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Return to The Language Teacher Online One of the most obvious benefits of study abroad is daily contact with the target language and immersion into the culture. Since Japan has embraced the concept of "internationalization," the number of study abroad and homestay programs for students has proliferated: Japanese universities conduct summer courses with overseas "sister universities"; private companies organize homestays for junior and senior high students; travel agents even offer study abroad packages of airline ticket and language program with room and board. Such group programs, however, may fail to meet the linguistic and cross-cultural expectations of the participants due to reclusive tendencies of the homogeneous group itself. Unless the Japanese students are joining a multicultural language learning program, special consideration must be given to creating opportunities for authentic linguistic and intercultural exchange. Furthermore, as Allwright and Bailey (1991) point out, while living in an environment where the target language is spoken may provide students with input and practice opportunities, the outcome of this fusion depends on learners' receptivity to the target language, culture, and its speakers. Receptivity means the state of mind that welcomes the experiences and challenges of becoming a speaker of another language (Allwright and Bailey, 1991). Administrators, teachers, and other persons involved with study abroad programs for homogeneous groups should not only address the students' linguistic needs, but also organize activities which integrate the study abroad students into the mainstream university community, and consider the students' emotional condition. Otherwise, disgruntled students may simply retreat to the world of their L1, thereby defeating the purpose of the study abroad program. Students and Program BackgroundIn the summer of 1993, 19 students from Nihon University participated in a special academic ESL program at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A. for six weeks. The ESL program was sponsored by Auburn University's Center for International Commerce, and the majority of the Nihon students were majoring in Business or closely related fields such as Economics, Industrial Management, or Commerce. The program was initiated by an Auburn faculty member whose specialty is Japanese Technology Management. At that time Auburn University didn't have an ESL program, so the faculty were contracted from Georgia State University's Applied Linguistics and ESL department to design, develop, and conduct the program. Program ObjectivesThe ESL team aimed to create an environment that would provide learners with varied and multiple input and practice opportunities with native and nonnative speakers, and monitor learners' receptivity. With the intention of creating a supportive group environment and keeping students active, upbeat, and engaged with English, each day of the program was thoroughly structured. Eventually however, the schedule was modified to accommodate the students' many requests for more free time. Below is an outline of a typical day.
Proficiency LevelTOEFL scores were available for only six students; the scores ranged from 433 to 497. The day following their arrival, all students took the G-STEP (Georgia State Test of English Proficiency) test, which is used by Georgia State University to place international students in level-appropriate ESL classes. The test consists of four sections of multiple choice questions which separately evaluate students' listening, grammar, vocabulary, and reading ability. Based on the results of the objective part of the test, a thirty-minute timed writing, and a ten-minute interview, the students were divided into two proficiency groups: intermediate and low-intermediate. Course DescriptionsThe primary objective of the ESL classes was to provide students with meaningful L2 tasks that would involve them with speakers of English. The students' assignments frequently required them to investigate some American custom or tradition by interviewing non-Japanese peers. This sort of "action homework," as it was called, not only required the students to get out of their dorm rooms to speak English, but also created an opportunity for authentic exchange as the homework task was overtaken by genuine conversation. As a result, it was hoped that they would become more relaxed and comfortable with English in both personal and academic settings and improve their English accuracy and fluency. Reading and writing were conducted as a combined class in two-hour blocks, five days a week; speaking and listening classes also met for two hours, but only four days a week. During the speaking/listening block on Fridays, students attended lectures given by Auburn faculty members on topics in business and economics. The two purposes of these lectures were to provide the Nihon students with authentic listening practice and introduce new concepts and perspectives. Arrangements were also made for Auburn graduate students in Speech Pathology to work with the Nihon students on pronunciation. The content of the reading/writing class focused on U.S. culture and intercultural communication, as well as on the themes presented in the weekly academic lectures. Students also completed assignments related to extracurricular activities; for example, following a visit to an Auburn high school, students wrote essays comparing their observations of U.S. classrooms with Japanese classrooms. It was hoped that comparative writing assignments and the intercultural component of the course would guide the