How memories of study abroad experience are contextualized in the language classroom

Abstract

Many study abroad researchers recruit genres, such as diary, interview, and questionnaire, to study memories of study abroad experience and their relationship with language learning. Whether quantitative or qualitative, much emphasis is on individual representations and circulation of past experience, not the here-and-now, nor the impact a person’s study abroad memories has on their subsequent life practices. In this study, I draw on sociocultural theory to analyze study abroad experiences recounted in various types of language classroom activity. I show that memory is constantly (re)shaped by intermental, interactional, and institutional forces, as when students are mediated at lexical, grammatical, and discursive levels to reconstruct their experienced past vis-a-vis goal-directed activity in class. I highlight discursive practices rememberers adopt to render their version of the past credible and authentic, and explain how such practices create opportunities for mediation in the classroom. The findings demonstrate that contextualized remembering is a mediated process of objectifying personal experience, and that memory discourse is a mediating tool for transforming mental and social activity. Thus, remembering is not simply the retrieval or circulation of individual subjectivities, but also an active social practice.