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The influence of learners' socioeconomic status on learning English as a foreign language
This report aims to argue for an urgent need of more empirical research from the sociocultural view towards EFL learning, mainly from the social class construct, on the impact of students’ SES on their EFL performance and competence in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. To accomplish this objective, the paper is organised into three sections. The first section reviews the benefits of EFL learning and how these relate to the socioeconomic advancement in a variety of sociocultural contexts. The second section reviews exploratory research findings to discuss who the real beneficiaries of EFL learning are as well as how students’ EFL performance, perceptions, and competence may be moderated by their SES characteristics. The final section of the report provides a brief critical reflection as well as suggestions for further research about the issues covered in this report. In general, this literature review seeks to contribute to our understanding of the ways learners’ EFL learning can be affected by their SES characteristics. Thus, the report engages in the ongoing debate about how learners’ success or failure in EFL may be bounded to questions of social structures.
Learning English
English as a foreign language