〈Research Note〉

Relationship between Student Internships andSecond Language Education:
Examples from the Experience of a US Overseas Studies Program in Japan
Andrew Horvat

The following notes were part of a series of presentations about Stanford University’s Kyoto-based
overseas studies program delivered at three successive annual meetings of the American Associationof Teachers of Japanese held between 2012 and 2014. The author wishes to express his gratitude toProfessor Yoshiko Matsumoto of Stanford University, co-presenter at AATJ, for help and guidance inthe preparation of these notes.
By Andrew Horvat *The following research notes deal with the relationship between foreign language study and student
internships. Report 1 describes the effectiveness of “peer education” in encouraging awarenessamong students of a) the real life benefits to be had from overseas internships and b) the crucial roleof pre-departure language training in enhancing the internship experience. Using responses to two
separate surveys of students and host organization staff, Report 2 demonstrates how time spent on
language study prior to an internship correlates positively with satisfaction levels of both students andhosts. Report 3 focuses on counterintuitive insights gained from qualitative analysis of responses topost-internship surveys.

Report 1: Utilizing peer education to promote pre-departure language study andencourage participation in overseas internships
It has been generally assumed among Japan-related study abroad specialists that internships are a“good thing” since they place students inside Japanese society and encourage social interaction to a
far greater degree than classroom instruction. But what factors contribute most to a satisfying
internship experience? Student responses to surveys at the conclusion of a program consisting of an
academic quarter in Kyoto followed by a summer internship at a Japan-based host organization
indicate that the single most significant determinant of satisfaction is pre-departure language study.
As Report 2 demonstrates, students who arrived in Japan with more than the minimum required－ 43 －

units of Japanese generally evaluated their internship experiences more highly than those who camehaving completed only the prerequisite two quarters. While this fact is unlikely to surprise language
teaching professionals,i the positive correlation between pre-departure language preparation andsuccess after arrival is generally not well understood by students.
Although surveys comparing the language competence levels of students who participated insummer internships with those who returned immediately after the spring academic quarter were nottaken, almost all students who participated in internships stated that their ability to communicate inJapanese had improved significantly by the end of the summer as a result of interactions with native
speakers at their host organizations.
While most students stated that they derived great satisfaction from acquiring skills in Japanese,during the economic downturn following the bursting of the US subprime bubble many came toperceive additional Japanese language study as taking time away from courses in technical fields suchas engineering and computer science, subjects they saw as crucial to their future careers.
The task facing instructors and administrators of the Stanford Kyoto program was to make students
aware that in a globalized economic environment the ability to speak a foreign language was not aluxury but a necessity and that an overseas internship – especially one conducted in a foreign language– would greatly improve a student’s career choices on graduation. As described below, during thepost-subprime recession many students chose to return to the United States early to take part ininternships with American firms. With regard to pre-departure language preparation, about 60 percent
of students continued Japanese study but the remainder either stopped at the minimum two quarters orelse interrupted language study after just one additional course in order to make room for courses incomputer science and engineering.
In the immediate aftermath of the economic downturn, numbers of students staying for summer
internships declined precipitously. This first report describes how administrators were able to reversethat trend through “peer education” – students telling other students about their positive experiences.

Background
Founded in 1989 as the Stanford Center for Technology and Innovation (SCTI), the Kyoto overseas
studies program was initially conceived as a response to deteriorating US-Japan relations during an
era of trade and technology friction. SCTI’s original goal was to nurture a cadre of Japan-literatebusiness and technology leaders who could respond to tensions in bilateral relations with sensitivity
gained through first-hand knowledge of Japanese language and culture.
Although the name SCTI was dropped in 2012, the program remained largely as originallyenvisaged: a minimum of one quarter of academic study in Kyoto followed by a 10-week summer－ 44 －

