Qualitative Analysis of Second Language Acquisition in Study Abroad: The ACTR/NFLC Project. NFLC Occasional Papers.

A study undertaken by the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR) and National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) is described. The project was designed to examine the process and results of language study abroad. The first phase of the project was a statistical analysis of the relationship between student characteristics (demographic and educational) and pre-program and post-program assessments of students' speaking, listening, and reading abilities. Subjects were 658 students of Russian participating in a semester abroad. The second phase was an ethnographic study of student language-learning behaviors and experiences in the target country, documented by self-report diaries, observations, interviews, and recordings. The present report focuses on the methodology and results of the second phase. It chronicles the data collection process (setting, participants, instruments, and data collected), and summarizes the coding, analysis, and insights gained from student calendar diaries and narrative data. Gender-related differences are discussed briefly. Additional analyses, drawn from audio- and video-recorded data and case studies, are also described briefly. Implications of the findings for second language acquisition research are analyzed. A brief bibliography is included. (MSE)