Conference Agenda

Extended stays abroad are seen as important opportunities for acquiring and improving a language. One focus of research on study-abroad experiences is the length of stay, indicating that “the longer, the better” (Llanes, 2011, p. 208), although some research also confirms the effectiveness of shorter stays (Yang, 2016). The Council of the European Union (1997) recommends that all students in all member states should start foreign language education as early as possible. Schools support learning a foreign language through exchange programs to provide authentic learning activities and improve students’ language skills. In a student exchange, students attend a school in, for example, an English- or French-speaking country for a certain period of time. During this time, they usually live with a host family. Apart from exchange programs, students have the opportunity to attend language courses abroad during school breaks that are often organized by private institutions. Students spend a school break, e.g., in an English- or French-speaking country and receive instruction focused on developing competence in the target language. Students taking these courses are usually accommodated in hostels and only rarely in host families. Why can parents, students, and teachers expect gains in language proficiency from a stay abroad? Relevant here is the theory of opportunities which provides a convincing basic explanation of why staying abroad as a student may enhance foreign language learning. Carroll (1963) first introduced the idea of “opportunities to learn,” which has been taken up by utilization-of-learning-opportunities models (e.g., Helmke, 2010). The basic assumption is that the greater the amount of (high-quality) opportunities provided, the higher the learning growth will be. However, what is not considered is that learning is a social and interactional process. This implies that it is not solely the utilization of learning opportunities that matters: Relationships with teachers and peers also significantly influence the learning process.

Although empirical research on the effects of stays abroad on L2 acquisition has increased in both linguistics and educational science in recent decades, most empirical studies focus on university students. In comparison, less is known about the effectiveness of stays abroad for younger students, in particular students at the lower secondary level, the target group of our study. To our knowledge, the only empirical study focused on the language outcomes of high school students through attendance of study-abroad programs using large-scale assessment data is the study by Hübner et al. (2021) that asked students in Year 13 whether they had studied abroad during their school career. Heinzmann et al. (2025) note that “in comparison to productive skills, the effect of student exchange on receptive skills, such as listening and reading is poorly studied” (p. 809). Thus, the possible effects of language stays on the two receptive skills require further attention. Although the research literature mentions various programs and different forms of language stays, the language gains from the two types, student exchanges and language courses abroad, have not been researched within one study. With regard to different target languages, in particular EFL and FFL, again there are no reliable findings from studies that compared students’ proficiency with a similar background in both languages.

In the study to be presented, we focus on Year 9 students enrolled in German high schools (academic school track) and investigate the following research question: Do language stays abroad have a significant beneficial effect on students’ foreign language skills? Under this research question, we investigate the potentially different effects of stays abroad by examining two types of stays abroad (student exchanges and language courses), two different languages (English and French), and two different language domains (reading and listening comprehension).

This study evaluates and adapts the Extramural English (EE) Scale by Sundqvist and Uztosun

(2024) and investigates its relationship with English reading comprehension (ERC) among

Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test test-takers (n = 3,787). As English is increasingly integrated

in Swedish society from an early age through informal contexts, assessing young peoples’

engagement in EE and understanding its implications for academic achievement is important.

The originally proposed eight-factor EE Scale was evaluated through confirmatory factor

analysis (CFA). Although the proposed eight-factor model showed a good fit to the data, some

items and scales had nonoptimal psychometric characteristics. Therefore, alternative

conceptualizations were explored using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) followed by CFA.

Results supported a refined five-factor model. Structural equation modeling (SEM) showed

that EE Media and EE Internalized positively predicted ERC scores, whereas EE Gaming and

EE Social Interaction were not significantly related to ERC. The EE Digital Creativity factor

emerged as a negative predictor. Overall, the adapted scale explained 19 % of the variance in

ERC scores. This study contributes to the development of a psychometrically robust measure

of EE, facilitating more consistent assessment, replication and comparison of EE research

findings across populations and contexts.

