"Self-identity is a ‘production’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside representation."
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When it comes to language learning contexts, even if you take a hundred students and send them off on the same Study Abroad, it’s very unlikely that they will have the exact same experience or results. This is because, when it comes to learning a language, it’s not only the context itself that’s important, but the individual who is in it. People often say that Study Abroad changes them, and that they come back a different person than they were when they first arrived. But what does this new you look like? Let’s hear what he students have to say.
So, how can you readjust to your home country and reflect on your Study Abroad experience; and how can you retain the benefits you acquired while abroad? In the following sections, we help you to figure out what this new you is suppose to do once you get back home.
It might be that your dream of going on study abroad involved a sense of searching for something else, something new. You wanted to see what other ways there were out in the world of living your life, of belonging. A few months in another country was just be a ‘taster’, but you wanted to make the most of this as you have aspirations to live and work in other countries after university.
Looking at foreign language learning and ‘identity reconstruction’, Kinginger (2004) traces the linguistic and cultural development of Alice, who studies abroad in France and learns French, despite needing to “…overcome significant personal, social, and material obstacles”. This research records Alice’s accounts of access to social networks and observes that: “For Alice, becoming a speaker of French is a way of reorienting herself in the world – a ‘mission’…to upgrade her access to cultural capital…”.
"Self-identity is a ‘production’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside representation."
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Student Videos
What does this term mean to you after having lived abroad?
In what ways do you feel as though you have changed since living abroad?
What advice would you give to other students to prepare for these changes?