The Language Environments of Exchange Students
at Scandinavian Universities
Tim Caudery, University of Århus
Margrethe Petersen, Århus School of Business
Philip Shaw, Stockholm University & KTH Stockholm
Abstract and Keywords
Exchange students who come to Scandinavia are often motivated by an intention to
improve their proficiency in English rather than the local language. They take
academic classes conducted in English and may find themselves living in a linguafranca English bubble, acculturated to an international-student subculture. A few do
break out of the bubble, learn the local language, and experience the local culture.
Here we report on a project intended identify the factors leading to successful
learning of both English and the local languages. 70 students at each of four
institutions, two in Sweden, two in Denmark, were interviewed three times over a
semester and asked to complete simple language tests. English proficiency improved
in most cases, Swedish/Danish was only learnt by those with good initial English and
appropriate motivation. As expected, contact with local students was limited.
Institutional policies can probably influence these outcomes.
Exchange students, language, Scandinavia, lingua-franca English.
Introduction
The Council of Europe has set a goal for plurilingualism that encourages all
Europeans to know two languages other than their own (Breidbach 2003). If CLIL
(Content and Language Integrated Learning) programmes at European universities
truly aimed to achieve this goal we would see British students doing some of their
study of, say, economics or engineering through the medium of French and some
through German. CLIL that used French or German as the medium would be
common alongside English medium classes in Spanish universities, and so forth. In
fact, however, CLIL most often involves English-medium classes, and these most
often seem only incidentally intended for local students but actually put on to attract
foreign students. In many programmes in Germany the idea is that international
students will eventually have good enough German to study through that medium,
and in this the Council of Europe’s goal is achieved. But in a number of other
situations all academic study is in English. A Spanish-speaking student coming on
exchange to Scandinavia can reasonably expect all classes to be in English
(background in Airey and Linder 2006, Berg et al 2001, Gunnarsson 2001, Josephson
2004, Söderlundh 2004), so that the second possible language-learning experience –
learning the local language – becomes completely voluntary and in fact, as we shall
show, quite difficult. If all instruction is in English, there is a risk that the local
language is not learnt, and the exchange and CLIL experience becomes one which
supports English as the general lingua franca and what Phillipson (2003) calls
“English-only Europe” rather than plurilingualism. In fact one could say that by
making English essential for academic success and the local language merely
recreational for exchange students CLIL sends a very powerful message about the
language hierarchy.
In general, the four main objectives of students studying abroad under the Erasmus
scheme have been found to be: learning a culture or personal development by means
of such learning, improved knowledge of a foreign language, academic learning, and
professional enhancement (Maiwurm 2001, see also Figel 2006a and b), often in that
order of priority. Neither content nor language learning is the highest priority.
Furthermore, Maiworm says, 90% of the exchange students studied by means of
postal questionnaire in the extensive Socrates 2000 project believed that they had
reached an adequate level of language proficiency at the end of the visit. There is
evidence that many exchange students do indeed become more fluent, if not more
accurate, in the language of the host community (Wilkinson 1998, Engle and Engle
2004, Freed 1995). Specifically, most “make extensive, rapid progress in the basic
vocabulary to which they are most intensely exposed: [....] home, meals, classroom,
public transportation, and various social settings” (Engle and Engle 2004 : 65).
However, the culture to which exchange students are exposed may not be exactly
what is expected. Engle and Engle point out that for US students abroad “the
prospect of a genuinely challenging, creatively unsettling cultural and linguistic
experience abroad has receded yearly” because of “the increasing prevalence of
English as a nearly universal lingua franca, the daily reality of instant electronic
communication, and the near omnipresence of certain realities and symbols of
American pop culture” (2004: 221). Correspondingly, for European students the
cultural and linguistic experience may not be so much of the local culture and
language but of the globalised community of international students, based in
globalised (American) popular culture, and using lingua franca English.
In Scandinavia today, for example, many exchange students live and eat with other
exchange students, or at best (and rarely) with Scandinavian peers who speak English
to them. They take courses taught in English, and, like many others in Europe
described in this volume, universities in Scandinavia are offering an increasing
number of such English-medium courses largely in order to facilitate visits by
exchange students with little or no knowledge of the local language. According to
Coleman (1998), only 19% of the courses taken by exchange students in Denmark
were in Danish ten years ago, and the proportion is likely to have fallen further since
then (as our own survey suggests). Most of the social settings that students encounter
can be handled in English, and most people whom they interact with automatically
switch to English. Consequently any “extensive, rapid progress” exchange students
make in language skills is likely to be in lingua franca English (Seidlhofer 2001) and
the culture to which they become assimilated is at least partly the culture or
interculture of internationalised youth. They do indeed learn intercultural
competence (Byram 1997), but do so by participating in this interculture rather than
by directly confronting the local one.