internship at a Japan-based host organization. In one typical year students were placed at researchlaboratories of NTT and NEC, a product design firm in Yokohama, three software start-ups, and four
major manufacturers: Hitachi, Kawasaki, Furukawa and Horiba.
In normal years 80 percent of students taking part in the Kyoto program are in science andengineering; the remainder, in the social sciences and humanities. The latter normally proceed tointernships at NGOs, think tanks, and research centers. In 2012 these included the Institute ofInternational Monetary Affairs, JACSES (an environmental NGO in Tokyo) and the Kyoto
International Manga Museum. One student worked at the Tokyo office of a Democratic Party of Japan
Diet member. The number of students participating in the program in recent years has ranged between
30 and 40 depending largely on the popularity of study in Japan in any given year. Since its founding,
SCTI has placed about 800 students at internship with organizations of various kinds in Japan.
As might be expected, many students perform at a very high level. During one recent program
session a linguistics major in her junior year wrote a paper comparing attitudes in Kyoto and Osaka
toward the use of Kansai dialect. During her internship at a Kyoto hospital she studied cross sectionsof frozen mouse brain tissue to pinpoint the location of sound production in the brain. In another year
a mechanical engineering major devised a new type of clutch which his host firm later patented. At
the end of their internships, both students presented the results of their work in Japanese.

Challenges
In the years immediately following the bursting of the US subprime bubble in 2008 students
expressed reluctance to commit to internships in Japan, preferring instead to return to the UnitedStates where they felt they stood a better chance of finding secure jobs after graduation. Even thosestudents who chose to remain in Japan for an internship saw the experience primarily as preparation
for future employment. For example, one engineering student wrote in his evaluation at the conclusionof his internship that his time at a major auto parts firm “will help make me an even greater success.” I
cite this to indicate that perhaps one half of technology students on the program can be categorized as“instrumental learners” in keeping with the criteria established by Gardner and Lambert.ii The otherroughly 50 percent of science and technology majors could be described in the same way as the
majority of social science and humanities students, namely as “integrative learners.” This is clear fromstatements these students made in program applications that their interest in things Japanese wassparked by childhood viewing of anime such as Doraemon and Sailor Moon.
An additional factor contributing to the decline in internship participation was a change in program
rules. Until 2006, internships were a mandatory part of the SCTI program. As soon as internships
became voluntary, numbers of participants declined from 30 in 2006, to 27 in 2007, 24 in 2008, 20 in－ 45 －

2009 and 19 in 2010. Had an outside funder not stepped in to subsidize two social science internships
in 2009 and 2010, numbers for those two years would have been 18 and 17 respectively. In otherwords, within four years the program experienced a 40 percent drop in internship participation.
By 2011, however, numbers of students choosing to remain for internships had recovered almost
completely. And in 2012 there were twice as many technology majors heading for internships as in2010. Had the disaster of March 11, 2011 not forced the cancellation of the Kyoto academic quarter inthe spring of that year and had other delays not resulted in students giving up summer internships
already arranged for them, some 24 technology majors would have taken part in internships in Japan
in 2011. By 2012, however, that very same number of engineering and hard science majors did takepart in internships at Japan-based host organizations.

Response
How was the program able to rebuild its internship component and did this recovery signifychanges in student attitudes toward the importance of pre-departure language proficiency? The answer
lay in peer education, i.e. getting students to inform other students about a) the real-life benefits ofoverseas internships, and b) how additional language training improves internship outcomes.
In 2009, at the suggestion of staff at a major donor organization, program administrators in Japanlaunched a regular annual exit event where students were given an opportunity to meet among
themselves to discuss their internship experiences. It became immediately apparent that this exercise
contributed to heightened student morale. Of 20 students in 2009, 18 had positive stories to relate.
They spoke about their initial difficulties and embarrassments and how they eventually achieved
rapport with supervisors and co-workers. In 2011, of 12 students who came to Japan in spite of the
March 11 disaster, 10 evaluated their internships positively, one not so, and one admitted in front ofpeers that she would have had a more fulfilling experience had she taken more Japanese language
courses prior to coming to Japan.
In 2010, with the help of Dr Richard Dasher, director of the US-Asia Technology Management
Center at Stanford, the Kyoto program revamped its home campus orientation programs, held at thattime some six months prior to the departure of students for Japan. The aim was to home in on theconcerns of the “instrumental learners” about employment and to encourage them to think positivelyof their internship experience.
Dr Dasher, a linguist by training, presented a picture of “reward for effort,” a basic motivating
factor for instrumental language learners. He explained that an internship in Japan even at relatively
little known host organizations would give students “international experience” and “global
competence.” Students were told that if they wrote on their CVs these four magic words, that the－ 46 －

