Study abroad is a prime setting for the use of English as a multilingua franca since study abroad students often interact with other international students who have diverse linguistic backgrounds and use English as a mediating language to do so. In my guest lecture I will address the topic of English as a multilingua franca from three different perspectives:

• From the perspective of social networks and language use
  In this part I will illustrate the linguistic diversity of social networks that study abroad students entertain.
• From the perspective of English language development
  In this part I will probe into the potential of ELF interactions for language development by drawing both on test and interview data.
• From the perspective of plurilingual competence development
  In this part I will outline a vignette approach for the self-assessment of plurilingual competences before and after study abroad measuring students’ self-perceived ability to employ their plurilingual repertoires for communication in different situations and will then move on to present results on the potential of study abroad for the development of such competences.