Evaluation and the Summer Language Program Abroad: A Review Essay

abroad increased during the 1980s while at the same time its clientele broadened from foreign language majors to students from business and engineering (6: p. 92). The strengths of summer study abroad programs suggest why many institutions are sponsoring them: the visibility and prestige they bring to the university, the cost relative to full-year programs, the opportunity for faculty to travel and conduct research abroad, and the profitability to the institution. Criticisms of summer study abroad programs are tied to what are also program features: brevity and lack of traditional structure. The shortness of the summer study experience can limit student contact with the host culture, which in turn limits the opportunity for language practice and the potential impact on student values (5: p. 261). From an administrator's standpoint, summer study abroad programs are problematic since they do not compare easily with on-campus summer study. Do summer study abroad programs offer classwork equal in rigor and content to coursework given on campus? Most summer study directors who have published their views on academic rigor in summer language programs believe that coursework can and should be rigorous, but not in the same ways that counterparts on campus would be.1 Geitz argues that students must be given equal opportunity both to assimilate information about their new environment and to experiment with how that information works so that neither academics nor the richness of the for