| Summary: | <p>Study abroad (SA) has long been regarded as a learning environment that is beneficial to second language acquisition (SLA), especially in competencies related to social interactions (Kinginger, 2011). However, little is known about whether SA students make actual gains in domains of English they are typically exposed to outside of classroom settings such as phrasal verbs (PVs), and whether their informal language contact contributes to such development. To explore this relationship, this study investigates students’ PV development and informal language contact, to understand how they make use of the L2 exposure during SA.</p>
<p>This longitudinal mixed-methods study collected data from over 250 international foundation year students studying in the UK three times in one academic year. PV data were collected through standardized tests and speech samples, while L2 contact was measured via language contact questionnaires, social network surveys, and semi-structured interviews. Paired-samples t-test revealed that there were significant gains in receptive and productive PV scores between Time 1 and Time 2, while the overall informal language contact and social networks of the participants did not see significant changes from Time 1 to Time 2. Correlation and multiple regressions analyses revealed a stronger relationship between informal language contact and PV knowledge at Time 2 than at Time 1. Mixed-effects modeling revealed that the overall English proficiency of the participants, corpus frequency of the PVs in the British National Corpus, and the amount of language contact were significant predictors of PV scores, while semantic opacity of PVs, the Chinese L1 of the participants, and L2 social networks were not.</p>
<p>This study underscored that the degree-oriented SA participants may have different prioritization and leisure time routines compared with summer school participants or exchange students abroad. With academic prioritization, the participants made limited gains in colloquial L2 vocabulary competency and their highly academic L2 contact did not greatly contribute to PV development.</p>
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