The Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Native Speech Norms: Effects of a Year Abroad on Second Language Learners of French

One of the perennial debates in language teaching is the one about the benefits, or otherwise, of time spent abroad -- learning the language while immersed in the target speech community. After all, as Gardner (1979) says, in acquiring a second language "the student is faced with the task of not simply learning new information (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc) .. but rather of acquiring symbolic elements of a different ethnolinguistic community". To what extent is this process facilitated by living in the target language community? This article reports a study which provides concrete empirical data on the effects of such experiences on the language learning process. This sociolinguistic study of second language acquisition tries to investigate just what is the process of the acquisition of symbolic elements of another ethnolinguistic community. It is a study of the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence and focuses on the acquisition of a particularly sensitive sociolinguistic variable which is invested with powerful symbolic significance by the native speech community.