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SOCIAL FACTORS IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Fazilat Khabibullaeva
Master’s graduate of the Faculty of TESOL at Webster University in Tashkent,
Uzbekistan
E-mail: fazilatkhabibullaeva11@gmail.com
+998911326167
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13747710
Abstract
The primary goal of this work is to provide a detailed
description of target language
learners who are learning English as a foreign language and various social factors, such as age,
gender, race, and ethnicity, which affect their language learning process.
Keywords:
Sociolinguistics, age, gender, ethnicity, vernaculars, multilingualism,
plurilingualism.
Introduction
Sociolinguistic Profile of a Group of Learners
Target group consists of 13 students. Seven of them are males, the rest are females. There
are different age groups in the group including teenagers and young adults. Ten of them are
Uzbek, two are Russian, and the one is Kazak. Their vernaculars are Uzbek, Russian, and Kazak
respectively. According to Wardhaugh and Fuller (2014), vernacular refers to “the language a
person grows up with and uses in everyday life in ordinary, commonplace, social interactions”
(p. 28). Uzbek and Kazak students have mutual intelligibility among their vernaculars as they
belong to one language family. Besides, these nations have lived together and socialized for a
long time in near geographical space throughout the history. Almost all of my students are
multilingual; according to Nuessel (2010), which refers to an individual who can use more than
two languages depending on the social situation. My students know different languages such as
Uzbek, Russian, Kazak, Turkish, and a bit of Arabic. Yet many of them are considered passive
multilingual because they cannot produce utterances in L2, for example, in Russian. The
Russian student is plurilingual since he acquired Uzbek by experiencing the Uzbek culture.
I chose the age and language background social factors as subgroups for my target
learners. Since these factors are so essential to be taken account in my instructional context, I
will be illustrating them in details below. Moreover, I covered other social factors like gender,
race and ethnicity as these factors are so important in sociolinguistics and second language
acquisition (SLA).
Age
As I have mentioned above, the group consists of two different age groups: teenagers and
adults. I will provide details in a table so that it is easy to show:
N
Age groups
Male
Female
1
Teenagers
2 (17-18)
3 (16-17)
2
Adults
5 (22-25)
3 (21-26)
Table 1
There are two different age groups in my target classroom: teenagers and adults. The
teenager group consists of two male students, aged 17 and 18, and three female students, aged
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16 and 17. There are five males who are between 22 and 25; and three females who are between
21 and 26 in the adult group (
Table 1
). Wardhaugh and Fuller (2014) included age-grading
phenomenon as an example of the influence of social organization of age groups on the language
spoken in these groups. According to this phenomenon, young people speak differently from
older people and vice versa. This can be observed in English usage among my students, their
choice of grammar, lexical items and styles can vary depending on their age.
Language Background
My target group of learners is good at learning languages. The majority of them have good
and rich language background which should be beneficial for learning English. They are well-
aware of the standardized form of their first language which enables them to learn other
languages effectively and efficiently by comparing and contrasting. In addition, some female
students acquired the Turkish language by watching movies. As they said, the exposure to
target language and the high level of intrinsic motivation helped them to improve their Turkish.
The Russian student also picked up Uzbek in his neighborhood when he played with his peers
in his childhood.
However, when it comes to the English language, almost all of them studied it by attending
tutorial classes. According to the needs analysis I conducted with the group, they all learned
English at school, lyceum or other higher education to some extent. As they reported in the
needs analysis, they forgot most of the things they learned in their mandatory education.
Another significant point about their English I should mention is that their vernaculars
considerably impact their ideolects in English, which is considered an individual way of
speaking, including sounds, words, grammar, and style, according to Wardhaugh and Fuller
(2014).
Social Factors
Gender
The topic of gender is relevant in my instructional setting and should be taken into
account while teaching as language use and gender are interlinked with each other. The way
males and females speak differ from one another in several ways. According to Mesthrie et al.
(2009), linguistic distinctions between males and females are seen as indexical of social
practices and beliefs, which means language plays a role as a social mirror to reflect social
distinctions. According to the various research findings provided by Mesthrie et al. (2009),
general idea about men’s and female’s language is that women are more likely to use prestige
language; while men tend to use more vernacular language in conversations.
Moreover, the empirical study carried out among English speakers in western context
demonstrates the distinctions in male and female speeches according to the amount of talk,
interruptions, conversational support, tentativeness, and compliments. The result showed that
males speak more than females, especially in formal and public context, and they interrupt
women more than vice versa. The rest three categories were more common among female
speakers; they tend to support their partners by short phrases, keep their speech hesitant and
tentative by using hedges, and make more compliments. These categories are applicable for my
target learners as well. From my observations, my male students try to be dominant in
conversations and debates we organize; whereas the female students tend to be cooperative
and tentative in their speeches. They try not to hurt others when they speak. In addition, my
male students are keen to learn informal language; they usually bring different jargons and
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slangs taken from songs and media. On the other hand, my female students prefer to learn
Standard English and use prestige form of English. So, relying on these arguments, gender is
important and relevant topic in my instructional context.
Race
The topic of race is not common in my country as it is in other parts of the world. It is not
relevant topic for my instructional setting. One of the reasons can be that people have not been
treated according to their race throughout the history in Uzbekistan. Also, it is not common
social factor in education and other fields. Rather, people are usually treated depending on
where they come from. People who are from regions or rural areas might be discriminated in
certain context. In education, student might also be categorized and addressed according to
their hometowns. Yet, it is not essential social factor in my teaching context.
Ethnicity
Fought (2011) included that ethnicity is strongly bonded with language. Researchers
seem to agree that ethnicity cannot be understood itself as isolated from other social factors
such as social class, age, and gender (Fought, 2011, p. 240). As ethnicity is central and connected
with other social variables in sociolinguistics, it is definitely relevant and worth considering in
my teaching context as well. Also, both of the subgroups I chose to describe my target learners
were demonstrated in details as social variables in connection with ethnicity by the same
author. The way students speak, the way they choose language forms, the way they choose style
and register, these all reflect their ethnic identity.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is clear that various social factors such as age, gender, and ethnicity play
crucial roles in shaping the language learning process of my target learners. The sociolinguistic
profile of this group highlights the diversity in their language backgrounds, their multilingual
abilities, and the impact of their vernaculars on their English learning journey. Age is a
significant factor in how they engage with the language, as younger learners tend to have
different linguistic preferences compared to adults. Gender, too, influences their
communication styles, with male and female learners showing distinct approaches to language
use. Although race is not a major factor in my context, ethnicity plays a key role, as it is
interconnected with their identity and language choices. Understanding these factors helps me
tailor my teaching methods to meet the specific needs of my learners, making the language
learning experience more effective and meaningful. By acknowledging the social dynamics
within the classroom, I can foster a learning environment that utilizes these differences to
promote better learning outcomes.
References:
1.
Fought, C. (2011). Language and ethnicity. In R. Mesthrie (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook
of sociolinguistics (pp. 238–257). Cambridge University Press.
2.
Mesthrie, R., Swann, J., Deumert, A., & Leap. W. L. (2009). Introducing sociolinguistics.
Edinburgh University Press.
3.
Nuessel, F. (2010). Succinct history and overview of U.S. sociolinguistics. In E. T. Spencer
(Ed.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 119–136). Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated.
4.
Wardhaugh, R., & Fuller, J. M. (2014). An introduction to sociolinguistics. John Wiley &
Sons, Incorporated.
