2. Make the most of the learning context
In the book Language Learning and Study Abroad: A Critical Reading of Research, a professor provides a scathing critique of teachers who take students on study abroad only to herd them into a classroom and teach as they would back home (Kinginger, 2009). What’s the point of going overseas just to have students interact with each other in a small room?
In a diverse learning ecology, each practice offers unique affordances that no other practice can precisely imitate. A good teacher knows how to incorporate different elements of the learning ecology. For example, if you want students to focus individually on specific grammar points, online environments offer myriad tutorials and self-correcting exercises. FSA, on the other hand, is ideal for improving the following competencies:
- interactional competency, particularly fluency
- domains of communicative competency, including sociocultural competency and strategic competency
- intercultural communicative competency
FSA is also an excellent way to motivate students and to meet social, affective, and identity needs. So, if you’re going to take students abroad, make sure you plan activities that can be done only in an overseas context, such as occasions to interact with locals and engage in authentic conversations.
However, making the most of your FSA doesn’t mean that you can’t have some class time while overseas. It simply means that your class time should be used differently. An effective overseas model (Grau & Legutke, 2015) involves reconceptualizing the overseas classroom as a core zone. A core zone is a place that provides two services to students:
- It prepares, supports, and assesses out-of-class learning.
- It provides an “arena for learner contributions to the process of learning and its contents, as a location where learners are not only invited, but also expected to contribute topics and texts they come across in the out-of-class.”(p. 270)
In other words, in the core zone model, out-of-class interactions provide learning experiences, whereas in-class, core zone time is used to reflect and assimilate.
In short, research on effective language learning demonstrates the importance of making effective use of each practice in the learning ecology. Students who rely solely on their teacher’s input in the classroom fall behind those who use a variety of practices to meet their learning needs. FSA is only one practice among a diverse ecosystem, but it can be extremely effective in targeting specific competencies that are difficult to target in classroom settings. Consequently, it’s important to focus on the unique affordances of FSA and to see how and where it fits in a diverse language learning ecology.