Home Background and Learning English

Ravinarayan Chakrakodi
Lecturer, Regional Institute of
English South India
Jnanabharathi Campus
Bangalore -560056
ravirie@gmail.com

Children’s success in learning is, to a great extent, dependent on what they bring to
school from the family context. There are close connections between school education
and family socioeconomic status, parent child interactions as well as home learning
environments. The home environments created by parents play a major role in children’s
development of language skills.

In order to find out the English language skills of students attending government schools,
who are the most disadvantaged in our society, we at the Regional Institute of English
South India, Bangalore, in association with the English and Foreign Languages
University, Hyderabad, conducted a survey using the questionnaire method. We, first,
looked at the family background and the attitude of parents towards English. The survey
was conducted among a sample of 100 parents: 69 from villages, 4 from small towns
and another 27 from cities.

Ability to Use English

The data about their ability to use English reveals that almost 60% of the parents can
hardly speak, read and write in English. Further, as many as 71% parents do not read
books in English, 80% of them do not read newspapers and a majority of them (82%) do
not read magazines in English. When asked if they used English at home or in the
neighbourhood or at social gatherings or at their child’s school, 70% of them responded
negatively.

A similar survey was conducted with the children of these parents who were studying in
classes V, VI and VII in government schools located across the state. The study showed
similar results for children indicating that the majority of them do not read newspapers or
magazines or watch television programmes or listen to any text in English. Moreover,

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many of them do not use English at home or in the neighbourhood or with the peer
group at school.

Attitude to English

It is obvious from the data above that children hardly get any exposure to oral and
literacy experiences in English in the home environment. However, the attitudes of the
parents and the children towards English are highly positive. The majority of the parents
see English as representing the key to economic development and employment
opportunities. They also feel that English should be a compulsory language at the
primary level. Interestingly, 75% of the parents disagreed with the statement ‘English
should be the medium of instruction at the primary level’.

It is also interesting to note that 52.6% of the children find learning Hindi difficult and
42.9% of them find learning English difficult. However, the majority of them (82.7%)
responded that they did not want to learn Hindi more; instead (79.6%) wanted to learn
English more as illustrated in table 1.2. They seem to recognise better future prospects
for learning English more.

Major Findings

The major findings of the survey are:

• Children studying in government schools have no access to oral and literacy

activities in English at home.

• They have hardly any access to resources/learning materials in English.

• They have strong motivation for learning English.

• Parents want their children to study English as a compulsory language but not as
a medium of instruction.

We should understand that family background factors such as practice of home-based

literacy activities and parent-child interactions contribute significantly to children’s
academic performance. It is important to note that children from lower socio-economic

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backgrounds are being exposed to impoverished language compared with their middle-
class counterparts.

Implications

Many research studies carried out in other countries where English is taught as a
second language have found that there is a greater correlation between second
language aptitude and social class and parental education. These studies reveal that
children from more privileged classes and with higher parental education are more likely
to develop greater aptitude for language learning. Hence, second language acquisition
(SLA) is not entirely based on inherent capabilities. Social and societal backgrounds,
family background specifically, have a great impact on SLA.

As children from lower socioeconomic class get few opportunities to engage in social
interaction and literacy experiences at home, they need more exposure to English in the
school and the classroom. We also need to provide them more access to English
learning resources such as children’s stories, newspapers, magazines, wall posters,
cassettes and computers. It is unfortunate that early language experiences for these
children at home, in the preschool period and even in the school are very limited in our
educational context.