Hilbe, Robert

This contribution discusses two case studies that illustrate the experiences of mobility students who were studying abroad during the first outbreak of COVID - 19. The case studies have emerged from a larger longitudinal, mixed - method study, which included a n interview study with six international students planned for spring 2020. Due to the COVID - 19 pandemic, all participants had to terminate their stay early. Hence, the original interview study was adapted to focus on the impact of COVID - 19 on students' soc ial contacts, linguistic practices , and emotional well - being in these exceptional circumstances. In the present contribution, we understand study abroad as a rite of passage, an important time in the life of young adults, and we draw on insights from previ ous research on educational travels with transformative potential to make sense of the students' differing reactions to their early return

The research project SAM investigates student mobility, which is still usually thought of and investigated in terms of a primarily monolingual focus on the TL as spoken natively, from a multilingual perspective. For decades, student mobility is enjoying increasing demand due to growing international connectedness. More recent research suggests that these programs cannot always live up to the high expectations regarding immersion into the target language. In many cases social contact with speakers of the target language are fewer than hoped for and language use more multilingual than anticipated, which can lead to disappointments among the study abroad students. This perspective largely ignores the learning affordances of multilingual language practices or of using the TL as a lingua franca. Through a mixed methodology of quantitative as well as qualitative approaches we will explore the relationship between students’ language attitudes, their social relations and their linguistic practices abroad with the aim of finding out (a) how effective different patterns of social relations and language use are for linguistic development and (b) what role students’ language attitudes play for the development of their social relations and linguistic skills. The insights from the study will benefit the (further) education of teachers, in particular when it comes to the expectations and assessment of student mobility.