Language Program Reintegration After Study Abroad

Abstract

This study explores the challenges a language instructor and classroom cohort members encountered in reintegrating study abroad returnees into a US domestic language program. The presence of study abroad returnees in the upper-level, domestic world language class is not exceptional, but language program reintegration remains a neglected topic. Among the few existing studies, reentry is either tangentially addressed or routinely understood through the returnee’s perspectives only. This article presents commentary from a world language instructor and students at home. Triangulated with classroom interactional recordings, the commentary characterizes discursive practices of study abroad returnees, the pedagogical shock they experienced, altered motives upon their return, and consequences of contact with these returnees. For the domestic instructor and classmates, reintegration emerges as sharp dichotomies–language classroom versus study abroad, teacher mediation versus real-life affordances, victimized students at home versus assertive returnees from abroad – which require pedagogical efforts and program support to mitigate.