computers which read application forms would immediately pick theirs out. The message was simple:
real-life overseas experience would count more towards a job than time spent at big name companies
where interns may be asked to do little more than make copies and serve coffee.
Students who had taken part in the program in previous years and who had spoken positively about
their internship experiences at exit events were asked to talk about their internships at the predeparture on-campus orientation sessions directed at students heading for Japan in the following year.
At one such session, a student, who had interned with an international securities company in Tokyo
described how she had learned about stock markets by editing the English language copy of Japanesemarket analysts, how she had been asked to provide a short course on presentations in English forJapanese sales staff, and how much this was appreciated by her supervisor. And finally, she told her
fellow students that everything she had done had led directly to her being hired by a majorinternational consulting company at its San Francisco branch on her return.
The impact of this student’s presentation was electrifying. One student in the audience who earlier
had said he wished to return to the United States after the end of the academic quarter in Kyoto(without heading for a summer internship in Japan) approached the Kyoto program director at the endof the orientation session to say he had changed his mind. This student, an environmental engineer,
not only signed up for an internship in Japan but also remained committed to it even through theuncertain period after March 11, 2011 when it appeared that in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear
accident the university would cancel not only the academic quarter in Kyoto but summer internships
in Japan as well. This student was among the 12 who stuck it out and came to Japan in the summer of
2011. This same student, upon completion of his internship in August 2011 wrote in his evaluation: “I
think this program is a great experience and the staff should continue to advise students that do notchoose to intern initially to do so anyway (which was my case).” This is a direct reference to hischange of mind thanks to the revamped orientation. Although he was not aware of it, he was
responding to peer education.
In October of 2011, the same type of pre-departure internship orientation program was held on thehome campus; this time the mechanical engineering student whose new type of clutch had been
patented by his host company spoke to students weighing the pros and cons of staying for aninternship in Japan the following summer. The student made the following two points: 1) I went for“international experience and global competence” (the very words used by Dr Dasher in theorientation session he attended in 2010) but 2) learned a lot that was directly related to my major(strong appeal to instrumental learners). Both he and another student spoke (without prompting fromprogram staff) about the importance of pre-departure language study. The engineering student
explained that thanks to having taken five quarters of Japanese instead of the minimum required twoquarters, he was able to read the kanji (Chinese characters) on the Japanese language patent－ 47 －

application his company showed him prior to filing for (and obtaining) a patent for the device thestudent had developed while interning at the company.
The student who had expressed mixed feelings about her internship at the exit program also spoke.
In front of students who could still opt to take additional Japanese courses, she confessed that she hadtaken only the minimum two quarters for technology majors but later, during her internship, when she
was having troubles communicating with host organization staff she realized that she should havetaken more Japanese. (This student returned to Kyoto later to complete a full two years of Japanese
language study.)
After the 2011 on-campus internship orientation described above, 32 students signed up for oncampus interviews for internships. Of these 29 made a firm commitment to do internships andultimately all were placed with host organizations. In other words, the ratio of participation ininternships had recovered to virtually the same levels as when internships had been mandatory.

