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Article published In: Australian Review of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 48:2 (2025) ► pp.224–247

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Informal language contact and formulaic language development of Chinese students abroad during a global crisis

ORCiD logo with link | The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
ORCiD logo with link | Hong Kong Metropolitan University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the authors.

Published online: 1 October 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.24008.zho
Abstract
This longitudinal mixed-methods study tracked the informal language contact and phrasal verb knowledge of 21 Chinese foundation program students in the United Kingdom (UK) during the 2019–2020 academic year through three rounds of data collection. Because of the disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the study was able to capture the impact of a global crisis on the experiences of international students studying abroad and learning a second language (L2). Data from a Language Contact Questionnaire, a Study Abroad Social Network Survey, and semi-structured interviews indicated significant changes in their L2 use and social networks. Our findings showed that the students sharply reduced their L2 contact and increased their use of first language (L1) during the pandemic. Productive and receptive tests assessing phrasal verb knowledge revealed that the students did not make significant gains after the pandemic lockdown. The study suggests that significant changes in the living environment can directly impact students’ L2 usage and their formulaic language development.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Language contact in SA research
    • 2.2Social networks in SA research
    • 2.3Importance of investigating phrasal verb knowledge
    • 2.4Gaps in the literature and research questions
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Instruments
      • 3.2.1The Language Contact Questionnaire (LCQ)
      • 3.2.2The Study Abroad Social Network Survey (SASNS)
      • 3.2.3Productive and receptive PV test
      • 3.2.4Semi-structured interviews
    • 3.3Procedure
    • 3.4Analyses
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1RQ1: Language contact
    • 4.2RQ2: Social networks
    • 4.3RQ3: PV development and L2 contact
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1RQ1: The impact of the pandemic on the language contact
    • 5.2RQ2: The impact of the pandemic on the social networks
    • 5.3RQ3: The relationships between language contact, social networks, and PVs in the pandemic
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • References
References (54)
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