Linguistic and motivational changes of a German adolescent student in New Zealand
This paper reports on the findings of a 15-year-old German girl’s motivational and linguistic experiences during
her one-semester study abroad (SA) in New Zealand. Chiara primarily interacted in social settings with either locals (e.g.
homestay) or other Germans (e.g. school breaks). This paper investigates the nature of her second language (L2) learning
motivation in different social settings, as elicited in interviews, reports and blog entries; and the dynamics of her oral L2
development, as captured in six interviews. The findings show that Chiara’s L2 motivation was highly situational: she only made
significant efforts in L2 use when she considered the specific social setting valuable for reaching non-linguistic goals and when
it validated her sense of self. The linguistic findings, measured in language complexity, accuracy, lexis and fluency (CALF)
demonstrated that Chiara improved her already highly functioning oral skills during SA – especially fluency and accuracy – despite
inconsistent L2 interactions.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 2.1Motivation
- 2.2CALF and study abroad
- 3.The study
- 3.1The New Zealand context
- 3.2Participant and SA programme
- 3.3Instruments and procedures
- 3.3.1Quantitative data and analysis
- 3.3.2Qualitative data and analysis
- 4.Findings
- 4.1Motivation
- 4.1.1Motivational orientation
- 4.1.2Behavioural motivation
- 4.1.3Attributional motivation
- 4.2L2 development
- 4.2.1Grammatical complexity
- 4.2.2Accuracy
- 4.2.3Lexical diversity
- 4.2.4Fluency
- 4.2.5Direct speech
- 5.Discussion
- 5.1Motivation
- 5.2L2 development
- 6.Conclusion
- Notes
-
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Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Mroz, Aurore & Julia Gorham
2024.
From Caterpillar to Butterfly: Story of an Ordinarily Extraordinary Generation Z L2 Student Abroad.
Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 36:1
► pp. 312 ff.

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