Conclusion
The experience of the Stanford Kyoto program in the difficult economic period of 2008 to 2011
proves that crises do contain opportunities. In this case, the sudden and drastic downturn in numbersof participants encouraged administrators to focus on reaching out to students to explain the real-life
benefits of foreign language skills and the positive role of internships in maximizing those skills.
The decision to let students speak to other students turned out to be the right one. Students are able
to convey through dress, gestures, and vocabulary, a sense of community with their fellows.iii While
there can be no doubt that student testimonials are the most effective way to get across the message
that internships are both personally transformative and career useful, (and that language is not merely
a curriculum prerequisite but also a real and genuine building block of the experience), peer education
alone does not provide a complete explanation for positive student response. Were peer education the
only determining factor, then students ought to be able to convince other students to do absolutely
anything. We know that this is not true. Peer education is an effective tool when the message beingtransmitted has recognizable truth value. That pre-departure language study is the single greatest
determinant of competence achieved after arrival is demonstrated below.

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Report 2: Relationship between language competence and success in overseas study -What the numbers did tell us: strong correlation between Japanese language
ability and student/host satisfaction
The following are some conclusions drawn from a survey of students returning from Japan after
completing an internship during the summer of 2012 and a separate questionnaire sent to the same
students’ host organizations. A response to a question on the application form students filled out prior
to leaving for Japan is also referred to. In the year in question, Japanese language levels stood at: five
students in first year, 14 students in second year and six students in third plus one in fourth.
There were also 10 students who had taken one course beyond the minimum required but had
dropped language study in order to take more courses in their area of concentration, usuallyengineering and computer science. When looking at student expectations from overseas study – inparticular internships – this group of 10 is highly significant because they had interrupted theirlanguage studies and had fallen behind their peers. The pressures on technical students to take courses
related to their majors is extremely high so we need to refrain from being judgmental regarding thistype of behavior but it is clear from survey responses that these students reported being least satisfied
with their internship experience. They also received low evaluations from their host organizations
compared to students who opted for more language study.
The survey material:
1) Student survey: Of 29 students who stayed beyond the academic quarter in Kyoto to undertakesummer internships 21 replied to a 10-question survey. This report focuses on responses to threequestions: a) did you use Japanese in your internship; b) were you generally satisfied with yourinternship experience; and 3) would you consider returning to Japan to work in future?
2) Host organization questionnaires: Of 29 host units, 24 responded in writing, two in verbal
interviews and three opted not to send evaluations. Taking Japanese cultural context into consideration,
we can assume that failure to respond meant a desire to avoid giving a negative appraisal. In all threecases in which responses were not received, students hosted by the same organizations also either
failed to respond or else expressed critical views of the internship. Host units were asked six questions
but for sake of simplicity responses were reduced in the following way: a) host unit satisfaction withstudent’s Japanese language ability and b) the average score of answers to five questions related to
student attitude toward work and social relationships. Unit supervisors were asked to rate students ona scale of 1 to 4, the highest number being 4. Again, given cultural context, under normal circumstances
a student could expect to receive a 4 regardless of how many years he/she had studied Japanese.
Anything below a 4 was judged as indicating dissatisfaction on the part of the host organization.
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3) We also looked at an answer students gave to one particular question on their pre-departure
application forms: “What classes are you taking that might be relevant to your major or internship?”A high degree of correlation could be observed between positive student self-evaluation and hostunit appraisals; likewise, an equally close correlation existed between dissatisfaction among students
and low evaluation by host units of the student’s performance. In 24 out of 29 cases student selfappraisals and host evaluations correlated positively, i.e. both the student and the host supervisor
agreed about the outcome of the internship whether negative or positive.
With the exception of one outlier – a dissatisfied student with one year Japanese who was given a 4
by his host both in language and general performance – students with just one year of Japanese, or
students who had interrupted their language studies after completing the minimum requirement,
received low evaluations from their host organizations and in one case received no evaluation. Threeof seven such students received evaluations of 2 on a scale of 4 from host supervisors.
Thirteen of 17 students who were given scores of 4 on language or 4 on other criteria by their hostorganizations also rated their experiences as having been either generally or wholly satisfactory. One
student stated that her experience went “well beyond expectations.” All 13 had two or more years ofJapanese prior to embarking on internships. Of 5 students in third year Japanese, four were rated
highly by host organizations as well as themselves; of the eight among the 13 who had completed
second year, four finished their last quarter of Japanese with As, two had A-s, one a B+ and one had aB. (Although the B student did not do so well in class, this student had an outgoing personality andwas seen to be performing well outside the classroom in contact situations with Japanese peers.)
In other words, there is a clear correlation between high performance in language, high satisfaction
in internships and positive evaluation from host organizations. While this may look like a no-brainer
to any fairly competent speaker of a foreign language who has spent significant time abroad, thiscorrelation does not appear to be self-evident to students even as they prepare to go to Japan.
This inability to see a connection between Japanese language skills and success after arrival seems
to be corroborated by the failure of nearly 2/3 of internship participants to list Japanese courses intheir pre-departure application forms as “being relevant to your internship.”
It would appear that most students assume that they will have a successful experience overseas
simply by going to the target country and spending time with local people. Most are unable tounderstand that language competence is not simply a course pre-requisite but that it is the single mostimportant enabling element of the life-changing experience that they say they wish to have as a resultof study overseas.
Conclusion: More effort is required to convince students going abroad that the time and effort they
spend on language study prior to their departure is just as much a part of their preparation as thetechnical courses they take. In fact, without an ability to engage in basic communication in a target－ 50 －