In fact, Huebner’s generalisation (1998) that all study abroad in a different language
community offers opportunities for informal language learning may not actually be
true. Where both natives and visitors share the view that foreigners cannot be
expected to learn the local language, a faltering attempt to use it can evoke a
response in convincing English, and opportunities for language learning may be few
and far between. On the other hand, of course, we do know that some exchange
students make contacts with Scandinavian society, learn the language, start to take
classes in the local language, and have something more like the traditional studyabroad experience.
One could hypothesise that these different responses to the CLIL situation result
from differences in motivation. Only relatively few exchange students come with the
primary objective of improving their skills in the language of the country concerned,
and even fewer are actually taking degrees in a Scandinavian language. Many may
regard improving their English language skills as one objective of their visit, while
others may have no particular interest in language improvement at all, but be more
interested in the general experience of an exchange from an academic or cultural
viewpoint (the other three of the aims defined in Maiworm 2001). English skills may
thus be seen by many students simply as a tool to facilitate the exchange, and
countries and educational institutions may be selected as hosts mainly or entirely
because they offer relevant courses taught through the medium of English.
While this situation is likely to be particularly true in Scandinavian countries or other
countries where the local language is not widely studied, it is probably also of
growing importance in other areas of Europe and the world (Coleman 2006), and
certainly favoured by the spread of English-medium CLIL. Exchange students whose
specialist subject is not languages, and who are offered classes in English, may well
find themselves in a community whose natural lingua franca is not the local
language, but English. In fact it may be becoming increasingly difficult for exchange
students to enter the local-language community in many European countries.
But this is quite a vital issue. While one aim of government and EU support for
exchange students is to “internationalise at home” (Nilsson 2001) and create an open
environment for cultural and intellectual exchange in the university, another is to
encourage and strengthen the learning of the country’s own language. For host
countries, imparting or improving a knowledge of the local language may be seen as
advantageous in winning friends among the educated population of the world, either
because it facilitates exchange students’ contacts with the local population or because
it increases the number of people outside the country who have an interest in and
connection with their language. Organisations promoting exchange in order to
promote intercultural communication and understanding in Europe or the world may
see language improvement as useful to their objectives, and may, like the Council of
Europe, aim at plurilingualism rather than lingua franca English (Breidbach 2003,
Coleman 2006). Educational institutions, on the other hand, are likely to be
concerned that exchange students are sufficiently proficient in the language of
instruction for them to benefit from their courses and pass their examinations, and
also that they have adequate control of a language for survival outside the classroom.
In the light of these tensions, it seems important to know more about the relatively
unfamiliar situation of international student exchanges where only a minority of
incomers learn the local language. Our research project sets out to investigate the
language experiences of students while on exchange in two Scandinavian countries,
Sweden and Denmark. Like Wilkinson (1998: 121) we want to know “What happens
during a sojourn in a different cultural and linguistic environment? What kinds of
contacts do students have within such a context?” The project, which is partly
financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers, seeks answers to the following
questions, among others:

What is exchange students’ experience of the bi/tri-lingual environments
(Swedish or Danish, English and the students’ L1) in which they are moving?
Which languages are associated with which domains? Who do the students
speak to? In which language(s)?

Which language(s), if any, do they want to learn or improve?

How successful are students in improving their second language skills? In
what particular skills are improvements likely to be most evident?

What factors are associated with success in improving skills in either local
languages or lingua franca English?

Are there institutional measures that could be taken to influence the process
of language improvement? How useful are pre-sessional courses, for
example?
This paper reports on some of the preliminary findings from the academic year 20052006 concerning student motivation for going on exchange as well as interaction and
language improvement while on exchange.
