ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the Language and Social Networks Abroad Project (LANGSNAP) design, participants, methodology and analysis procedures. The Spanish Elicited Imitation Test used for the LANGSNAP project was initially designed by Lourdes Ortega, Iwashita, Norris, and Rabie, and has been used by Ortega and Bowden. The Language Engagement Questionnaire was designed to document LANGSNAP participants' language use practices for a range of typical year-abroad activities. The Social Networks Questionnaire was specially designed to collect information about participants' social networks, in particular their regular L1- and L2-using contacts in five different social contexts. The chapter provides introductions to the various project instruments that gather data concerning participants' overall L2 proficiency, their L2 development in terms of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF). Syntactic complexity was analysed in the argumentative essays only, as it is generally accepted that written genres offer the greatest scope for complexity development. Lexical complexity was operationalized as lexical diversity and analysed in the oral interview.
