Study abroad and its effect on speech act performance

Although the effect of the study abroad environment on foreign language learners’ speech act performance had been underexplored for many years, a number of studies have been published in the last decade that help to shed light on the impact of study abroad sojourns on language learners’ pragmatic competence. In this chapter, I will review and discuss investigations examining the effect of study abroad on language learners in a variety of study abroad contexts (e.g. Canada, United States of America, Latin America, France, Germany, Great Britain) and involving a variety of native and target language combinations (e.g. Chinese – English, English – French, English – German, English – Spanish, German – English, German – French, Japanese- English). The speech acts investigated are: advice, apologies, leave-taking, offers, refusals, requests and suggestions.