The present study stems not only from the concern for the significance of family socio-economic status in learners’ second language acquisition, particularly among vocational high school students, but also from the intention to reveal the relative weight of learning motivation and use of metacognitive strategies in explaining vocabulary achievement, on top of family socio-economic status. Therefore, the following discussion proceeds from explanations of the results to theory-based pedagogical suggestions for practitioners. The explanations mainly include the reasons (1) why the relationship between SES and each of the three variables – motivation, strategy use, and vocabulary learning – is insignificant in the present study as well as (2) why motivation (specifically motivation intensity) overweighs strategy use in the accountability of vocabulary achievement. Lastly, suggestions are made regarding how teachers can elevate learners’ motivational intensity to learn English.
The Effect of Socio-economic Status
MANOVA and one-way ANOVA were performed to answer the first research question: Do students of different SES differ in their learning motivation (including intensity and types), use of metacognitive strategies, and vocabulary achievement?
The findings were negative regarding all the three pairs of relation. The following sections provide explanations for the results.
Socio-economic Status and Motivation
MANOVA results demonstrated that students of different SES did not differ significantly in either motivational intensity or types of motivation (F = 0.691, p
=.733). In fact, the descriptive statistics showed little difference in the means of
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motivational intensity toward learning English among three SES groups (low SES = 25.54, mid SES = 26.05, high SES = 26.21), in spite of the slight propensity that the higher SES one had, the higher intensity one held. Neither did the three groups feature different types of learning motivation. Regarding intrinsic motivation, the mean of low-SES group was 25.99, mid-SES group 27.77, and high-SES group 26.88; the respective mean of the three groups concerning extrinsic motivation was 39.33, 40.95, and 40.96; amotivation: 5.15, 4.66, and 4.68; requirement motivation: 11.37, 10.26, and 10.64. The between-group differences were so scarce that SES did not make a difference in the type of motivation learners possessed toward learning English.
The finding that students of different SES did not hold significantly different degree of motivational intensity implies that SES is not related to how much learners are motivated to learn English and that it is a fallacy that students from high-SES family must have high motivation toward learning English whereas low-SES students are doomed to be less motivated. The reason underlying this fact might be that between SES and motivation intensity lies other important factors, which are not necessarily proportional to socio-economic status. According to Karaarslan and Sungur (2011) and Tocco (1971), though in the subjects of science and mathematics respectively, it is parents’ attitude toward a certain subject and the cognitively stimulating environment they create accordingly that are directly connected with students’ attitude toward that subject, instead of parents’ educational level and annual income. Through a 150-subject quantitative study making use of questionnaires, Tocco has confirmed that students’ attitude toward mathematics is directly correlated with their reports of perceived parental attitude toward that subject. Moreover, it has also been validated that parents’ attitude toward the learning of mathematics is not related to their socio-economic status. In other words, SES is not necessarily predictive of parental involvement in the process of academic learning. Instead,
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perceived parental attitude toward learning plays a significant role in learners’
attitudes and motivation. Such parental attitudes can be perceived by children through observing whether parents carry out a pleasant conversation when the subject is discussed, whether parents express joy or satisfaction when learning their children have made progress on the subject, and whether parents have tried to help children with the subject. Obviously, these encouraging moves are not necessarily proportional to socio-economic status (Tocco, 1971).
Likewise, a student born in a low-SES family does not necessarily receive less parental involvement in his/her process of learning English, and neither does one from high-SES family receive more. It is very likely that the 224 participants in the present study received a similar amount of parental care and experience a similar parental interaction on English learning, regardless of socio-economic status. That is why the three different groups of SES yielded similar strength of English learning motivation.
It is also possible that some low-SES parents might attend more to their children’s learning process than their high-SES counterparts did out of compensation and dignity so as not to repeat in their children the learning helplessness they had experienced in early life. On the other hand, although expected to be fully aware of their role in affecting children’s attitudes toward learning, some parents of high SES might fail to carry out parental actions consistent with what they believed due to too tight a work schedule or coddling children too much to right their errors, for instance. These speculations require further investigation in the future research in order to verify if the factor directly related to learners’ intensity of learning English lies in parental involvement in learners’ learning process, which has been recognized as unrelated to socio-economic status (Tocco, 1971).
On the other hand, aside from the possible mediation between SES and learning motivation through parental involvement (Tocco, 1971), a meticulous look into the
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constitution of SES might also contribute to an understanding of the current finding that SES is unrelated to learners’ motivational intensity toward English learning.