students on an introspective journey to understand themselves as, in Hall's (1976) terms, "cultural beings." In this case, culture can be likened to an iceberg: above the surface one can see the distinguishing characteristics that make a society unique, language, food, native costume, etcetera; below the surface, however, one finds values, attitudes, and beliefs that support or define the surface cultural points. The writing assignments asked students to compose essays synthesizing prior knowledge or beliefs, class readings, and encounters with or observations of non-Japanese in order to better understand the submerged cultural underpinnings of their own psyche, and ultimately help the students to become better cross-cultural communicators. Through these writing assignments, students practiced what Carson, C hase, & Gibson, (1992) found to be one of the most frequently required academic tasks of university students in the United States: synthesizing multiple channels of information. Furthermore, it was hoped that these assignments would stimulate intellectual growth, which Leki and Carson (1994) assert is a goal often neglected in ESL writing classes. The reading/writing teachers required students to type their assignments, and three hours of class each week were spent in the computer lab. Students quickly developed the habit of revising and editing their assignments on the computer. Additionally, students were introduced to language-learning game and quiz software which they could play once their assignments were completed or during their free-time. The listening/speaking class was task-based and centered around authentic language situations (e.g., polling American students and reporting the results, using the telephone to obtain information, discussing everyday problems and brainstorming solutions, taping weekly oral journal reports), and aimed at improving students' communication strategies and fluency. According to Richards, Platt, and Platt (1992) task-based learning is more effective than a syllabus organized around items of grammar and vocabulary, since it endows learners with a purpose for using the language. Current event reports were used as a warm up each day; students could report news items from the mass media, or share an anecdote of an experience with a non-Japanese student. Students followed their news report with three short comprehension questions about their stories. Additionally, a portion of listening/speaking class each day was spent preparing for the academic lectures; the instructors also presented a number of exercises designed to help students discover their own learning methods: auditory, visual, kinesthetic or a combination, and discussed different learning strategies conducive for each. According to students' responses in a free-write, anonymous, final evaluation, they were extremely satisfied with the content of their ESL classes and gave numerous accounts of how the cross-cultural component had helped them to communicate with English speakers. For example, one student wrote
In addition to this course work, the students were also given advanced preparations for the Friday academic lectures. According to Harmer (1992), while nonauthentic material may be useful in teaching structures, its artificial nature "makes it very unlike anything that they are like to encounter in real life" (p. 186). For this reason, Harmer advises that authentic texts should be used to help students become better listeners/readers. In line with this, the concepts and themes introduced by the Auburn faculty were presented as they would have been normally to their undergraduate classes, but schema-activation research, as presented in Cook (1991), has shown that comprehension is much higher if students have background knowledge. Therefore, the Program Director visited the guest speakers before the lectures to collect handouts and get a sketch of the content. The ESL teachers then reviewed this material with the students, practicing note-taking skills, predicting the content of the lecture based on the information provided, and preparing possible questions for the lecturer. Later, students reviewed their predictions with the actual content and completed a questionnaire about the lecture. However, despite the ESL faculty's efforts and varied strategies to help the students grasp the content of the lectures, in weekly evaluations the majority of students reported that they understood only about 50% of the lecture. Also, the students' reactions to the content of the lectures were mixed: one student simply wrote, "perfect" while another wrote that "[economics] was not my major and this was not interesting for me." Based on the final evaluations, it can be surmised that a few students rose to the linguistic and cognitive challenge posed by the lectures, but most of the students did not like the lectures. In all, academic lectures were mentioned by ten students in the final evaluation; two were positive, the remaining eight, negative. As noted above, graduate students from the department of Speech Pathology worked with the Nihon students two times a week for four weeks, meeting privately or semi-privately for an hour of pronunciation practice. By all accounts, the students were extremely satisfied with this Speech Clinic feature of the program. One reason that the Speech Clinic appealed to the Japanese students may have been because the speech therapists asked them to repeat sounds and words and this drill procedure felt familiar and comfortable for them. In addition, unlike the ESL classes, the Speech Clinic did not require the students to perform cognitively dense tasks and what was considered "correct" and "incorrect" was immediately clear. Campus LifeStudents, teachers, and the Program Director were housed in a university residential hall. Pairs of Japanese female students shared a suite with American students (two rooms, one bath, 4 students); unfortunately, there were not enough American male residents to pair with all of the Japanese male students. Living in the dormitory provided the students with varied English opportunities. They befriended their suite-mates and other residents, passed time in the lounge watching TV, playing games, and doing puzzles, and milled around the residence entry desk. This desk was staffed from noon to midnight and the Nihon students were often gathered there, talking with the staff people, teaching them origami, or how to write their names in Japanese. The dormitory Residential Assistants were paid a stipend to organize leisure time activities (e.g., softball games, movie nights, and pizza parties) for the Nihon University students to which the dormitory residents and other students were invited. Also employed by the program was an Auburn Japanese graduate student, who functioned as an Intercultural Coordinator. She worked with the Program Director to organize transportation and logistics of out-of-town field trips. Most importantly, the Intercultural Coordinator functioned as a liaison between the Japanese students and the dorm supervisor, communicating the dormitory's rules and policies. Although there were no crises or problems that required the Intercultural Coordinator's direct intervention, it gave the students a sense of security to know that they could communicate with a completely bilingual compatriot, should the need arise. Evening Communication Sessions & Field Trips The approach to the evening communication sessions was holistic: academic, business, extracurricular, personal, and social matters were attended to by the ESL faculty. For these evening sessions, the students were divided into groups of four or five, with faculty members serving as group leaders. It was believed that students would feel more comfortable speaking up about concerns or comprehension problems in smaller groups. Also, working with the same students every evening allowed the group leaders to observe students and note irregularities in students' mood or behavior. Program management matters, such as weekly schedules and self-evaluations, were handled during the Sunday evening sessions (a copy of a weekly evaluation can be found in the Appendix). Follow-up activities (games or singing songs) were optional, as students usually had homework to finish or were tired from the weekend. During the week, the evening communication sessions were used to prepare the students for upcoming activities. For example, before students attended a theater production of Shakespeare's As You Like It, the plot was broken down into strip stories, and each group was responsible for re-telling successive parts of the play. By summarizing and re-telling their "scenes" the students eventually ordered and digested the entire plot. Using interactive and interdependent activities such as this, the students prepared for other field trips, too. The evening communication sessions were also used to plan the parties that the Nihon students hosted for their non-Japanese peers. In all, there were four parties: Let's Meet; Food and Fun; Reception for the Black Student Union; and Good Luck on Your Finals. For the parties, the Nihon students prepared information posters for the dormitory and other campus locations; they invited their suite-mates and other students that they had met at campus events, such as the International Student Association Coffee Hour. As a way to inform the campus community about the Nihon students' presence and purpose in Auburn, reporters from the student newspaper were specifically invited to these events. To help break the ice, each party featured a cross-cultural activity; the Nihon students prepared the Japanese portion and the ESL faculty prepared the English part. These cross-cultural activities included comparing American and Japanese idioms, telling English and Japanese riddles, and completing a collection of statements entitled "In my culture . . . ." These ice-breakers provided a prop to initiate conversation and the Japanese students were motivated and rewarded for completion of these tasks with bonus points that they could apply to their final grades. Additionally, the Nihon students prepared questions for the Black Student Union students that they had about the African-American experience in the South. All students received copies of these hand-outs and were free to engage in discussions as they liked. A comment from a student's final evaluation reads,
The faculty's strategy to use these ice-breakers to decrease students' anxiety about speaking in English seemed to be successful. This could be observed by the number of friends students made, and the bonus points collected. Homestay & Community ActivitiesThe first four weeks of the program focused on campus life. Then the Auburn students left for a short end-of-summer break and the campus became noticeably quieter and in fact seemed almost deserted. At this point, the Auburn-Nihon program turned outward towards the community for authentic linguistic input and cross-cultural experiences. During the first weekend of the Auburn University semester break, the students did homestays with local families. The remaining community activities were selected by the students from a menu of options; as a result, we visited the city of Atlanta, a military base, Auburn High School, Auburn's International School of Fisheries, went