Method
Data collection was based on semi-structured interviews with volunteer exchange
students at two Swedish university institutions and two Danish ones: Stockholm
University (SU), the Royal Technical Institute (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan –
KTH), Stockholm, the Aarhus School of Business (ASB), and the University of
Aarhus (AU). The findings discussed here are based on interviews with around 30-40
students at each institution (the final number is expected to be 70 at each of the
institutions involved in the project). Subjects were drawn from volunteers who were
all:

first-language speakers of French, German or Spanish (and languages spoken
in Spain) as the main language groups, supplemented by first-language
speakers of Italian, Dutch, Polish and Czech1

students who had not studied the language of the host country before

students who were not studying language subjects.
Wherever relevant, the selection of subjects from the lists of volunteers aimed at
obtaining a balance with respect to gender, countries of origin, and subjects of study.
However, the sample of exchange students was clearly not representative, and results
have to be regarded as essentially a series of case studies. Further complications
follow from the differences in students’ situations: Sweden and Denmark are not the
same, Stockholm and Aarhus are not the same, and the various participating
institutions differ both in their academic cultures and in the ways in which they treat
exchange students. Some students have the opportunity to take language courses in
Danish/Swedish, either as presessional courses or as courses during the academic
semester, or both. Some students attend academic courses taught through the medium
of Danish/Swedish, while others only attend courses taught in English. Some
students are housed with other exchange students, while others live in situations
1
The exchange student population includes native speakers of English from a variety of countries. Their
language development involves a somewhat different set of problems, which were not examined here
Anecdotally, though, we understand that they typically have little success at learning a Scandinavian language,
and in fact make little effort.
surrounded by native speakers of the host country’s language. Nevertheless, the
results were subjected to statistical analysis where relevant, and conclusions drawn
with suitable caution and provisos.
Each student was interviewed three times: shortly after the start of the teaching
semester, mid-way through, and around the time that teaching finished. Students who
stayed for two semesters were interviewed once more at the end of their stay.
Interviewees were rewarded for their participation in the project with a cinema
voucher for each interview. Interviewers were either the researchers or paid student
assistants. The interviews were recorded so that the discourse as well as the content
could be analysed at some stage.
Interviews followed a questionnaire enquiring about students’ expectations or
experiences with regard to language use, their motivations for learning languages,
their reasons for selecting the host country and institution for their exchange, their
perceived progress with the local language and English, etc. As part of each
interview, they completed forms detailing how much of their total interaction with
other people was spent in interacting with particular types of people, and what
languages were used. As the semester progressed, the study kept track of how
perceived patterns of interaction changed.
In addition to the questionnaires concerning their experiences of language use,
students were given tests in their language proficiency. These tests were designed to
be quick and easy to administer, and to give an overall impression of whether there
was clear progress with language proficiency; they were not intended to be thorough
tests of language skill or pragmatic/sociolinguistic competence.
The main test required students to describe a picture, talking if possible for around
two minutes. They did this first in English, and then in Swedish/Danish if possible.
These descriptions were recorded. Three pictures were used; the students were
presented with a different picture at each interview, but the sequences in which
students saw the pictures were varied from student to student. At present, these
recordings are being processed; raters are attempting to state the sequence in which
they think the recordings were made for each student, working on the assumption
that students’ performance will improve over time. Each set of recordings will be
sequenced by at least two raters, who will also indicate the features of the language
that appeared to improve. Where raters are in agreement as to the sequence of the
descriptions, and where the sequence they believe took place tallies with the actual
sequence, this will be taken as evidence of language improvement. Where there is
disagreement between the raters or where the sequence they believe took place does
not tally with the actual sequence, this will be taken as evidence that no real
improvement has taken place, or even that there has been degeneration.
Since many of the students were never able to make even a rudimentary description
of a picture in Danish/Swedish, students were also given simple vocabulary tests in
the language of the host country, the expectation being that these would give an
indication of any progress even if students never reached a level at which they could
really communicate in the language. Items tested were all frequently-occurring nouns
drawn from domains such as transport, people, buildings, food and study, and
attempts were made to ensure that they did not have obvious cognates in German,2
Spanish or French. Students were given a list of eight words in Danish/Swedish and
asked to match them with words from a list of twelve in their first language. Once
again, there were three different tests, and students were given the tests in different
sequences, one at each interview.
In the case of students staying for two semesters, the tests at their final, secondsemester interview required them to complete all three vocabulary tests once again.
Results
As the findings reported below regarding motivations, interaction and language
learning are based on preliminary analyses of the data collected so far, the results
should be treated with great caution at this stage. There is much more to be learned
from the interview forms and recordings, and although we have noted some trends,
our early impressions may have to be revised as we study the data more closely.
