The Role of Cultural Capital in Learning of English in a Government School in Hyderabad District

Abstract

This study aims to demonstrate the influence of parents’ attitudes on students’ English language proficiency in Government Secondary School Halepota (GSSH), district Hyderabad rural, Sindh, Pakistan. The study uses Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital as a theoretical framework to this study, analyzes the data following this theory, and applies the theory. Moreover, this is a qualitative study and uses Interpretivist paradigm to understand the social reality. This research pursues to construct the connection between family background, especially the attitudes of parents which are influenced by family structure, socioeconomic position of the parents, and parents’ education level and the English proficiency of the students. The research investigates these elements and discovers that parents’ attitudinal support with regards to emotional and material support is lacking on the basis of micro factors, such as parents’ interest, care, seriousness, and importance of English. Moreover, this study also finds that some of the parents emotionally and economically support their students. However, the main concern is that most of the parents are not literate in English language; therefore they are not able to linguistically support their children.

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/88-03

Publication date:May 31^st 2022