language, much of the time students spend on technical preparation will be for nothing since they will
not be able to develop the social and professional relationships needed to apply the technical skills
they have learned. Moreover, the general sense of satisfaction – well-being – that they will acquire
through the confidence they gain from being competent communicators in a foreign language, will
have a positive ripple effect on other aspects of their time abroad including their professional work.
Conversely, frustrations due to lack of language competence will undermine their self-confidence
which in turn will have an adverse effect on all aspects of their stay. Although the scope of thisanalysis is limited, nonetheless the message comes across loud and clear: students who go abroad withless than sufficient pre-departure language training are setting themselves up to fail. Every effort
should be made to encourage students going overseas to take language study seriously.

Report 3: Qualitative Analysis of Student and Host Organization Internship Survey
Answers -- What the numbers don’t tell us: the importance of being earnest.
In Report 2 we tabulated numerical ratings of student performance by host organization staff inareas such as language skills, task completion, and socializing ability and compared these with student
self-appraisals of levels of satisfaction on conclusion of internship. We found that there was a strong
positive correlation between time devoted by students to language study and satisfaction of bothstudents and internship hosts.
The above method was useful because it provided hard facts when encouraging students to takelanguage study seriously, i.e. to finish more than the minimum two quarters of Japanese for technicalmajors and five quarters for non-technical majors before leaving for Japan.iv However, qualitative
analysis yields nuances which the mere tabulation of results – the reduction of satisfaction levels tonumbers – does not.
Qualitative analysis, i.e. the search for common threads in students’ written responses as well as
comments of host organization staff, not only corroborates the results of quantitative analysis it also
provides some insight into areas for which we did not create criteria when tabulating numbers.

