Japanese Students’ Fluctuations in Their Perceived Capacity to Speak in English and French/German Before, During and After Studying Abroad in Europe

Recently, a multilingual turn in applied linguistics research recognised classrooms’ increasing linguistic diversity and multilingual users’ integrated linguistic repertoires (Cenoz & Gorter, 2019). In contrast, Japanese education tends to continue its focus on English mastery (Humphries & Burns, 2015), and research on Japanese learners has indicated some reticence to speak this dominant foreign language (King, 2013). Research into Japanese people who study abroad to learn English and languages other than English (LOTEs) can reveal new perspectives. However, longitudinal studies of Japanese students’ multilingual speaking attitudes before, during and after studying abroad in a LOTE context remain scarce. The study focused on two participants who had significantly improved their speaking proficiency in France and Germany, outperforming peers in English-speaking countries on pre- and post-sojourn speaking tests (ALC, n.d.). They wrote monthly reflective journals and created retrospective timeline graphs to indicate fluctuations in their perceived capacity to speak (Humphries et al., 2023) for each foreign language. Using a qualitative longitudinal approach (Henry & MacIntyre, 2024), the researchers analysed the narratives of these two participants. This study supported previous findings that learners’ English improved while studying abroad in non-Anglophone European countries (Borràs & Llanes, 2022; Köylü & Tracy-Ventura, 2022). Both participants showed introspective and introverted tendencies that aided their linguistic success in English while studying abroad, as they formed close bonds with supportive L2 English users. However, they struggled to speak with Europeans in the local language and experienced emotional distress, which challenged their ability to maintain two languages after their sojourns. Overall, the emotional impact of this multilingual experience seemed strong, indicating the need for planners to develop support mechanisms during and after sojourns.