This experimental study investigates whether the reading platform, digital or paper, and the texts affect university students’ L2 reading comprehension and information retention. From the literature review, it can be seen that while the impact of the two platforms on reading comprehension has received significant attention in research, the results have been inconsistent due to the involvement of other factors, for instance, while some meta-analysis studies of reading comprehension only considered reading comprehension in the first language (e.g, Clinton, 2019), others did not take into account the language of reading comprehension which is either L1 or L2 (Kong et al., 2018; Peras et al., 2023). Furthermore, the genre, the length of the text, as well as other features connected to digital screens (e.g., the interactive mode, animated visuals) and paper (e.g., 2-D pictures) among different studies could affect the results, especially when the two conditions of digital screens and paper were not comparable. Moreover, there is a lack of studies investigating the relationship between the two platforms and learners’ information retention, especially after a period of time. They are the gaps that this study seeks to cover, including to take into account the text as a variable that can influence learners’ information retention besides the platform (paper versus digital). This study was conducted in students using English as a second language, and their English proficiency was from upper-intermediate to advanced levels. The study did not treat L1 or L2 as a variable because only L2 was used for the experiment. Students’ English levels were treated as a part of learners’ differences that can create individual random effects for the study. With the aforementioned purposes and directions, the research questions of the study are the following:

Research question 1: Are there any differences between digital and paper platforms in L2 reading comprehension and information retention?

Research question 2: Is there a correlation between characteristics of the texts and students’ L2 information retention?

Reading proficiency is essential for developing critical thinking and for pupils' academic success across all subjects. Globally, millions of pupils struggle with basic reading skills, with international assessments revealing persistent gaps in reading achievement (OECD, 2019). In China, although pupils perform strongly in assessments such as PISA and PIRLS, these tests primarily assess reading in Chinese and are administered only in economically advanced regions like Shanghai (OECD, 2020), limiting generalisability to broader populations. For English reading, which has been compulsory in Chinese primary education for over two decades, little robust evidence exists regarding pupils' proficiency or effective instructional approaches.

Following China's 2022 English Curriculum Standards, greater emphasis has been placed on reading proficiency and pupil autonomy. However, persistent challenges remain, including limited access to suitable reading materials, ineffective pedagogical approaches, and regional disparities in resources. To address these issues, substantial government investment through initiatives such as the Education Informatisation 2.0 Action Plan (Ministry of Education, 2018) has led schools to increasingly adopt computerised reading programmes. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated this digital adoption. Yet many programmes lack independent rigorous evaluation despite strong claims by developers (See & Gorard, 2020), posing risks when schools and parents adopt them uncritically.

One widely used programme is Accelerated Reader (AR), deployed in over 50,000 schools across 90 countries, including more than 800 schools in China (Renaissance, 2026). AR is a computerised supplementary reading programme providing guided reading instruction and formative feedback through comprehension quizzes. The theoretical framework underpinning AR is Vygotsky's (1978) zone of proximal development (ZPD), which posits that learning occurs most effectively when instruction is pitched slightly above a learner's current level but within reach with appropriate support. AR operationalises this theory by matching pupils to books at their individual reading levels and providing immediate feedback through quizzes, enabling pupils to progress through increasingly challenging texts. Cambridge Reading Adventures (CRA), a freely accessible alternative offering comparable functions with digital levelled reading materials, serves as a cost-effective comparison in this study.

Despite the large number of schools using AR in China, no independent research has been conducted to test its effectiveness among Chinese pupils. Most existing studies were conducted in the US and UK (Gorard et al., 2015; What Works Clearinghouse, 2016), with no rigorous evaluations in non-English speaking countries, limiting generalisability to contexts such as China where English is taught as a foreign language. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of AR and CRA on Chinese primary school pupils' English reading achievement and reading behaviour (defined as reading habits and reading attitudes). The main research questions are: (1) What impact do AR and CRA have on Chinese school pupils' reading performance? (2) What is the impact of AR and CRA on Chinese school pupils' reading behaviour (reading attitudes and habits)? (3) How much of the variation in reading performance can be explained by reading behaviours?

This research contributes to the international evidence base on computerised reading programmes in non-English speaking contexts. By comparing a commercial programme with a freely available alternative, the findings offer insights relevant to educational policymakers across Europe and beyond who face decisions about technology investments in linguistically diverse classrooms. The study has particular relevance for contexts where English is taught as a foreign language and where resource constraints necessitate cost-effective solutions.