Syntactic Gains in Short-Term Study Abroad

This article reports the results of a study of the syntactic acquisition of nine participants in a short-term study abroad program that was designed to complete the second year of German. Data compared study abroad students' use of accusative and dative case prepositions and ditransitives, auxiliary selection in the past tense, and dative verbs with the use of those constructions by students who completed the second-year course sequence at the home institution. The study abroad students performed at about the same level as the on-campus students on all syntactic measures but produced many more ditransitive clauses.