This paper examines the resulting qualitative transformation of two students' metapragmatic awareness following a semester abroad in southern France--one of whom had access to a concept-based pragmatics instruction programme (expert-mediation), while the other followed a standard semester programme. The larger study from which these cases are drawn was designed to address the many calls for pedagogical interventions to help students to engage in, interpret, and negotiate the complexities that surround them during study abroad. Through a thematic discourse analysis of pre- and post-programme language awareness interviews, both focal students exhibited development and growth in their metapragmatic awareness but each student's development was markedly different in nature. These case studies show that expert-mediation provided one learner with notably more systematic, reliable, and recontextualisable conceptual knowledge (in comparison to her non-expert-mediated counterpart) through which she could interpret the language use she encountered through everyday interactions abroad. Subsequent theoretical and pedagogical implications are also discussed.