Cross-cultural study of the impact of short-term language courses abroad on language acquisition

The paper presents the results of a survey, conducted during the realization of an exchange program in which three higher education institutions from Russia, France, and Germany participated. The aim of the cross-cultural survey was to discover the students' attitudes towards short-term academic stays abroad and to compare their evaluations of the impact of short-term language courses on the acquisition of the target language as well as the target culture. The total number of the survey participants from three participating countries was 64. The methods employed in the current research combined observation and a questionnaire study. The evaluation of the significance of differences in the survey results of the three groups was done using chi-square analysis. Our study has shown that most respondents irrespective of their nationality are interested in having more experience with short-term language courses abroad in the future and give positive ranking to the impact of such programs on most components of language competence, as well as language- and culture-related issues. The difference in the affirmative answers among the subjects' groups was statistically significant only regarding the importance of pronunciation, the importance of grammar, grammar control and orthography, which can be explained by students' individual as well as professional preferences.