Impact of studying abroad on language skill development: Regression discontinuity evidence from Japanese university students

The importance of English communication skills has increased with globalization, and governments in various countries have encouraged students to go abroad. However, the causal impact of studying abroad has rarely been investigated, particularly in non-European countries. This study adopted a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD) for the flagship scholarship program of the Japanese government for youth studying abroad. We found that scholarships significantly increased the probability of studying abroad by 77–80 points. We measured English proficiency using a multiple-choice test we originally developed and found that studying abroad increased English proficiency by 33–38% (or 1.15–1.35 standard deviation). We also found that studying abroad significantly improved their international posture and perceived communication competence in a foreign language, which are the two traits found to be important determinants of future development in language ability in applied linguistics literature.