Oral proficiency retention of L2 Chinese learners following study abroad

Abstract This study examines L2 Chinese learners’ oral retention during the formal instruction at home (AH) context after a period of study abroad (SA). Specifically, it investigates oral developments of L2 Chinese learners in a six-month AH context following their return from ten-month SA. Participants were ten English-speaking undergraduate L2 Chinese learners at an Irish university. Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency (CAF) measures were employed to assess learners’ oral development, with seven metrics providing an in-depth performance evaluation. Data were collected at three time points: pre-SA (T1), post-SA (T2), and six months after returning to AH (T3). Analyses focused specifically on the T2–T3 period to examine the long-term retention of oral proficiency gains following SA. Results showed lexical diversity and syntactic subordination retention, while erosion was observed in fluency (e.g., increased silent pauses) and lexical sophistication. Such findings suggest that learners in the AH context tend to concentrate on learning vocabulary (diversity) and syntactic complexity at the expense of fluency, accuracy ( Juan-Garau & Pérez-Vidal, 2007 ) and lexical sophistication.