Impact of overseas experience on lexical availability in English and Spanish as foreign languages

Abstract

More than six decades ago Gardner introduced the novel concept of integrativeness, which is related to “the individual’s ori entation to language learning that focuses on communication with members of the other language group, a general interest in foreign groups, especially through their language, and favourable attitudes toward the target language group” (Gardner, 2005, p. 10). This openness to other cultures in general and to the target language culture in particular might explain the results obtained in several studies carried out in Spanish L2 (Sandu, 2013) and English L2 (Sandu & Oxbrow, 2021; Sánchez, 2021), which show that students who...