ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights how a language socialisation approach can enrich student's understanding of language learning in out-of-class interactions during study abroad. It discusses some examples of language socialisation from a longitudinal project that examined naturally occurring interactions outside of class by US-based students sojourning in Spain. Interactions with host families and native Spanish speakers (NSS) age peers made up the majority of the participants' time speaking in Spanish outside of class. However, within the group, there was wide variation in the reported amount of time spent with those individuals. The age peers oriented to expert-novice roles regarding language and culture to a lesser extent than host families. In particular, two features stood out in the corpus due to their frequency and importance for interaction: humour and assessments. In both cases, there were instances of language socialisation. The conversations provided instances in which expert speakers guided students explicitly and assisted them in using Spanish in contextually appropriate ways.
