Effects of Staying Abroad on the Foreign Language Proficiency of German School Students

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 7
  In Poster Session: Language Development Across Contexts and Mediums

Abstract

Based on data of a German large-scale study with ninth grade students, we focused on two types (student exchanges and language courses during vacation) of studying abroad (SA) and determined the frequency of SA and its effects on the proficiency of English and French as foreign language (EFL resp. FFL) learners. For estimating the average effect on the treated, we conducted propensity score matching leading to sample sizes of 1,132 (EFL) resp. 950 (FFL). Our results show that only few German ninth grade students already have been SA. Both for EFL and FFL, we determined significant effects of student exchanges on listening comprehension skills and marginal significant effects on reading comprehension skills. For language courses, no significant effects were found.

Authors

• Lars Hoffmann, Humboldt University - Berlin

• Stefan Schipolowski, Humboldt University