While a host of researchers have agreed on the dichotomous measurement of socio-economic status – both parents’ occupation and educational level (Hallingshead, 1957), some have revealed concern for such a simplified measure, unveiling different degrees of influence of these two factors on children’s learning achievement (Karaarslan & Sungur, 2011). This might partly explain the result that SES is not related to motivation. In their examination of the relationship between socio-economic status and self-efficacy with respect to elementary students’ science and technology learning, Karaarslan and Sungur (2011) found that among several indicators of socio-economic status (including parents’ educational level, parents’
employment status, number of siblings, number of reading materials, presence of a separate study room and a computer with internet connection, frequency of buying a daily newspaper, and income), number of reading materials at home (r = 0.49), frequency of buying a newspaper (r = 0.43), and income (r = 0.60) were positively correlated with learners’ self-efficacy level while the other indicators were negatively related to learners’ belief in their own capability to successfully perform a certain task and focus on other people’s judgment about their ability. This finding entails that for one thing, students provided with cognitively-stimulated environment are more self-efficacious in the learning of science and technology than students without. For another, parents’ income is significantly more positively correlated with learners’
perspective of their own learning than parents’ educational level is. Such precedence is more distinct than the distance manipulated in Hallinghead’s (1957) scale:
occupation is 7/4 times of education. This inconsistency in operationalizing socio-economic status in research fields arouses a wonder if the result of the present study would be different once parents’ educational level and occupation were
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separated or assigned different weights in measuring socio-economic status.
In addition to motivational intensity, students of different SES were not found to possess different types of motivation, either. MANOVA results revealed that SES was unrelated to the reason why the students were motivated. The finding entails that whether students are raised by intellectual, skilled in profession, and wealthy parents barely has any connection with reasons driving them to approach English. Although the reason underlying the inclination of motive types remains unclear, one thing has been proved through the present study: parents’ occupation and educational level has no significant effect on learners’ reason to learn English.
Socio-economic Status and Metacognitive Vocabulary Strategy
In the similar manner, the ANOVA result uncovered an insignificant relationship between SES and use of metacognitive vocabulary strategies (F = .88, p = .416) and suggested that students of different SES did not use metacognitive strategies at different frequency. This disagrees with previous literature that claims socio-economic status is conducive to children’s cognitive development and readiness for school through early life social interaction and cognitively-stimulated environment (Akyol et al., 2010; DEECD, 2006; Stipek, 2001; Stipek & Ryan, 1997). The finding hereby implies two points: firstly, even though the effect of SES on cognitive competence has been suggested in field of social and science education, it does not apply to second language acquisition, particularly the learning of lexis among vocational high school students; secondly, the aforementioned contention founded among young learners, mostly from preschool to elementary school students, might not be generalizable to the participants in the present study, who not only have started formal schooling for at least 9 years but have received English instruction for 7 years.
They might thus have developed their own thinking patterns and learning behaviors through instruction and socialization. In other words, to these experienced learners,
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the link between the ability to regulate their own learning and their parents’
socio-economic status is weak.
Some inferences concerning the effect of SES on learners’ use of metacognitive English vocabulary learning strategies can be drawn. As far as 1st-graders in vocational high school are concerned, the frequency at which students initiate moves to exploit resources in order to expand their English lexical knowledge (self-initiation), judge if newly-encountered words are worth looking up and being memorized (selective attention), and make use of resources to help themselves consolidate the memory of learnt words (consolidation) is unrelated to parents’
educational level and occupation. Such a weak connection might be underlain by two reasons. First of all, as proposed in the preceding section, the impact of parental involvement may surpass that of socio-economic condition on learners’ attitude toward their own learning. Therefore, a child with adequate parental care, which is not necessarily proportional to SES, is more likely to develop proper self-regulation awareness and exert metacognitive learning strategies more frequently in acquiring English lexis. Secondly, since the participants have been exposed to English learning for at least 7 years, chances are that they have come to be acquainted with how to plan, monitor, and evaluate their English vocabulary learning through teachers’ instruction or their own past learning experiences, regardless of family background.
Socio-economic Status and Vocabulary Achievement
Similarly, the one-way ANOVA result demonstrated that the between-group difference in terms of vocabulary achievement was not significant (F = .068, p = .934), indicating students of different SES did not differ in the width of English vocabulary.
Considering the previous two outcomes, where SES had no significant relation with learners’ motivation, regardless of intensity or types, and use of metacognitive strategies, this finding seems reasonable and predictable. Nevertheless, it seems to
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reject the positive relation between SES and English proficiency maintained in a number of Taiwanese studies (Chen, 2004; Hsu, 2009; Lee, 2009; Nieh, 2004). The following discusses possible explanations for such an insignificant connection.
To begin with, the effect of SES on academic learning outcome may have been reduced by school practices. A host of researchers have contended that the academic inequalities between high- and low-SES students, termed as socio-economic gap (SES gap), can be effectively reduced by school practices. Alexander, Entwisle, and Olson (2001) and Downey, von Hippel, and Broh (2004) have discovered that SES gap has been widened up during summer vacation throughout elementary years while the growth of such a gap has been alleviated during school year, confirming that school instruction can reduce the academic inequality caused by socio-economic factors across students. A qualitative study in Taiwan (Chen, 2009) echoes such a finding.
Chen has revealed that teachers of low-SES students played an important role to mitigate their lack of social and economic resources through devoting more effort to building both a healthy and dynamic student-teacher and parent-teacher relationship that can enhance both sides’ understanding of students’ learning process and make it easier to provide help when necessary. Such a trusty role of teachers did greatly boost learners’ self-expectation and sense of responsibility for their learning.
