Investigating the Sociocultural Factors That Affect Learning a Second Language (on the Example of English)

Abstract

The present study investigates the sociocultural factors that affect second language learning. The investigation is built under five factors that are presumed to affect second language learning. The first factor is related to the effects of personality traits that are linked to second language learning, such as: self-efficiency, willingness, extraversion, and introversion, etc. The second factor pertains to motivation and second language learning. The third one is stereotyping and its effects on second language learning. The fourth is about social distance as a sociocultural factor of second language learning. And the fifth factor is about attitude. The study looks for how much effects do the factors mentioned so far have got in second language learning. A questionnaire is constructed to extract perceptions about the hypothesized factors from 62 participants. Responses are analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to get statistical descriptions about the factors that mostly affect second language learning. The analytic statistics gives the following mean values for each factor: attitude = 20.58, stereotype = 20.00, motivation = 19.84, social distance = 19.74, and personality 18.85. The study concludes with the consensus belief that attitude is a crucial factor of second language learning.