2
Though it should be noted that Danish and Swedish vocabulary are different and, for
example, Swedish fönster and Danish vindue present different cognacy problems
Motivations
On the basis of the first interviews with 45 exchange students at the University of
Aarhus, Denmark, 24 at the University of Stockholm, Sweden and 26 at the Royal
Institute of Technology, Stockholm, an analysis was made of the reasons given for
going on exchange at all and for choosing a particular country, city or institution.
Subjects could mention as many reasons as they wished,and the questions were
posed in an open-ended way (no choices were offered). The categories in the tables
and figures thus represent consolidations of the reasons given. These of course reflect
the discourses available to the subject for describing motivation as much as any
objective motives, but these discourses are of considerable interest in any case.
Figure 1: All subjects, reasons for studying abroad
55
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
English
(spont)
English
(prompt
)
Experience,
New
culture
New
study
env
New
people
Require
d
Career
benefit
Previou
s exp
Table 1. Exchange students’ reasons for deciding to study abroad, academic
year 2005-2006.
Reasons for Studying Abroad
Improving English
(spontaneous mention)
language
No. of subjects
mentioning (N)
AU
SU KTH
(45) (24) (26)
proficiency 15
8
8
% of subjects
mentioning
AU SU KTH
33
33
31
Total mentioning English, including after prompt
Experience, travel, fun
Encounter a new culture (and language)
Experience a new study environment
Meeting new people
Exchange mandatory/recommended by
university
Own/friends’ experience
Career benefit
23
20
15
14
9
3
16
8
8
4
2
3
15
10
11
2
5
1
51
44
33
31
20
7
67
33
33
17
8
12
58
38
42
8
19
4
3
2
1
2
2
3
7
4
4
8
8
12
The most common reason given for electing to study abroad was to improve English
language proficiency, though this is a consequence of subjects being prompted if
they did not mention the factor spontaneously. If we deduct the subjects who had to
be prompted, then improving English skills falls below “experience” and “getting to
know a new culture” as the most common reason mentioned for studying abroad.
When subjects were prompted, they generally responded enthusiastically on the
question of the importance of learning English, and they are included in the figures in
the table because there seems little doubt that this really was a part of their
motivation. More importantly, however, the prompting also enabled us to establish
definitively that more than 40% of the students interviewed were quite explicit in
saying that improving their English was not a reason for going on exchange.
At this stage (general motivation for study abroad) few subjects mentioned a wish to
learn a new language, and where this was mentioned at all, in most cases this was a
general desire rather than a specific wish to learn Danish or Swedish. Only four
subjects in Aarhus, and just one at an institution in Sweden indicated that a wish to
learn Danish/Swedish was a part of their motivation; these students were all
Germans, i.e. from a neighbouring country.
What Maiworm calls academic learning as a motivation for study abroad was not
mentioned particularly frequently. Relatively few subjects mentioned experiencing a
new study environment as a general reason for going on exchange, though those who
mentioned the academic excellence of the host institution and particular subjects they
wanted to study (Figure 2, Table 2) clearly also had this motivation. Non-academic
motivations were mentioned rather more frequently. Many mentioned “experience”,
love of travel, “fun”, and other types of general personal fulfilment as reasons for
going on exchange, and as many as 15% indicated that “meeting new people” was a
specific reason for studying abroad. A third of all students expressed an interest in
experiencing a new culture or language, but it seems as though enjoyment weighed
more heavily than broadening horizons. Two of the motivations cited by Maiworm –
learning a culture, and improving knowledge of a foreign language (though not in
most cases the language of the host country) – thus loomed fairly large, while the
other two – academic learning and professional enhancement – were less significant
(but see below for academic reasons for choosing this institution). This may suggest
that exchange to a relatively little known location attracts more adventurous students
(see “exotic location” below).
Figure 2: All subjects: reasons for choosing a particular country, city, or
institution for study abroad
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Interest in
place
Study
env/quality
Learn local
lang
Limited
choice
Exoticism
English
medium
Contacts
Table 2. Exchange students’ reasons for studying at a particular institution/in a
particular city or country, academic year 2005-2006.
