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Study Abroad
Studying abroad can be described as having the wonderful opportunity to pursue college
studies in a foreign country. This experience is a very enlightening, enriching, and transformative
one, both in a personal and professional manner. When a person studies abroad they are often
immersed in a new culture, a new language, and a new environment, so not only does a person
gain new knowledge and information pertaining to their studies, but they also gain insight into a
world never before seen by their eyes. This essay will review an article delving into the ins and
outs of studying abroad and the impact it has on students.
Research Purpose and Overview
The topic of studying abroad is not at all new to the research world; however, in most
research studies on studying abroad, the purpose is to discover how it impacts a student's
language, academic progress, and motivation in school. Contrary to this, the article “Lasting
Impact of Study Abroad Experiences: A Collaborative Autoethnography’s” purpose is to study
what the long-term effects of studying abroad are on students, and mainly what their experiences
are. The study includes two participants who studied abroad (Garbati & Rothschild). These
students claim that they still study and use what they learned of both language and culture in the
great country of France. Towards the is can be found. end of the article's first paragraph, the
thesis can be found. “Our research, which adopted a collaborative autoethnography (CAE)
approach, delves into the lasting impacts our respective study abroad experiences have had on
our lives.”(Garbati & Rothschild, 2016) It lists the article's intended purpose. The theory that was
used in this study is called the Rhetorical theory. The Rhetorical theory seeks to explore how
language can be used to persuade audiences.
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Methods and Research
This study of studying abroad used the qualitative research method to observe the long-
term effects that studying abroad has on the two research participants. The reason this article
chooses to use the qualitative research method is because it employs the use of personal
storytelling and experiences to argue its case. These stories are being told from the authors’s
points of view. Telling about what it was like to study in a foreign college far away from home.
The article does not include any statistics or mathematical records, it is all personal storytelling.
The research design employed in this article is called autoethnography, or a collaborative
approach. This is a design where the scholars who are creating the material are writing their own
experiences and using storytelling, sharing their cultural and personal interactions with the
reader. (Hark, 2017) The entirety of this article focuses on just that. Two students who studied
abroad spoke of their personal experiences and how studying abroad permanently affected them
both as individuals, their personal lives, and how it impacts them to this day. This is also a
collaborative research design meaning that more than one researcher is giving their story. In this
case, it is two different students.
Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Research
In this article, the two researchers came to the conclusion that the stories they told and the
experiences they had actually reinforced and upheld the idea that studying abroad has a long-
lasting impact on students, even after they are done with college. Both researchers still actively
pursue the study of the language they were immersed in, and the culture they were exposed to
also has an impact on their day-to-day lives. These experiences even had an impact on their
careers. The research style, collaborative autoethnography, aided the researchers in coming to a
conclusion by a landslide. This was because the style of collaborative storytelling allowed the
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two researchers to compare and contrast two completely different experiences in studying
abroad. This meant they were able to see what similar outcomes they had from studying abroad
and make a general assumption based off of their own experiences. The researchers concluded
that studying abroad greatly impacted and changed their lives for the better and that it was highly
rewarding. Some limitations this article faced were that this study did not have enough
participants to provide their personal experiences and prove that the data for the study was
accurate. If they had more participants who had studied abroad, they may have found that
studying abroad may have changed some people’s lives for the worse, or that some people feel
neutral on the matter. To participants is simply not enough for any study. In future research, the
researchers may want to consider having participants who experienced different cultures and
countries. Collecting a more diverse array of personal experiences could be very beneficial to
their study.
Original Summary
In This article, two people came together as both participants and researchers to compare
and contrast their personal experiences studying abroad. They explained how studying abroad
impacted their personal life, social life, and how it affected them afterward. Both researchers
studied at a foreign country where they were immersed in a new environment, with new people,
food, music, languages, and culture. They found that this impacted them positively to this day
and that overall this was an enriching and rewarding experience that they got to live through.
This article used qualitative research, as well as collaborative autoethnography. The data
consisted of the two researchers telling their personal stories. Some of the limitations of this
research article include the lack of diverse participants. The study only used data collected from
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two individuals who had studied abroad. Future research could utilize the collection of more
diverse data across multiple participants. Overall this was a very enlightening research article.
Analysis
Research articles in humanities and science are quite similar but also very different from
one another. Many science research articles study the natural world and how its inhabitants and
properties interact with one another. On the other hand, humanities often focus on the inner self
and how it acts with other individuals. Often Science articles have an impact that expands much
further than just the research itself, they aim to solve a problem, are patented, and offer a
solution. Humanities, however, usually publishes their research without much following. That is
why the public can freely access humanities research and not always scientific research.
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Works Cited
Garbati, J. F., & Rothschild, N. (2016). Lasting Impact of Study Abroad Experiences: A
Collaborative Autoethnography. [Die lange Wirksamkeit von
Auslandsstudienerfahrungen: eine kollaborative Autoethnografie. El impacto perdurable
de las experiencias de estudio en el extranjero: una autoetnografía colaborativa] Forum :
Qualitative Social Research, 17(2)https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-17.2.2387
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