Falk Kleinert and Dr. Hans-Wilhelm, German and Slavic Studies

Study abroad has long been argued to be the best way to improve a student´s proficiency in a second language, e.g., German. This claim is being scrutinized more and more in light of the current economic struggles facing many students and their families. This project is part of a larger study conducted by my mentor, Dr. Kelling, and his colleague, Dr. Laura Smith, assessing language gains on Berlin study abroad.

The present study aims to examine the impact of study abroad on improving grammatical competence by investigating what changes occur in the grammar usage of students who participated in the Berlin study abroad (2010). In particular we ask if students’ grammatical competence increases (as shown, e.g., by decreased errors in grammatical forms and word order and decreased use of English words) and whether students attempt more complex grammatical structures by the end of study abroad potentially increasing error rates. To answer these questions, we compare timed writing samples written before and at the end of Berlin study abroad, investigating not only grammatical accuracy and word choices, but also changes in sentence length. Both changes in error rates and attempts at more complex grammatical structures, e.g., longer sentences, adjectives placed before nouns, subordinating conjunctions, will provide insights into what actually happens grammatically to the language of students on study abroad. This information will inform students and faculty about the benefits of study abroad.

Immersion is commonly regarded as the most effective method for second language learning and it has typically been supposed that study abroad provides the best immersion context, particularly when students receive formal instruction in the language while abroad (Guntermann, 1995). However, with rising costs limiting the number of students able to afford study abroad, it is increasingly important for researchers to demonstrate the benefits of such programs to help students understand the possible return on their financial investment.

As part of a larger project examining pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical gains by my mentor, Dr. Kelling, and Dr. Laura Smith, this study will uncover the impact of study abroad on grammatical competence. Using pre- (before Berlin) and post-test (end of Berlin) writing samples to investigate changes in grammatical competence, we pose two research questions: 1) do students increase their grammatical accuracy on study abroad? 2) Do students attempt more complex grammatical structures by the end of study abroad? In order to answer the research questions we collected writing samples from 33 students before and at the end of the 10-week Berlin program. Writing samples were then typed up including all errors. We have started to analyze and compare the pre- and post-test samples for mistakes with adjectives, nouns/pronouns/articles, prepositions, spelling, verbs, word order/syntax/style, word choice, and length of sentences. In particular I am analyzing the writing samples for word choice, spelling, verb conjugations and placement, and prepositions, all aspects best analyzed by a native German speaker. To analyze the data, we count both the number of attempts students make at grammatical structures as well as the number of errors made in comparison with the overall number of words per sentence and writing sample as a whole.

While grammatical errors provide insights into grammatical competence, increased attempts at more complex structures reflect increased creativity and risk-taking. All counts of attempts and errors are done by two researchers to increase accuracy of scoring the writing samples. Using inferential statistics, we will compare attempts and errors from the pre- and post-tests to determine whether students make significant improvements in accuracy and increases in attempts at grammatical structures as a means of determining in what ways students’ grammatical competence changes while abroad.

In the end we ran multiple regression analyses to compare the above mentioned variables to determine the effect on students who participated in the program. Those analyses also shed light on the students’ risk taking behavior in using new structures and to find any increase in grammar usage. Our hypothesis was that the students would show a very notable decrease of the attempts error ratio. Furthermore, if the hypothesis failed we would attribute that to the student trying more complex grammatical structures and showing a gain through this channel of language learning.

All in all, our hypotheses proved to be true. All, beginners, intermediates, and advanced speakers increase their ability to master more complex grammatical structures. The most progress was noted among the beginners and intermediates. Only little improvement was made by advanced speaker. We presented at the 2011 GLAC (German Linguistics Annual Conference), where our research was received with great interest. Through the participants feedback the study will be advanced and give more implications on how to optimize a study abroad experience in the future..