Reasons for choosing
country/institution
Interest in country/city
No. of subjectss
mentioning (N)
AU
SU KTH
(45) (24) (26)
20
8
11
% of subjects
mentioning
AU SU KTH
44
33
42
Limited choice / Exchange agreement
with university
Study environment/quality
Interest in Scandinavia/somewhere exotic
Learn Danish/Swedish or 'a new
language'
Personal recommendations / know people
in this city/institution/country
16
3
6
36
12
23
15
10
9
3
7
6
8
5
11
33
22
20
12
29
25
31
19
42
5
2
6
11
8
23
Reasons for choosing Denmark/Sweden and/or the particular city or institution were
fairly diverse and not necessarily comparable across institutions. Almost two-fifths
did mention something that could be interpreted as a preference for
Denmark/Sweden or Aarhus/Stockholm, but in a number of cases this was a very
lukewarm kind of preference, stated for example as “I hadn’t been to Denmark
before” or as “I chose Stockholm because it is a big city.” There were quite a number
of cases where Aarhus subjects expressed a clear interest in Scandinavia in general,
and this corresponded to Stockholm subjects saying they chose Sweden because it
was so exotic. The point is that most subjects had to choose from a limited number of
options and many subjects were probably in the position of the Catalan who said
“The other possibilities were more worse, because they were: Italy, and I
don't want to learn Italian; French, which is very dificult and I don't know
anything about French; A posibility that I like, it's Ireland, but Ireland it's
for one year and I want to stay six months only. and my university has an
agreement with KTH.”
As with general motivations, only around one third of students mentioned academic
factors as reasons for their choice of place of study. However, in this case some of
the reasons given were quite specific, and since fewer factors were mentioned overall
in explaining the choice of place of study, academic factors appeared to weigh
proportionally more heavily here. There are institution-specific factors here, since
many KTH students mentioned the Institute’s expertise in their particular area of
study. Not many subjects said that they chose a university where courses were taught
in English, but it can probably be assumed that there were other students who simply
did not think this point worth mentioning, since they would have considered it selfevident that they would only consider a university where courses were taught in a
language they could understand. Other factors mentioned included the fit of the
courses with the course programme at the home university, and the reputation of the
university as a whole or the specific department..
Motivation may have a role to play in determining various factors concerned with the
way that exchange students structure their exchange, including the creation of
opportunities to learn or practise foreign languages. From that point of view, it can
perhaps be assumed on the basis of the data above that a far greater number of
exchange students in Scandinavia would positively welcome living in an English
lingua franca environment than w ould wish to attempt to break out of such an
environment and spend more time speaking Danish or Swedish. Motivation is not, of
course, the only factor that will affect the structuring of exchange students’ lives, and
indeed probably not the most important one; practical and social issues are likely to
play a far bigger role.
Interaction
As mentioned above, subjects were asked to estimate the proportion of their total
interaction at the university and outside was with which particular types of people
and what languages were used. Clearly the estimates are fairly arbitrary, but where a
reasonable number of subjects responded they are indicative. In particular the
method is reasonably appropriate for assessing trends, because subjects were told
their estimate from the previous interview, and could thus give a figure reflecting
their perception of the change from last time. Although our analyses of the data
provided reveal pattern variation among institutions, there are some shared features.
As concerns interaction with other students, the interviewees at all four institutions
reported that they communicated more with native speakers of their own mother
tongue and with other international students than they did with native speakers of the
local language. Interaction with native speakers of the interviewees’ mother tongue
varied considerably among institutions but the level of interaction with other
international students was fairly high throughout the semester. Table 3 shows the
perceived pattern of interaction with other international students.
Table 3. Estimated interaction with international students, not native speakers
of the interviewee’s L1, academic year 2005-2006, % of total interaction with
other students.
Institution
1st interview
2nd interview
3rd interview
KTH N= 213
37
45
43
SU N=17
38
40
41
AU N=45
49
46
48
ASB N=19
44
46
39
Although the interviewees’ pattern of interaction changed over time, their
communication with speakers of the local language was consistently reported as
constituting the smallest part of their interaction with other students (see table 4).
Table 4. Interaction with speakers of the local language, academic year 20052006, % of total interaction with other students.
Institution
1st interview
2nd interview
3rd interview
KTH N= 21
5
14
19
SU N=17
19
22
28
AU N=45
20
22
23
ASB N=19
20
17
22
As can be seen from table 4 the interviews revealed a relative increase over time in
the perceived extent of communication with students who were native speakers of
the local language. Nevertheless, the amount of communication with these students
remained limited. The large increase in KTH figures is largely an artefact of many
subjects being interviewed before classes started, but both Swedish increases may be
due to a proportion of subjects taking Swedish-medium classes, which seems to be
more common than the Danish equivalent.
