Chapter 2: It’s all in the Mind: Developing New Ways of Thinking and Acting During a Semester Abroad: An Australian Case Study

Learning abroad (LA) in Australia has become increasingly popular in the last 10 years with semester long exchanges being an integral part of language and culture undergraduate degrees. By developing their language skills further, students learn how to engage with people in the new environment, broaden their worldviews and intercultural skills and learn how to adapt their ways of thinking and acting to and through the new surroundings. This study explores what intercultural outcomes students of a semester-long sojourn to various non-Anglophone destinations perceived. Self-reflection essays at the end of an extensive capstone unit after students’ returns were analyzed to explore what intercultural attitudes and skills the students had developed, how they were developed, and what importance students assigned to them in their language and adaptation process. The findings show that students developed various new ways of thinking and acting and were able to critically reflect on and show the limits of these new capabilities.