Emergent Leadership, L2 Oral Proficiency, and Social Networks During Study Abroad

Research shows that study abroad (SA) provides a unique, yet varied outcome for students seeking to improve their target language oral proficiency during study abroad SA (Freed et al., 2004). Contemporary work in second language acquisition (SLA) during SA has looked beyond individual behaviors of sojourners to analyze social networks as a structure with significant influence on outcomes, yet emergent leadership has not been addressed within social network analysis in SA. To address this gap the current study employed a computational social network approach. This mixed methods study analyzes the social networks of 30 SA sojourners from a large private U.S. university studying Arabic in Amman, Jordan for three months. It attempts to discover the relationship between leadership emergence and language progress, as well as the relationship to those who may be instrumental in facilitating access to target-language (TL) speakers. The study found that emergent leaders formed into three groups: strong (30%), moderate (50%) and weak (20%). Leadership indicators of Arabic proficiency, trustworthiness, advice-giving, and group work initiators were statistically significant for strong leaders. A subset of three strong leaders had higher interpersonal skill nominations than Arabic nominations, showing that interpersonal skills are valued where challenges on SA may require skilled social leaders as well as language leaders. Leader nominations were best predicted by post-sojourn oral proficiency interview scores (OPI), improved reading and pronunciation, and the number of interactions with TL speakers a student facilitated. Variables not found to correlate with leadership were gender, extroversion, and leadership identity. This is seen as positive as the probability for men and women to participate as leaders was not statistically different, and neither were extroversion types. The data found that some weak leaders reported high leadership identity yet received low leadership nominations which may indicate the contextuality of leadership, and that a sojourner's leadership identity may change with proficiency. Leadership nominations and facilitator nominations were positively significantly correlated, although leaders received more credit for interactions than they carried out. Strong leaders had TL contact facilitation averages that were significantly higher than moderate or weak leaders. SA programs may benefit from the knowledge of how social and L2 leaders are positioned in group work.