Analyzing the effect of context of second language learning: Domestic intensive and semi-intensive courses vs. study abroad in Europe

This study examines the second language (L2) written and oral performance of three groups of Spanish-speaking university students after being exposed to English in different contexts. One group of learners was spending some time abroad (Erasmus students in the UK), and two groups were following classroom instruction in two different types of intensive courses in Spain: “intensive” and “semi-intensive”. The learners’ L2 written and oral production were analyzed at different time points through different measures of fluency, syntactic and lexical complexity, and accuracy. The main objective of this study was to compare the performance of the students abroad with each of the two intensive programmes. According to the results of the statistical analyses, after an equivalent period of exposure to the L2 in the two contexts, the students abroad outperformed the learners in the “at home semi-intensive” programme in the post-test in some of the variables under study, namely fluency and lexical complexity. Nevertheless, the students’ written and oral performance after an intensive course at home and after the equivalent time abroad was similar.