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10 The Effects of Formal Instruction and Study Abroad Contexts on Foreign Language Development: The SALA Project CARMEN PÉREZ-VIDAL Universitat Pompeu Fabra MARIA JUAN-GARAU Universitat de les Illes Balears JOAN C. MORA Universitat de Barcelona THE INTEREST IN INVESTIGATING the effects of Study Abroad (SA) on linguistic outcomes and processes seems undiminishing. Whereas the main body of research to date focuses on the effect of the SA period per se, the aim of the present study is to uncover the effects of an SA period, following a formal instruction period, on the linguistic development of advanced level English major undergraduates studying for a degree in translation. The degree includes eighty hours of English tuition in the first year, prior to a three-month SA period spent in an English-speaking country (mostly in the UK and Ireland, but also in the United States, Canada, and Australia). The data analyzed are part of the corpus gathered in the framework of a larger long-standing, state-funded research project, the Study Abroad and Language Acquisition (SALA) project, with a corpus of 63 averaged longitudinal and between 45 and 240 cross-sectional participants, according to test. They have been measured intensively, with a variety of data-collection procedures (oral and written, both with global and fine measurements) and with a comprehensively longitudinal design. Indeed , the project encompasses measurements not only during SA but before it—that is, following the AH instruction period, and also after it—in order to tap the midterm effect of SA. Participants are multilingual, Spanish/Catalan speakers learning English , their L3, and a second foreign language, their L4. Finally, these data are compared with baseline participants who are English-speaking university students on an SA program in Spain; hence, they constitute highly comparable data. The study presented here illustrates the variety of data in the SALA project by presenting analyses of written development, oral proficiency, and pronunciation in all its phonetic detail. 115 If we start by tackling the theoretical underpinnings underlying SA research, two key questions stand prominently for the researchers’consideration. The first and most important question concerns the interest of SA studies within the field of second language acquisition. An answer was clearly put forward by Collentine and Freed (2004, 158), in their seminal monograph edited in SSLA, where they stated: “The study of SLA within and across various contexts of learning forces a broadening of our perspective of the most important variables that affect and impede acquisition in general.” Indeed, on the one hand, SA does represent a specific context of acquisition in which specific proficiency gains can be obtained in contrast with other contexts such as formal instruction, domestic immersion, content-based teaching, or content and language integrated learning. It has been contended that an SA context may facilitate automatization of the linguistic competence practiced, whose proceduralization might have begun in an FI context (DeKeyser 2007). These are processes that to some degree involve implicit and explicit cognitive mechanisms taking place separately or at once. On the other hand, a whole set of learner variables that determine the amount of proficiency gains achieved during an SA period have been identified (see, among the seminal studies on SA, Collentine and Freed 2004; DeKeyser 1991, 2007; Freed 1995; Milton and Meara 1995; Regan 1998; Towell, Hawkins, and Bazergui 1996). The second question concerns the actual gains obtained after SA. Research has been somewhat biased in this respect as oral production has been the winner, in terms both of the number of studies devoted to it and of conclusive results regarding the benefits derived from SA. Literacy has been the loser in both senses. Grammatical or structural competence, lexical, pragmatic, strategic, and sociolinguistic competence have also been analyzed. According to DuFon and Churchill (2006, 26) results seem to indicate the following: Generalized improvement in overall oral proficiency and fluency is the norm. Improvement in oral accuracy is not often reported. Even short programs seem to lend significant benefits. Longer programs lead to greater improvement in the area of pragmatics, pronunciation , and fluency. At best learner development only approaches TL norms. When one analyzes oral communication, the skill having received the greatest attention in SA research, documentation on the development of fluency abroad abounds (see, e.g., DeKeyser 1986; Juan-Garau and Pérez-Vidal 2007; Lafford 2004; Segalowitz and Freed 2004). However, there is a dearth of SA studies focusing on oral accuracy by...

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