European countries (Germany, France and Spain: data from www.go.international.ac.uk). Male UK students seem particularly reluctant to participate; they consistently comprise only one-third of the participants. The numbers of participants are currently rising, though this is from a persistently low base; according to Go International, in 2013–2014 just 1.2% of all UK-domiciled students spent time abroad, and three Anglophone countries (the United States, Australia and Canada) are among the top 10 destinations. Around 30% of all mobile UK students are languages majors.

American students have also shown somewhat increased numbers sojourning abroad in recent decades. However, the absolute proportion remains low (less than 3% of full-time students); additionally, most of these programmes involve “shorter timeframes and students majoring in social sciences, business or management” (Kinginger, 2009, p. 15). A significant percentage head for other Anglophone destinations, and language learning is not expressly prioritized in many cases. Again, participants are predominantly female and Caucasian (Kinginger, 2009).

Nonetheless, despite a long relative decline in popularity compared with other school and university subjects, languages retain the loyalty and interest of a minority of young Anglophones. With contemporary globalization and related waves of migration, including postcolonial influxes following World War II and the free movement historically facilitated through membership of the European Union, British society is also increasingly diverse, linguistically as well as ethnically and culturally. With one in six children attending school in England now bilingual or multilingual, according to official statistics (current figures available from www.naldic.org.uk), multilingualism and accompanying practices such as translanguaging are increasingly familiar in urban Britain. The supposed attractiveness to employers in a global economy, not only of multilingual proficiency but also of the intercultural awareness which accompanies it, is increasingly promoted among both educational professionals and their students (British Academy, 2014).

Recent research shows clearly that languages majors in UK universities have typically made a very positive choice, and have come to terms with their exceptionality. Studies by Busse and Williams (2010) and by Stolte (2015) explore in some detail the language-learning biographies of university students of German. These researchers conclude that enjoyment of the language-learning opportunity available while at school, plus perceived personal success and aptitude for languages, create intrinsic motivation and play a key role in British students’ pursuit of languages beyond the compulsory stages. Additionally, early opportunities to visit Germany and to meet German people, either through school exchanges or through family holidays and contacts, had provided participants in both of these studies with influential tasters of the communicative possibilities which arise from language-learning effort. Instrumental motivation had some influence, but to a lesser degree, and students in neither study showed classic integrative motivation (despite pleasant impressions of Germany gained through short visits). These researchers also consider the relevance to their participants of the L2 motivational self-system proposed by Dörnyei (2009); they find little evidence for an ought-to self among British students, unsurprisingly (i.e., societal expectations and pressures for language learning success are weak). However, they agree in interpreting their participants as possessing a distinctive ideal L2 self which values multilingual proficiency in general and oral proficiency in particular. That is, these languages students now see themselves as prospective bilingual/multilingual speakers, with associated characteristics such as aptitude for mobility and intercultural awareness.

When Anglophone university students do venture abroad, with positive motivation and commitment to L2 learning, they are likely to target one of de Swaan’s “supercentral” languages – French, German, Spanish or perhaps Chinese, Arabic or Japanese. Their sojourns are most often spent in countries where these languages have historical status as national standard languages (for current figures see www.gointernational.ac.uk). However, whatever their desired linguistic target, sojourners abroad are now increasingly likely to enter a linguistically complex environment, with English embedded and available to many as a socially valued L2/lingua franca. (On the availability of English across Europe, see, e.g., the annual English Proficiency Index published by Education First: http://www.ef.co.uk/epi/regions/europe/; on linguistic superdiversity see, e.g., Blommaert and Rampton, 2011). A further complication is the transformation of contemporary students’ immediate social and linguistic context, due to the constant availability of the internet and social media. These offer the potential to sustain existing social networks with a quite new immediacy and facility (Coleman, 2013; Coleman & Chafer, 2010; Kinginger, 2010). The isolation from home reported in older qualitative accounts of study abroad, such as Hawkins’ description of his stay in Germany in the 1930s (Hawkins, 1999), is now a thing of the past, with corresponding implications for continuing access to English among modern Anglophone sojourners.

1.2 Anglophone traditions in the language-learning sojourn

Study abroad has a long social history in Europe, with mobility among early medieval scholars very evident, and the earliest European universities (such as Bologna or Paris) attracting students from across the continent, who organized themselves to live and socialize together as diverse “nations” (de Ridder-Symoens, 1992). From the Renaissance onward, the education of a European aristocrat might also include a sojourn abroad, to learn a range of gentlemanly arts, including languages (Gallagher, 2014).

The modern European university tradition is, however, grounded in 19th-century nationalism, and (re)conceived to serve the growing economic and social needs of the nation state for educated personnel (de Wit & Merkx, 2012). German universities led modernizing trends, and when modern languages appeared on the British university curriculum in the later 19th century, they were much influenced by the German tradition of philological study (Rüegg, 2004). Thus, universities were ambivalent about the teaching of practical language skills, and these were often left to lower-status language tutors. However, periods of study and residence abroad appeared as part of the modern languages higher education curriculum in England from the early 20th century, initially as a voluntary extra supporting the development of practical skills (as for Eric Hawkins in the 1930s: 1999), but increasingly as a compulsory element of the course. For example, Britain and France have exchanged students as language teaching assistants since 1904, and similar exchanges with Germany followed soon afterward (Rowles & Rowles, 2005).

Following World War II, a period abroad, embedded within the programme, became compulsory for languages students at most UK universities (Evans, 1988; Nott, 1996). Thus, a guide for prospective students of languages published by the Modern Language Association in 1961 advises the interested that a languages degree will involve

willingness on your part to spend some time – ranging from one month to a full year – in the country concerned

(Stern, 1961).

The goal of this stay abroad is described in another 1960s guide as

a general finishing device for oral proficiency, as well as for the acquisition of first-hand knowledge of the foreign culture

(Healey, 1967, p. 7).

Practice was inconsistent however, so that Healey could describe the stay abroad as

a very variable quantity, ranging from stipulations that certain amounts of vacation time must be spent in a country speaking the language, to the requirement that a whole year be spent in that country

(Healey, 1967, p. 7).

The extent of supervision, and academic tasks required, on the part of the home university also varied widely. Healey could assume that any student spending a full year abroad would “normally” do so as a teaching assistant in a school (p. 86), and by the late 1970s, the language assistantship scheme was attracting around 2,000 participants annually (Dyson, 1984). However, others might spend their sojourn as an exchange student, or on a work placement (Willis, Doble, Sankarayya, & Smithers, 1977).

Following British accession to the European Economic Community, and the subsequent creation of the Erasmus student exchange programme in the 1980s, UK students have benefited from much more systematic institutional links and financial support offered by the scheme, which supports large numbers of student exchanges across Europe, including those targeting languages majors (Ballatore, 2015; Byram & Dervin, 2008; Teichler, 1997; Teichler & Ferencz, 2011). Correspondingly, the balance between sojourn types has shifted, with the student exchange becoming the most popular type among British students by the 1990s (Coleman, 1995, 1996). At this point, the goals of the sojourn became elaborated, as further potential benefits were recognized in terms of personal development (“greater maturity, independence, self-reliance, self-awareness and confidence”: Coleman, 1996, p. 66), and also intercultural awareness. In the 1990s, this last was a particular focus, with specific collaborative projects involving a numbe...