The importance of being earnest:
1) The earnestness with which a student tries to communicate and to learn Japanese is appreciatedmore highly by host organization staff than successful performance. It is significant to note thatstudents with only one year of Japanese received praise in written evaluations given by hostorganization staff, even though the numerical value such students received in their evaluations
was 3 out of 4 or even 2.
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2) Such a gap between qualitative and quantitative evaluation is consistent with accommodation
theory, namely, in contact situations willingness to communicate facilitates communication
helping to overcome deficiencies in pronunciation and grammar. In other words, feelings matter.
Understanding the above gap is important when evaluating student applications for overseas
study. In other words, good grades in language do matter but students who have achieved thehighest marks on their quizzes may not be the most successful communicators, and conversely,
students with less than sterling marks may perform quite effectively in real life contact
situations. This fact should be kept in mind when interviewing students for internships.
3) One example of the above could be observed in the case of a student with particularly low
marks in language. This student was evaluated by three host organization staff, each one ofwhom rated his Japanese language skills differently: one gave him 2 out of 4, another 3, and yet
another gave him an incredible 4 out of 4! Clearly, subjective factors have a great impact on
ability to communicate.
4) The tendency to evaluate consistent and sincere effort higher than brilliant near-native
performance is underscored by a negative comment from one supervisor regarding the allegedly“inappropriate” behavior of the linguistically most competent student in the group. We need totake note of this – even though it is only one comment – because it tells us of the need toencourage students to acquire cultural and social skills in tandem with increased competence inabilities in verbal communication.
5) It is also interesting to note that the appreciation shown by host organization staff for “sincere
effort” to communicate in Japanese as opposed to real success in reproducing near-native speech
finds its parallel in Japanese attitudes toward the use of “keigo” among fellow native speakers.
It has been pointed outv that Japanese native speakers tend to feel more comfortable withcounterparts whose performance in keigo is less than perfect than with those who can manipulate
all aspects of Japanese treatment language without making a single mistake. In other words, inkeigo speech trying hard is highly evaluated, whereas faultless performance may trigger
negative feelings. This is not to say that we should encourage students to make mistakes but
rather that they should be more aware of cultural context and less concerned with acquiring
faultless mechanical skills.

Language competence and desire to return to Japan to work:
It can be said that students who achieved high levels of proficiency in Japanese not only indicatedgreater satisfaction with their internship experiences but also showed greater desire to return to Japanfor work or study. Although there were exceptions, students with generally good language skills were
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more likely to say they wished to return to Japan at some future time than those who experienced
problems communicating with Japanese supervisors and colleagues. Those who said they did not wish
to return to Japan attributed their reluctance to what they described as “Japanese corporate culture”
and “poor treatment of women employees.” In other words, students who made reference to "Japanese
corporate practices" or "discrimination against women" (with one exception) tended to be those withlow levels of language and culture competence. It is significant to note, however, that a female student
whose language skills were near-native level made no such comments while two students with low
language abilities cited “long hours” and “gender issues” as reasons for not wishing to return to Japan.
This is not to say that it is easy to work in Japanese companies or there are no barriers against womenin Japanese society. It is, however, more likely that such students looked to “outside factors” toexplain their reluctance to return, while those who could communicate well, saw opportunities forthemselves that less competent students could not.
The above is a mere sampling of what can be learned by taking time to read carefully the written
performance reviews of host organizations and the self-evaluation of students. Although quantitative
analysis does give the big picture, qualitative analysis provides insights that can help us todifferentiate various cases and to treat students more sensitively as individuals.
*Between 2008 and 2013, the author served as director of the Stanford Kyoto Program.

isee Matsumoto Yoshiko, “Acquisition of Japanese by American Businessmen in Tokyo: How much and why,”in Current Issues in Second Language Acquisition and Development, Carol Blackshire-Belay, University Pressof America. 119-140, 1994
ii
Gardner, Robert C. and Wallace E. Lambert, Attitudes and Motivation in Second-Language Learning,
Newbury House Publishers, Rowley MA 1972
iii
Allow me to offer as an example of how students relate positively to dress choices permitted for peers but
inappropriate for elders the case of the mechanical engineering student whose design of a new type of clutch
was patented by his host company. This student gave his presentation at the home campus orientation wearing
tee-shirt and shorts under a navy duffle coat. As it was raining his only footwear consisted of flip flops.
Although it might be difficult to provide empirical proof of the positive impact of this student’s outward
appearance, it was clear from the relaxed smiles of members of the student audience that they felt the presenter
to be one of them and hence were more receptive to his message than to one delivered by an older adultwearing jacket, white shirt and tie.
iv
As language study after arrival was mandatory, technical majors who fulfilled minimal requirements would
depart for their internships with three quarters (i.e. one academic year) of Japanese while social science andhumanities majors would complete six quarters, or two full academic years of Japanese language study.
v
Wetzel, Patricia, Keigo in Modern Japan: Polite Language from Meiji to the Present, University of Hawaii
Press, Honolulu, 2004

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