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This longitudinal study used qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the development of aspects of the intercultural competence (ICC) of Saudi learners of English as a second language in a study abroad (SA) context based on Deardorff's (2004) ICC model. It also examined students' development of Saudis' perceptions of the home and host cultures at the beginning of SA and after four months. Moreover, this study explored the relationship between ICC and second language proficiency. This study found no substantial change in ICC-related attributes over four months of studying abroad. Results also showed an overall agreement in ICC assessment between the teachers and the students. As far as perceptions of members of the Saudi and US cultures are concerned in the second study, the findings suggested that the Saudi SA students continued to use their home frame of reference even after four months of study in the US and that the national stereotypes persisted. In these results, US Americans are perceived to be work-oriented, whereas Saudis are relationship-oriented. The findings of the third study demonstrated that SA students' perceived gains with regard to skills of speaking, listening, reading, grammar, and vocabulary were significantly lower than their expectations at the beginning of the program and that their expectations were relatively low for culture learning. Moreover, no significant relationship was found between SA students' L2 usage patterns and L2 learning, nor between L2 usage patterns and C2 learning. However, the level of L2 proficiency upon entry into the SA program indicated a strong correlation with perceived gains in L2 learning. Interestingly, no relationship was found between ICC and L2 learning, nor between ICC and C2 learning.

BACKGROUND: Rapid changes in healthcare and science have enhanced the need for international educational experiences (IEE). Despite the importance of IEE in healthcare, there is a lack of literature in this area of research specifically relating to respiratory therapy. Therefore, it is important to assess the perceived impact of IEE in the United States on RT students in order to evaluate the need for developing international educational opportunities in the field of respiratory therapy. PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to assess Saudi RT international students’ perception of the impact of IEE on their lives experiences. METHODS: Data were collected through a descriptive survey using a modified version of the international education survey (IES). The survey was emailed to all RT members of the Saudi Society for Respiratory Care (SSRC). Four main dimensions were assessed: Professional RT role, global understanding, personal development, and intellectual development. Excluded from the study were non-Saudi RTs and RTs with no IEE from the United States. RESULTS: Nineteen responses met the exclusion criteria of the study and were excluded. The total adjusted number of participants was sixty-two (n=62) out of (N=534) emailed surveys. The study response rate was 15.17%. Just over half of participants hold a graduate degree in RT while 48.4% hold an undergraduate degree in RT. Female participants accounted for 12.9% of all participants while male participants accounted for 87.1%. The study revealed that “professional RT role” was the most impacted area of IEE for RT undergraduate students (M 5.48, ± 1.4). The study showed that “global understanding” was the most impacted area of IEE for graduate RT students (M 5.4, SD of ± 0.84). The study findings showed that there is a moderately significant positive correlation between the duration of IEEs and the impact of RT professional role (r=0.426; p=0.001). Moreover, the study findings indicated that IEEs had a higher but insignificant influence on former international RT students’ perceptions of impact than current students. Conclusion: IEE had a large overall impact on participant’s lives experiences. The study findings support the value of promoting IEEs in the United States for RT students due to its perceived positive impact on internationalization of healthcare. Further studies with higher number of participants, different cultural backgrounds, and different IEE destinations is recommended.

The study aims to investigate how studies abroad in the English subject are made possible, motivated for, valued and evaluated. By using a qualitative method where three interviews with three students and two teachers were conducted the following results came to light: The results show that the municipality decides whether studies abroad will or will not be approved and financed. Furthermore, teachers and students work together with assignments before, during and after the trip which is followed by an evaluation. Finally, teachers’ and students’ attitudes and values towards studies abroad are both positive and negative. Both teachers and students can see an improvement in the English language where students develop a courage to use the English language, which in long term perspective leads to more use of the English language in the classroom, thus improved English. Teachers and students can also see an improvement in the students’ knowledge about English culture with a better understanding for what English culture is. Besides improvement connected to English as a subject, teachers and students can see that studies abroad lead to individual growth among the students.

