Mardi 25 juin 2024 17h30 salle 126 Site Saint-Charles 1
Nicole Tracy-Ventura (West Virginia University, PMU) : From second language learning to long-term retention: An overview of the longitudinal LANGSNAP project
Abstract: In this presentation I will provide an overview of the Languages and Social Networks Abroad Project (LANGSNAP: http://langsnap.soton.ac.uk ), a longitudinal mixed-methods study that began in 2011 to examine the linguistic, personal, and social benefits of study abroad, and which has since evolved to explore the long-term retention of advanced second language proficiency. At the start of the project, the participants were British university students completing degrees in either French or Spanish who were required to spend an academic year abroad. They graduated in 2013, yet many ended up working in fields requiring little to no use of their L2s. As part of the study, they completed a variety of language assessments (e.g., an oral proficiency test, an oral interview, a vocabulary knowledge test) and interviews in English at multiple times over an eleven-year period, nine years of which were post-instruction (2016, 2019, 2022). In addition to describing the design of the on-going project and the resulting learner corpus, I will discuss recent findings related to the role of two important variables in long-term retention of L2 skills (continued exposure and peak instructional attainment) and how that relates to participants’ career trajectories.
Nicole Tracy-Ventura is associate professor of applied linguistics specializing in second language acquisition, study abroad, task-based language teaching, and corpus linguistics. She is a founding member of the Languages and Social Networks Abroad Project (LANGSNAP), which began in 2011 to investigate individual, linguistic, and social benefits of study abroad, and has since evolved to explore the variables contributing to long-term retention of foreign/second languages. She is co-author of the book Anglophone Students Abroad: Identity, Social Relationships, and Language Learning (with Rosamond Mitchell and Kevin McManus – Routledge 2017), and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Corpora (with Magali Paquot – 2021). Her work can also be found in journals such as Applied Linguistics, Applied Psycholinguistics, International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, The Modern Language Journal, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, among others. Due to West Virginia University deciding to eliminate its Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, Nicole will be starting a new position at Oklahoma State University in August 2024.
