The importance of going abroad to study/work

The students who travel abroad to learn a new language and new culture, this deprivation and/or alteration of the self comes as with the shock of using the second language. The learner’s self becomes trapped behind the communication barrier that results, and only an altered picture of the self, one filtered through this new, incomplete language, is projected by the learner. Moreover, the cultural frame of the new environment causes the presented self to be reinterpreted through yet another filter of meaning. Learners become disadvantaged in their ability to assimilate new information, develop their social networks and present their self, when their own frame of reference becomes marginalized by the prominent frame of the new culture.

From Pellegrino Aveni, V (2005) Study Abroad and Second language Use Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 9-16

In Intercultural Communication: Identity by Holliday A, Hyde M and Kullman J, p.121