The purpose of this study was to identify current practices in study abroad offices and to investigate factors that may impact the number of minority students that participate in study abroad programs. The predictors, commitment to study abroad, proportion of staff and student workers, and awareness were selected for this current exploratory study are a result of the literature review. The other selected variables: endowment, financial aid and SAT/ACT scores are predictors typically used in higher education. This exploratory research focused on the policies, procedures, and strategies implemented allowing us to comprehensively describe the activities and efforts study abroad personnel employ in American higher education. We used as our population the Carnegie 101 public doctoral/research extensive universities that serve undergraduates. The researcher implemented the Study Abroad Office Survey to collect the data. The researcher conducted multiple regression analyses to examine whether the proportion of all students studying abroad is influenced by endowment, percent of a university's students receiving financial aid, university's commitment to internationalization and study abroad, the SAT/ACT scores, and the proportion of staff. The results of the regression reveals that the proportion of staff was highly significant Analysis of the standardized regression coefficient and associated p value reveals (β=.5 18, t=5.233, p The researcher conducted independent samples t tests to address the awareness factor. Results indicate that there is a significant difference in the proportion of the undergraduate student population studying abroad when presentations by study abroad office faculty/staff at student club meetings are implemented as a recruitment activity (t = is 2.595, 70 df, p = .012).Employing systems theory, the researcher recommends that higher education administrators should consider embedding internationalization in the curriculum by finding ways of making an international experience a more routine part of attending a twenty-first century university. The researcher further recommends continued lobbying efforts regarding the fate of the Abraham Lincoln Fellowship legislation.

Aujourd’hui, nous assistons à une véritable explosion de la mobilité académique internationale. Pourtant un étudiant mobile, est-il transformé après une expérience à l’étranger ? Est-ce que cela modifie sa vision de sa nation, d’autres nations? Et si oui, quels sont les facteurs déclencheurs des changements ? Il existe peu d’études empiriques comparatives internationales sur l’impact d’un séjour à l’étranger. Ceci est un travail de terrain dans trois pays avec de grands flux d’étudiants mobiles (la France, la Chine et les États-Unis) effectué de 2010 à 2011, et d’un échantillon de 180 étudiants mobiles enquêtés. L’objectif de cette thèse est d’examiner les éléments qui, pendant son séjour, peuvent influer sur le regard que l’étudiant porte sur lui-même et la manière dont il comprend ses attaches à son pays. Notre question centrale est de savoir si, grâce aux réseaux de relations interpersonnelles tissées lors du séjour à l'étranger, les éléments d'identification au pays d'origine et l'idée de la nation telle qu'elle est conçue dans chaque tradition nationale, subissent des transformations. Nous faisons l’hypothèse qu’il existe un lien entre la composition internationale du réseau et l’adhésion de l’étudiant aux identifications nationales ouvertes et tolérantes. L’analyse des réseaux sociaux ainsi qu’une analyse statistique multivariée qui définit un indicateur d’identification nationale servent à montrer ces articulations. En conclusion, il s’avère que les types de sociabilités développées lors du séjour international impactent les identifications. Les cadres institutionnels de la mobilité sont à réfléchir dans ce sens. / We are currently witness to an explosion of international academic mobility across the globe. However, can we truly speak of a student returning ‘transformed’ by his or her foreign study experience with an altered worldview? And if so, what may have triggered such changes? As international educators we face a lack of international empirically based comparative studies on the impact of a study abroad as well as how the various institutional frameworks of mobility and students’ social lives in the host country contribute to different outcomes. This dissertation is based on fieldwork in three countries (France, China and the United States) undertaken in 2010 and 2011 with a sample of 180 mobile students surveyed. The various factors at play during an academic sojourn abroad that may impact a student’s self-understanding and his/her ties to his/her country are examined. Our central question is whether students’ national identifications and the idea of the nation as conceived in each national tradition undergo transformations influenced by the relationships and social networks woven during the stay abroad. We assume that there is a link between the internationally heterogeneous composition of a network and a more open and tolerant set of national identifications. Social network analyses and an original multivariate statistical indicator measuring national identity types are used to show this link. In conclusion, we demonstrate how types of social networks impact ideas about national identity. Given the strong structural influence of mobility frameworks on student sociability, we can more accurately compare them in terms of their potential impact on students’ international understanding.

