Diego Felix-Trejo
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Research Mentor(s): Lorenzo Garcia-Amaya
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Romance Languages and Literatures / LSA
Program: UROPF
Session: Session 4 (1:40pm – 2:30pm)
Authors: Diego Felix-Trejo, Matthew Chang, Lorenzo Garcia-Amaya
Abstract
Previous research has examined the effectiveness of study abroad (SA) programs in developing second language fluency, with a focus on analyzing short speech samples from L2 learners. However, with the increasing number of learners participating in SA programs, the true efficacy of these programs has come into question. This study aimed to address this issue by investigating the impact of a 7-week SA program in Spain on a group of high school students. During their abroad experience, the 27 participants pledged to speak only Spanish and were supervised during the day while spending time with their Spanish-speaking host family in the evenings. To measure the participants’ progress, they completed a monologic task three times throughout their program, answering 10 questions in Spanish in a self-paced mode. Audio recordings of their responses were later transcribed and analyzed with Praat, measuring the duration of all words and hesitation phenomena such as filled and silent pauses. Our analyses revealed that regardless of their initial level of proficiency in L2 Spanish, all participants improved their speech rate and produced fewer silent pauses. However, by the end of the program, participants who started with a higher proficiency level produced more filled pauses than those who began with a lower level of proficiency. Further analysis demonstrated that although high-proficiency learners produced more frequent filled pauses, these pauses were shorter at the program’s end than the beginning. These findings contribute to the understanding of cognitive theories of second language learning and have implications for the design and implementation of SA programs.
