awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.4, 2014A Socio-linguistic Study to Investigate the Factors AffectingKhanabroad or to be the part of English speaking community of the country (Pathan et al 2010,Rehman et al, 2014)Socio-economic status (SES) is one of the factors which affect achievement in SLL. Social statusor SES is not given much attention in many research studies conducted in this context. Thepresent study is conducted in Pakistan where we can easily see class difference in our society.The economic status plays an important role in almost every field of life. So we cannot ignorerole of SES in SLL in Pakistani context. “There is evidence of a relationship between social classand L2 achievement- children from middle-class homes regularly outperform those from lowerand working class homes. There are also class related differences in learner‟s attitudes” Ghani(2003:01).Pakistani society consists of three social classes namely lower, middle and upper class. Upperclass has advantage in every aspect of life. They enjoy all the luxuries including education. Theysend their children to prestigious English medium schools. They have more exposure to SL(English) as they travel to English speaking countries. Upper class parents speak English at homeand at work place. So, the children from upper class have more opportunities to communicate intarget language outside the classroom setting. On the other hand, children from lower classcannot avail such opportunities and therefore, have less exposure to the target language. Thelower class parents cannot send their children to English medium schools and they arethemselves semi-literate or illiterate. So, these children tend to achieve proficiency in Englishlanguage, which shows strong association between SES and SL. The results obtained by theresearch study conducted by Ghani (2003) also show positive relationship between SES, mediumof instruction and English proficiency.Research Design and MethodologyData for the present study was collected only from The Islamia University of Bahawalpur,Punjab, Pakistan. The participants of the study were 120 boys and girls students of previous andfinal years of Master program. Forty participants were selected randomly from the Department ofEnglish, Management Sciences, and Political ScienceMoreover, in order to investigate the relationship between oral proficiency and the socioeconomicstatus of the learners, same participants were also divided on the basis of three socialclasses. The following table explains the distribution of participants on the basis of datacollection:Table 1. Distribution of Participants on the basis of SESSocial ClassNo. of ParticipantsLower Class (monthly income up to 15000 Rupees) 32Middle Class (monthly income up to 50000 Rupees) 79Upper Class (monthly income above 50000 Rupees) 09Total Participants 120The questionnaire used for the data collection was based on Attitude Motivation Battery inGardner (1985) was used. The items were in Likert form with some modifications to suit thelevel and requirement of the research study. The questionnaire was administrated under thesupervision of the researcher. The students were given necessary instructions to fill thequestionnaire. Confidentiality regarding the information i.e. name, father‟s profession etc. wasArab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org416