roller skating, and made use of other public recreation facilities. The last weekend marked the beginning of Auburn's football season and before going to the game, the students met the cheerleaders, learned some cheers, and joined the crowd that comes to Auburn to picnic and party before attending the game. To provide a linguistic crutch and decrease students' anxiety about the homestay, the students were paired, one a member of the intermediate, and the other of the low-intermediate group. Prior to departure, the faculty asked the students for questions and concerns and prepared a homestay guide for them and also role-played possible scenarios. Friday evening, the homestay hosts were invited to a barbecue to meet the students and other homestay families. This strategy guaranteed that all students were collected by their hosts at the same time, and also functioned as a formal introduction which would create a sense of familiarity for the Japanese. For the most part, the students were happy with the homestay but several students lamented that they hadn't a chance to develop deeper relationships with their host families: "My host family has a warm heart, I felt so happy and wanted to stay more with them." While it is unfortunate that students couldn't get more involved with their homestay families, it seemed unavoidable given the difference in the Japanese and American academic calendars. Another kind of complaint about the homestays came from one of the few students who had been placed with single people:
While one pair of students who stayed with a single person enjoyed the experience, it seemed that our Japanese students preferred a family setting. Final EvaluationsAt the end of the program, in the previously mentioned anonymous evaluations, the students by and large praised the ESL portion and "social" aspects of the program. In this respect, the program succeeded in engaging the students in the target language and promoting receptivity. The weekly academic lectures were not popular and this may be because they were linguistically beyond our students. Another possible explanation is that a lack of interest de-motivated the students; one student wrote "Next time, I want to join class to hear lecture with American, moreover I want to choose lecture which induce my interest." Dissatisfaction with the food was mentioned by several students in their evaluations. Though the students complained of the cafeteria food, it wasn't merely the taste; they missed Japanese food. As diet affects nearly every aspect of our mental and physical health, it seems important that study abroad programs give special consideration to diet and either provide students with food from home, or the freedom and facilities to make it themselves. The sports activities were successful in engaging the students and providing numerous opportunities to invite non-Japanese peers to join, as well as promoting mental and physical fitness. Generally speaking, the group played team sports which built a feeling of camaraderie, and by being physically active, the students were able to stave off weight gain that may occur with a change in diet; a weight gain, which in turn, may trigger negative feelings about oneself. At the end of the program, the G-STEP test was administered again at the request of the Auburn sponsor, the Center for International Commerce. While there seems to be no test available that is sensitive enough to measure six weeks of language learning, some of the students moved up one level during their stay, some stayed the same, and a few failed to maintain their original level. Overall, the Auburn-Nihon faculty felt that the program was a success. The academic lectures were not successful; the students reported difficulty and boredom with the content. However, the Nihon students got a feeling of the atmosphere and dynamics of an American university classroom. The students responded positively to the ESL classes and extracurricular activities, and in light of the concept of receptivity, it can be argued that positively engaged learners are more likely to learn and retain language than despondent students. Study abroad and homestay programs are numerous and varied and all seem to advertise some special feature, such as field trips, CALL, or particular lectures or seminars to attract students. These special features certainly make each program unique and appropriate to individual interests and needs. Attention to creating activities which integrate study abroad students into the mainstream university community, however, is a detail which is often overlooked, yet can contribute immensely to the success of the program in terms of the students' growth not only as language learners, but as cross-cultural communicators and as individuals. ReferencesAllwright, D., & Bailey, K.M. (1991). Focus on the language classroom: an introduction to classroom research for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carson, J.G., Chase, N.D, & Gibson, S.U. (1992) . Literacy analyses of high school and university courses: summary descriptions of selected courses. Atlanta, GA: Center for the Study of Adult Literacy. Cook, V. (1991). Second language learning and language teaching. London: Edward Arnold. Hall, E.T. (1976). Beyond culture. New York: Doubleday Harmer, J. (1992). The practice of English language teaching. London: Longman Leki, I., & Carson, J.G. (1994). Students' perception of EAP writing instruction and writing needs across the disciplines. TESOL Quarterly. 28, 81-101. Richards, J. Platt, T. & Platt, H. (1992). A dictionary of applied linguistics. London: Longman.
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