CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL CONCEPT
2.1 Previous Related Research
It is believed that social factors give significant influences on the acquisition of second language. Law at.al (2010) found that the children’s school entry performance is clearly associated with socio-economic status – the greater the disadvantage the lower the child’s score. Furthermore, the child’s communication environment and language are important influencing factors on the child’s school entry scores, the more advanced the child’s language and the more supportive the child’s communication environment, the higher the child’s school entry score. The research was quantitative-qualitative.
‘Focus’ clinics at which a range of direct assessments have taken place. Data had also been collected from the children’s schools and also supplied by the Department for Education. The project focuses on the early questionnaires completed by mothers during the child’s pre-school years and data collected from children’s schools at school entry. 4941(51.3%) were boys and 4688 (48.6%) were girls. The research was longitudinal, so the data taken was then more accurate.
The same finding came from Butler (2013). He found that socioeconomic is highly correlated with language learning. He studied 572 elementary level students in China. The data were taken through survey. It was a short term research. To analyze the data, he used ANOVA. In his paper, by examining parental SES and children’s EFL learning, he suggested at least the following three SES-related factors that seem to be closely related to learners’ second/foreign language learning: (1) resource availability and/or access to learn the target language (TL); (2) beliefs about the success of learning the TL; and (3) the role or status of the TL in a given context.
interaction effects of learning activities at ages three and five and socioeconomic factors (i.e. family income, maternal educational qualifications)
The findings consistently shows that, irrespective of socio-economic status, parents engaged with various learning activities (except reading) roughly equally. The socio-economic factors examined in this study, i.e., family income and maternal educational qualifications, were found to have a stronger effect on children’s language/literacy than on social-emotional competence. Socio-economic disadvantage, lack of maternal educational qualifications in particular, remained powerful in influencing competencies in children aged three and at the start of primary school.
Additionally the influence of gender, age and social class was also researched by Yen Ju Hou in 2015 in the journal titled An Investigation of Social Factors in Children’s Foreign Language Learning—A Case Study of
Taiwanese Elementary School Students.
learning motivation/attitude. The data were processed by SPSS 17.0 for descriptive, correlation, ANOVA, and predictive analyses.
In the study, social class was found to be positively predictive of students’ motivation, including instrumental orientation and integrative orientation, as well as motivational intensity. Students from urban areas had higher socio-economic status. The findings revealed that they not only had more chances to attend extra English programs out of campus but also were more motivated to learn English than students from rural areas. On the contrary, students from rural areas were with lower socio-economic status. However, they were very potential. They had higher means in attitude and motivational intensity toward English learning, though the differences did not reach significant levels.
But this research did not answer its own major question. The research did not touch how age, gender, and social class. It only discussed motivation and attitude, without stating the kind of motivation (external motivation and internal motivation). So, the content did not fit the title.
Contrary, Onovughe (2014) discussed the social factors that influence the achievement of children in learning English very well. In his journal Sociolinguistics Inputs and English as Second Language Classrooms,
in Akure Local Government of Ondo State. The sample was two hundred and forty (240) students in senior secondary school classes selected from six secondary schools randomly. The senior secondary school class was chosen because the students have internalized the rudiments of the English Language to a large extent (Onovughe, 2014:160). Questionnaires were used for data collection. It deals with the demographic and socio-linguistic background of the students. He employed One way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), t-test and Pearson Product Moment correlation statistics for the data analysis.
Onovughe (2014) found that parents’ occupations have input on students’ use of English. What this simply denotes is that parents who are educated and whose socio-economic status can be classified as middle or high are most probably speaking English at home and since the society is a microcosm of the large world, the effect will be conspicuously seen in their children performance.
Onovughe (2014) also found that gender and students’ use of English has no strong relationship. The assumption was because; both female and male learners of English have equal chances of learning and acquiring tools of language. The most important one is that both male and female students should strive and be encouraged to use English language at home and in classrooms.
this result could be credited to the fact that these students are no longer so young.
In his paper, Onovughe (2014) revealed that religion has nothing to do with language acquisition and learning although religion is a major factor in education. Religion is a tool of peace, stability and security. It should never decide how and what language learners learn especially the English language.
2.2Language Acquisition Theory
In order to fully appreciate the influence of sociolinguistics on second language learning and second language use, it is important to establish common ground in the field of second language acquisition as a point of departure (Geeselin and Long, 2014). Two different senses of SLA need to be distinguished. The term is frequently used to refer to the learning of another language (second, third, foreign) after acquisition one’s mother tongue is complete. That is, labels the object of enquiry. The term is also used to refer to the study of how people learn a secon language (Ellis, 2005). In this research, SLA will be labelled as the object of inquiry and the field of study.
entails, and the degree to which this knowledge is influenced by factors external to the second language grammar. Despite this apparent discord, there are several issues that arise across theories, and these will need to be considered before exploring theories that address social factors.
2.2.1Behaviorism
In the middle of the last century, it was believed that the environment was primarily responsible for human behavior. This theory, called Behaviorism, explained that learning (and all other behavior) took place as a child responded to stimuli in the environment. When children responded appropriately to such stimuli, positive associations were made and habits were formed.
