Language(s) acquisition and social capital

In essence, learning is a social process, which means the process of learning is an interactive activity between an individual and his/her surrounding environment.

Whether a language learner can learn well is influenced by his/her learning context. In an active and encouraged surrounding, the learner will be positive to learn and practice the language. Or else, it is very likely that they would keep silent. Firth and Wagner (2007), drawing on the works of Lave and Wenger (1991), regard the process of learning as an “inseparable part of ongoing activities, situated in social practice and social interaction” (ibid p.807). According to Firth and Wagner, the world is not simply found and discovered, but is constructed through the social interaction between the individual with his/her surroundings through various semiotic means,

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mainly language.

Language acquisition for students, especially home language and literacy acquisition, to a large extent, is determined by parents’ social class, both in content and in the way they speak (this is related to embodied cultural capital). Also, parents with distinct sociocultural backgrounds have different expectations and assumptions about their children's literacy learning. Moreover, parents’ values and behaviors affect their choices as well as attitude for their children's language acquisition. Therefore, language acquisition is also affected by social capital to a certain extent. Social capital can result in inequalities in student academic achievement in language learning, as discussed earlier in this chapter (cf. Anyon, 1981, 2005). The participants in this study are from different social class and have distinct social capital, their English achievements are also different. Parents with sufficient social capital have the ability to offer extra opportunities and certain resources to their children for their English learning through their powerful positions in society, while parents without social capital fail to offer necessary access to the resources for their children.

Many researchers have argued that social and cultural capital are manifested in the ways language and literacy are taught and learned (Li, 2007; Luke & Carrington, 1997; Monkman, Ronald, & Theramene., 2005) and therefore these processes and results (language and literacy) can be understood as constituting forms of linguistic capital (Luke & Carrington, 1997), which can be reproduced and exchanged for other forms of capital. Liu (2012) examined factors that motivated middle school students from different social classes to learn English in China. Based on variability of parents’

education, occupation, position and income, Liu grouped the students into 5 classes.

His findings illustrated that the participants from upper-class and upper-middle class families had higher motivation to study abroad or to further personal development, as well as stronger intrinsic motivation to learn English, compared to the ones from the lower class. The investment in English education varied significantly across distinct

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social classes. The parents from upper and upper-middle classes made more positive investment for their children’s English education than the parents from the lower-class. With the growing social inequality in China, English education is increasingly becoming a site for the reproduction of social-class differences (Butler, 2013; Zou & Zhang, 2011).

In summary, social capital offers great help to explain the disparities of English acquisition among students from different social class. Students with richer and more solid accumulation of social capital are more likely to have better academic performance than the ones with less social capital. This is illustrated by the inequalities and differences in English learning between the participants from different social classes in this study.

The concept of social capital also serves as a significant indicator of quality family environment. The relationships and interactions between adults and their children and their social networks offer valuable resources for children’s language learning at home. Social capital such as parents’ participation in children’s learning at home

“facilitates and enhances the conversion of other forms of family capital into children’s human capital” (Wong, 1998, p. 4).

Family and parents within their social networks, have emerged to be one of the most central social networks where the transmission of cultural capital takes place (Hao &

Bonstead-Bruns, 1998; Reay, 2000). At the same time, it seems that parents with poor educational background may have equally high aspirations for their children’s English learning as parents with higher education levels. However, their cultural, social and economic capital –often related to a lower education level- may restrict their involvement in language and literacy learning activities with their children at home (Purcell-Gates, 1995; Rogers, 2003; Lareau, 2000; Li, 2004). In terms of language learning, the resources in a given social network such as family may include

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discursive resources (i.e. motivational and belief discourses in language learning), social resources (i.e. competent speakers of target languages) and material resources (i.e. books and other artefacts that support the learning of languages; Palfreyman, 2006). It is crucial for the participants to access these resources in their pursuit of language competence in their various contexts. This is particularly so for English learners on the Chinese mainland as a result of the growing public enthusiasm for learning English (Gao, 2008; 2010; Wang & Gao, 2008).

Besides the aspects discussed above, in the case of this study, the effect of social capital on the transformation of English to cultural capital is discussed and illustrated.

As discussed in the definition of cultural capital, whether a skill, for instance, English acquisition, can be regarded as cultural capital, the vital factor is whether it can offer the learner a high/er social status. This process is closely related to one’s social surroundings and communities. That is, it is influenced by a learner’s social capital to main extent.