The Effectiveness of Studying Abroad Programs for L2 Students -How the Students’ Minds Changed after Being Exposed to English Only Environment for 2 Weeks-

Abstract

Study abroad programs are known to be effective to learn English for L2 students in Japan.  Since 2010, our college has been offering our students a Summer Intensive English Program (SIEP) in our affiliate school, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford (UPB) in the United States. Though it is a short term to study English abroad, one of the authors on this study, as a leader of this program in 2018, observed a big impact upon the students during and after the program.  Until today, in our college, little research had been conducted on the students’ changes after coming back to Japan.  In this study, we collected the students’ feedback after SIEP by conducting questionnaires and interview research. After that, we compared the scores before and after SIEP.  The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between their minds and English competency and what is needed to improve the SIEP program next year.