Watson wanted to find out if classical conditioning could be applied to children’s behavior. In a historic experiment, he taught Albert, an 11-month-old infant, to fear a neutral stimulus—a soft white rat—by presenting it several times with a sharp, loud sound, which naturally scared the baby. Little Albert, who at first had reached out eagerly to touch the furry rat, began to cry and turn his head away when he caught sight of it. In fact, Albert’s fear was so intense that researchers eventually challenged the ethics of studies like this one. Consistent with Locke’s tabula rasa, Watson concluded that environment is the supreme force in development. Adults can mold children’s behavior, he thought, by carefully controlling stimulus– response associations. And development is a continuous process, consisting of a gradual increase in the number and strength of these associations.
2.2.2 Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory
Piaget (1971) did not believe that children’s learning depends on reinforcers, such as rewards from adults. According to his cognitive-developmental theory, children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world.
Piaget’s view of development was greatly influenced by his early training in biology. Central to his theory is the biological concept of adaptation (Piaget in Siregar, 2013). Just as structures of the body are adapted to fit with the environment, so structures of the mind develop to better fit with, or represent, the external world. In infancy and early childhood,
Piaget (in Siregar, 2013) claimed, children’s understanding is different from adults’. For example, he believed that young babies do not realize that an object hidden from view—a favorite toy or even the mother— continues to exist. He also concluded that preschoolers’ thinking is full of faulty logic. For example, children younger than age 7 commonly say that the amount of a liquid changes when it is poured into a differently shaped container.
In Piaget’s theory, as the brain develops and children’s experiences expand, they move through four broad stages, each characterized by qualitatively distinct ways of thinking.
Table below provides a brief description of Piaget’s stages. In the sensorimotor stage, cognitive development begins with the baby’s use of the senses and movements to explore the world. These action patterns evolve into the symbolic but illogical thinking of the preschooler in the preoperational stage.
Table 2.1
2.2.3 Socio-cultural Perspective
The socio-cultural perspective attempts to reconcile features of second language learning that happen outside the mind with features inside the mind. This approach was made renowned by J. Piaget (1955) and L.S. Vygotsky (1962), who have competing general theories of cognitive development based on the ideas of Constructionism, or the philosophy whereby all human knowledge is constructed by the learner. Vygotsky’s approach is regarded as a socioconstructivism since he believed that conscious social interaction is the key to individual cognitive development, whereas Piaget’s ideas are regarded more as cognitive constructivism since he believed the individual learns by way of developmental stages. They both believe, however, that language and language learning are mediated through social and cultural factors.
For Piaget, the processes of ‘Assimilation and Accommodation’, as complimentary (Atherton in Thorton, 2009). Therefore, people learn language by developmentally increasing their schemata about language.
The confluence of Vygotsky and Piaget’s constructionist ideas has led to the present day preference of communicative language learning or approaches to language learning through conversational interaction. There are many SLA approaches that has have been developed from interaction in conversation. Swain’s Output theory (Swain in Thorton, 2009), for example, suggests learners realize what abilities they are missing in conversation when they notice differences in conversation with others. This helps them construct or reconstruct their own language production. This theory advocates that speakers can notice the differences between themselves and another speaker in conversation, which may also be used to develop rules about language discourse and how these rules apply to other linguistic situations.
2.3 Social Approaches to Second Language Acquisition
sociolinguistics is the unifying focus on social aspects of language. In other words, sociolinguistics views language use as a social activity that allows speakers to relate to one another in a variety of ways and accomplish a range of communicative tasks (Geeslen and Long 2014: 43). Some theories on SLA research are:
2.3.1 Sociocultural Theory
Sociocultural Theory is one of the best-known social approaches to language learning. Social theory is the manner in which cognitive processes and language are viewed. Under this framework, human thinking or mental activity is seen as having an external or social origin, and language is viewed as a tool that is used for social purposes.
In doing reserch, researchers often present learners with a task that is just beyond their current level of language development so that their behavior during the problem-solving activity can be directly observed.
2.3.2 The Identity Approach
The Identity Approach to second language acquisition adopts a distinct perspective on the relationship between the learner and the external, social environment. Under this approach learners are connected to the learning context via social identity(ies). Norton (in Geeslin and Long, 2014), defines identity as : how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future. Two principles central to this approach are: (1) the social identity of language learners is complex and dynamic, and (2) socially structured relations of power affect learners’ opportunities to interact with speakers of the target language community.
2.3.3 Language Socialization Approach
The Language Socialization Approach to second language acquisition is centrally concerned with learners’ development of linguistic, cultural, and communicative competence (Duff & Talmy, 2011). From the outset it is noted that acquiring knowledge of the second language under this approach is seen from a much broader perspective, in that acquisition involves knowledge of culture such as “stances of morality or respect” as well as social knowledge, or “how certain types of language practices produce and reflect social stratification, hierarchy, and status marking” (Duff & Talmy, 2011). Other social aspects that are examined by researchers adopting a Language Socialization Approach include ideologies, epistemologies, identity, and affect. Thus, social aspects related to both the learner and the learning context are investigated within this approach.
2.4 Conceptual Framework
Figure 2.1 Conceptual Framework
Behaviorism Theory
Parents’ Economic Level
Parents’ Education Level
Learning
Environment
Parents’ Occupation Social Factors on Children’s Achievement
Of Acquiring L2
Correlation between Social Factors and L2