As indicated above, the exchange students interviewed also provided information on
the languages of interaction used with particular types of people. If the interviewees
and their interlocutors had the same L1, communication would mostly be in that
language, but English would be used if native speakers of other languages were
present. That is, it was rare for our subjects to have taken what Engle and Engle call
“a binding, enforced pledge to use only the target language in all curricular and
3
Numbers are smaller than in Tables 1 and 2 because of dropout
extra-curricular circumstances” (2004: 221). If the interlocutors were other
international students, the language of communication was almost exclusively
English. Similarly, interaction with local students was mostly in English, with figures
varying from 58% (SU, average of 1st interviews) to 95% (ASB, average of 3rd
interviews). Some of the interaction with local students took place in the local
language, however, with figures ranging from 3% (ASB, average of 1st interviews) to
28% (KTH, average of 3rd interviews) Institutional policies, specifically KTH's
requirement for some students to take courses give in Swedish and ASB's general
exclusion of exchange students from courses given in Danish, may be responsible
here. Categorising the exchange students by mother tongue, we found that, in
interaction with native speakers of the local language, English was used considerably
more, and increasingly so over the semester, by Romance speakers than by Germanic
ones, who even, over the time of their stay, increased their use of the local language
at the expense of English.
Language learning
If CLIL is working, the students’ spoken English should be improving. The
improvement might be most dramatic in academic registers, which we were not
really testing, but it should be evident overall. There is evidence that this is
happening (Shaw, Caudery and Petersen 2007), but we will not present it here.
Instead we look at evidence of progress in the local languages.
It is clear that progress in Danish/Swedish will be very mixed, and also that there
will be considerable differences in proficiency associated with L1 (Germans tend to
be the best learners of Danish/Swedish, on average). Below we present some initial
analyses of mean vocabulary test scores for 93 students. Many, though not all, of
these students had been exposed to some teaching of Danish/Swedish before they
took the first test; most students at the University of Aarhus, for example, had taken a
one-month intensive course in Danish.
In general, students increased their scores over the semester, but not by very large
amounts. Mean scores out of 8 increased from 5.7 at the beginning of the semester to
6.3 at the end, or from 71% to 79%. Increases were statistically significant between
Test 1 and Test 2 and between Test 1 and Test 3, but not between Test 2 and Test 3,
suggesting that students made whatever improvement they were going to make early
on in their stay, as is a general finding for language code improvement, as opposed to
cultural awareness or fluency (e.g. Engle and Engle 2004). In general, though, the
statistics present a picture of students who are largely unaffected by exposure to
Danish/Swedish after the completion of their initial language training. Indeed, the
responses to our questionnaire on interaction suggest that for most students, there
was very little exposure to the local language. It seems reasonable to conclude that
students who scored low on the vocabulary test at the outset had language
proficiency that was below any level of practical functionality; this may have been a
factor limiting their exposure to the local language. We may find a different picture
when we examine the ability to speak, in that those students whose knowledge of
Danish/Swedish was at the upper end of the scale for the vocabulary test from the
outset (and thus whose progress could not be registered in their scores over the
semester) may have been able to benefit from using the language and thus have made
progress in their ability to describe pictures; the picture descriptions in
Danish/Swedish have yet to be analysed.
Table 5. Mean scores, vocabulary test in Swedish/Danish.
T-test p-:values: 1 vs 2:.004, 2 vs 3:.146, 1vs 3, what was it Margrethe?
Test
N
Test 1
Mean
Std. Dev.
Min Max
93 5.65
2.183
0
8
Test 2
93 6.11
2.243
0
8
Test 3
93 6.30
1.958
1
8
As Table 6 shows, this general pattern of slight improvement was reflected across
two of the “large” L1 groups, French and Spanish. The Germans did not exhibit
improvement, but this was probably because their scores were very high from the
outset. The numbers of speakers of other languages in this restricted sample were too
low to be reported separately in a statistically meaningful way, but it looks as though
the general pattern of slight improvement was common to all groups except the
Germans.
Table 6: development of vocabulary test scores, by language
Mean
score
Spanish
N=22
French
N=25
German
N=37
Std. Dev.