The primary focus of this study is to determine how clausal complexity and accuracy develop over the course of three academic years of intermediate to advanced-level German. This study aims to shed light on issues related to learner development of writing during advanced stages of language acquisition, particularly after conducting a study abroad. The main goal of this study will be to track the writing complexity and accuracy of multiple students longitudinally. This paper will identify Weighted Clause Ratio (Foster & Wigglesworth, 2016), as well as address Skills Acquisition Theory (DeKeyser, 2007), Interaction Hypothesis (Swain, 1985), and the Limited Attentional Capacity Theory (Skehan, 1998). In addition to this, the study will discuss the impact of a study abroad on the language-learning process, task complexity, and the language-learning plateau. Following a review of terminology, I will discuss how Weighted-Clause Ratio will be used to determine clausal accuracy and complexity. The data of this study will be analyzed with results shown in intervals throughout three academic years, comparing each of the three years with one another. Results indicate that accuracy increases drastically over the final two years when compared to the change in the first two years, confirming the effect that study abroad has on the written accuracy of learners, and the complexity showed improvements in some measures over the course of the study, but varied in other measures. I conclude the thesis by discussing by discussing the implications of these findings for our understanding of writing complexity and accuracy, and the long-term effects of study abroad.

This study examines Black students’ perceptions of their campus climate for perspective taking and how their perceptions influence their participation in high impact practices. Using ordinary least squares regression, I analyzed how the psychological climate, behavioral climate, and institutional structural diversity predict Black students’ perceptions and engagement in comparison to their Asian American, Hawaiian, Latinx, Multiracial, Native American, and White peers. Results from this study revealed that Black students have a positive perception of their campus climate for perspective taking. For the most part, Black students’ perceptions of campus climate were not significantly associated with participating in high-impact practices. However, Black students that had more positive perceptions of sources of support for engaging with diverse perspectives participated in high impact practices like study abroad programs and capstone projects. There were significant differences between Black students and Latinx and Asian American students in their perceptions of the general campus climate for perspective taking. Latinx students have a more positive perception than Black students, while Asian American students have a less positive perception than Black students. Black students were also more likely to participate in study abroad and required diversity courses than were Multiracial students. Among all students, there was a relationship between perceptions of the general campus climate and engagement in several high impact practices.

This study investigates whetherthe context of learning contributes to the vocabulary acquisitionin asecond language. Swedish L2 learnersof Italian studying at Stockholm universityare compared to Swedish L2 learners studying atthe same program in a study abroad context inRome. The study is longitudinal,and the development of vocabulary knowledge is measured by the Vocabulary Levels Testwith a month in between the tests. Both groups showeda higher knowledge of low frequency words compared to high frequencywords,by the secondtest there had also been establishedan increaseof vocabulary knowledge. However, they study found that the group studying in an at home-contextoutperformed their peers in the study abroad program in Rome in both of the tests.

The present study investigates the nature of communicative language ability as manifested in performance on the TOEFL iBT® test, as well as the relationship between this ability with test-takers' study-abroad and learning experiences. The research interest in the nature of language ability is shared by the language testing community, whereas understanding the factors that affect language acquisition has been a focus of attention in the field of second language acquisition (Bachman & Cohen, 1998). This study utilizes a structural equation modeling approach, a hybrid of factor analysis and path analysis, to address issues at the interface between language testing and second language acquisition. The purpose of this study is two-fold. The first has a linguistic focus: to provide empirical evidence to enhance our understanding of the nature of communicative language ability by examining the dimensionality of this construct in both its absolute and relative senses. The second purpose, which has a social and cultural orientation, is to investigate the possible educational, social, and cultural influences on the acquisition of English as a foreign language, and the relationships between test performance and test-taker characteristics. The results revealed that the ability measured by the test was predominantly skill-oriented. The role of the context of language use in defining communicative language ability could not be confirmed due to a lack of empirical evidence. As elicited by the test, this ability was found to have equivalent underlying representations in two groups of test-takers with different context-of-learning experiences. The common belief in the superiority of the study-abroad environment over learning in the home country could not be upheld. Furthermore, both study-abroad and home-country learning were proved to have significant associations with aspects of the language ability, although the results also suggested that variables other than the ones specified in the models may have had an impact on the development of the ability being investigated. From a test validation point of view, the results of this study provide crucial validity evidence regarding the test's internal structure, this structure's generalizability across subgroups of test-takers, as well as its external relationships with relevant test-taker characteristics. Such a validity inquiry contributes to our understanding of what constitutes the test construct, and how this construct interacts with the individual and socio-cultural variables of foreign language learners and test-takers.