How memories of study abroad experience are contextualized in the language classroom
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Sheng-Hsun Lee
Abstract
Many study abroad researchers recruit genres, such as diary, interview, and questionnaire, to study memories of study abroad experience and their relationship with language learning. Whether quantitative or qualitative, much emphasis is on individual representations and circulation of past experience, not the here-and-now, nor the impact a person’s study abroad memories has on their subsequent life practices. In this study, I draw on sociocultural theory to analyze study abroad experiences recounted in various types of language classroom activity. I show that memory is constantly (re)shaped by intermental, interactional, and institutional forces, as when students are mediated at lexical, grammatical, and discursive levels to reconstruct their experienced past vis-à-vis goal-directed activity in class. I highlight discursive practices rememberers adopt to render their version of the past credible and authentic, and explain how such practices create opportunities for mediation in the classroom. The findings demonstrate that contextualized remembering is a mediated process of objectifying personal experience, and that memory discourse is a mediating tool for transforming mental and social activity. Thus, remembering is not simply the retrieval or circulation of individual subjectivities, but also an active social practice.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Celeste Kinginger for her comments and suggestions on the earlier draft of the article, and to Guy Ramsay for his help at the stage of revising this article. I also thank the instructor and students for participating in this study. Any remaining errors are solely mine.
Appendix A
The following conventions were adopted in transcribing the interactional data. For detailed descriptions of the features, please refer to Du Bois et al. (1993).
| - | truncated word | X | indecipherable syllable |
| ? | appeal | @ | laughter |
| [ ];[[ ]]; [2 2]; [3 3] |
overlap | <HI HI> | higher pitch |
| = | lengthening | <P P> | soft |
| .. | short pause | <A A> | rapid speed |
| … | long pause | <L L> | slow speech |
| (( )) | researcher’s comment | <LO LO> | lowered pitch |
| <RH RH> | rhythmic | <MRC MRC> | marcato |
| <F F> | loud | (TSK) | a click of tongue |
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Training student writers in conducting peer feedback in L2 writing: A meaning-making perspective
- Assessing the use of multiple-choice translation items in English proficiency tests: The case of the national English proficiency test in Turkey
- Translingual negotiation strategies in CMC contexts: English-medium communication in online marketplaces
- Alignment effect in the continuation task of Chinese low-intermediate English learners
- Racializing the problem of and solution to foreign accent in business
- Migrant women, work, and investment in language learning: Two success stories
- Student motivation in Dutch secondary school EFL literature lessons
- Developing 21st century skills for the first language classroom: Investigating the relationship between Chinese primary students’ oral interaction strategy use and their group discussion performance
- How memories of study abroad experience are contextualized in the language classroom
- Spanish L1 EFL learners’ recognition knowledge of English academic vocabulary: The role of cognateness, word frequency and length