Min
Max
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
4.77
5.41
5.36
2.18
2.57
2.36
0
0
1
8
8
8
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
4.95
5.2
5.73
2.06
2.31
1.83
2
1
2
8
8
8
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
6.95
7.38
7.35
1.54
0.98
1.16
2
4
3
8
8
8
Discussion
Most Erasmus students coming to Scandinavia will be near zero beginners in the
local language, without a particularly strong interest in learning that language; where
indeed their first consideration in their choice of host country and institution may
well have been the availability of courses in their discipline taught in English. In host
countries where English is all that is needed to survive not just in an academic
context, but also in most communication with the local population, it will hardly be
surprising if we find that many – even the majority – of students learn little or
nothing of the local languages, and our preliminary results seem to confirm that this
is indeed the case. A much more nuanced picture is likely to be provided by our final
results, however. It is evident that some students do acquire an impressive degree of
proficiency in the local language during their short stay, and we hope to be able to
isolate some of the most frequent factors associated with such progress.
With regard to English, the picture is again likely to be very mixed. University
authorities tell us that the low level of English proficiency of some students is a
problem from the outset, and that this prevents them from deriving full benefit from
their academic courses. Other students are already very proficient in English before
their arrival. Many students express a wish to improve their English skills during
their stay, but it is evident that not all feel that they do make much improvement.
Where there are gains, it seems possible that the most frequent respect in which there
is improvement is in the ease with which students can produce English, and details of
grammar or pronunciation rather than overall comprehensibility or native-likeness.
We must stress, however, that we have only very incomplete analyses as yet of
perceived or real progress in English.
We hope that our study will stimulate educational institutions to give further thought
to dealing with these situations. Should more effort be placed on teaching
Danish/Swedish, or might it be better to reduce the scale of local language teaching
offered and focus more on cultural orientation during introductory courses, at least
for the large number of exchange students who evince no particular wish to learn the
language? Should there be greater provision of training in academic English skills for
students whose English is weak? What about students who have reasonable English,
but a strong desire to improve their skills in that language? Should greater effort be
made to counteract the tendency for many exchange students to exist in exchange
“cocoons” where the lingua franca is English, or would this be a futile struggle
against human nature? We do not expect our research to answer these questions, only
to provide additional information which will help those involved in organising
exchanges to review and decide on policy. Ultimately, the question comes back to
the goals of the interested parties, since it is clear that different policies could have
different effects.
If the aim is to promote students’ skills in English, if possible going beyond the
improvement in confidence and fluency which seems to be typically the main result
of using English as a lingua franca, then exchange visits provide an excellent
opportunity to develop skills in, say, academic English. Work on academic English
vocabulary, for example, combined with the need to read English for studies, could
promote “noticing” and hence acquisition of such vocabulary. Work on writing
skills, despite the fact that many students appear to write very little during the
teaching semester, could help student performance in examinations or producing
essays for course assessment. Since formal classes in English language proficiency
are not offered to exchange students at any of the universities we studied, we have no
evidence to support this claim; but it would certainly seem reasonable to suppose that
such classes might produce results.
If on the other hand the main desire of host governments with respect to exchange
students’ language development is to promote learning of the local language where
possible, then other policies might prove helpful. It seems, for example, that some
students benefit greatly from the 1-month presessional course in Danish offered at
the University of Aarhus, and do ultimately attain an operational level of proficiency
in the language in the course of their stay with the benefit of that head start; but such
students are a distinct minority, and perhaps resources are wasted on trying to teach
the language to the majority. Perhaps students could be “streamed” after a period of
teaching, and the main local language teaching effort thereafter reserved for those
students who are most likely to benefit, while others are offered remedial English,
additional courses on the local culture, or other study skills, according to need. For
those who are plausible candidates for learning the local language, academic courses
using it as a medium are extremely beneficial. At KTH students who take technical
courses in Swedish (normally with extensive mathematical demonstration on the
blackboard which simplifies comprehension) often take a giant step towards
functional Swedish. One possibility might be to provide 'sheltered' courses teaching,
for example, Scandinavian history or social patterns through the medium of
simplified Swedish or Danish.
Such options, as we have stressed, are not policies that we would necessarily
advocate, or which arise as firm suggestions as a result of our research. What we can
say is that at present, language development by students on exchange at the
institutions we have studied is not spectacular, and this is probably the result of
students being effectively confined within a “lingua franca English” bubble.
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