This line of research regards school as a compensatory role, alleviating SES’
effect on learners’ achievement. Based on this contention, it is plausible that after years of school instruction on how to acquire and memorize English vocabulary, the participants of the present study have gained similar amount of lexis, in spite of the diverse socio-economic status.
Another support for the current finding also lies in Chen’s (2009) qualitative study, which specifically unveiled the positive relation between parental-children interaction and low-SES students’ academic achievement. Common family impacts
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found in these students include frequent conversation between parents and children on school affairs as well as learning process and satisfaction of children’s basic survival need so as to let them concentrate on learning without distraction. Furthermore, Chen (2009) has established the significance of maternal care in these low-SES children’s success, in that mothers’ supportive attitude and positive encouragement were observed among all of the three subjects, including sincere social and material reinforcement perceived by children to maintain learning motivation. In addition, mothers’ high expectation of moral discipline was found to enhance the subjects’
self-efficacy and regulation. In other words, though born in a socially and economically disadvantaged family, students may reach academic success under the guidance of a responsible and caring mother.
The aforementioned studies offer some plausible explanations for why socio-economic status is unrelated to the participants’ vocabulary achievement in the present study. Apparently, between socio-economic status and vocabulary achievement lie significant mediators, such as parental involvement (particularly mothers’ support) and school intervention, especially for students of age 16, who have received formal schooling for more than 9 years.
To sum up, the insignificant relation between SES and English learning motivation, use of metacognitive strategy, and vocabulary achievement indicates that students of different SES do not differ in motivational intensity and types, use of metacognitive strategy, and vocabulary achievement. This result is supported by the line of research which has suggested that it is parental involvement that contributes more to learners’ development of learning motivation and long-term academic achievement, rather than parents’ socio-economic status, which is not necessarily proportional to the degree they engage in children’ learning process. In addition, the influence of SES on metacognitive strategy use can hardly be detected in students
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who have experienced nearly a decade of formal schooling in that the long-term exposure to instruction may have overriden the impact of family background on the use of metacognitive learning strategies. In other words, school practices might have compensated for the possible impoverished social and cognitive resource low-SES students suffer from, yielding an insignificant connection between SES and self-regulation on vocabulary learning as well as learning outcome.
Explanatory Factors in Vocabulary Achievement
Hierarchical regression was performed in response to the second research question: What is the explanatory power of motivation and metacognitive learning strategies for vocabulary achievement with SES controlled? Given the fact that the relation between SES and vocabulary achievement was weak, as the previous result indicated, it is not surprising that little accountability of SES for vocabulary achievement was found in the regression (Beta = -0.001, p = 0.989). In contrast, the addition of motivation and strategy accounts for as much as 28.8 percent of vocabulary achievement, which has been validated as a significant rise of accountability (R2 = .288, R2 Change = 28.8%, p = .000). This finding is discussed in detail in the following two sections: (1) metacognitive strategies and vocabulary achievement and (2) motivation and vocabulary achievement.
Metacognitive Strategies and Vocabulary Achievement
Although motivation and metacognition simultaneously explained English vocabulary achievement to a significant level, the significant contribution did not stem from the use of metacognitive strategies. In fact, learners’ use of metacognitive strategies did not explain their vocabulary learning outcome to a statistically significant extent (Beta = 0.139, p = 0.172). This result indicates that among first-grade vocational high school students, the higher frequency of using metacognitive strategies to acquire vocabulary does not necessarily bring about a
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larger English vocabulary bank.
This result seems to be counter-evidence of Gu and Johnson’s study (1996) reviewed in chapter two, where self-initiation and selective attention strategies were found to significantly predict general English proficiency, in the form of College English Test, among Chinese learners. However, the difference in task demands between theirs and the present study’s is evidently large, making the two cases incomparable. While the present study focuses on the more direct outcome of exploiting vocabulary learning strategies – vocabulary size, Gu and Johnson made use of the overall English proficiency as a dependent variable. Because of such a difference, it is implausible to claim that the present finding rejects Gu and Johnson’s suggestion. Rather, in light of the present weak explanatory power of metacognitive strategies for vocabulary achievement, further investigations with diverse vocabulary task designs are required so as to confirm the role of metacognition in second language vocabulary acquisition.
On the other hand, trivial as it appears, the explanatory power of metacognitive strategies for vocabulary achievement still exceeds that of socio-economic status. As the standardized regression coefficients demonstrated, socio-economic status rarely bore any accountability (Beta = -0.001, p = 0.989) whereas metacognitive strategy held higher, though still insignificant, explanatory power for vocabulary size (Beta = 0.139, p = 0.172). This finding entails that in the domain of vocabulary acquisition, the cognitive learner factor, which may be cultivated through learning experiences or instruction, weighs more than the uncontrollable inborn condition for learners, such as parents’ socio-economic background. The finding is inspiring to students from disadvantaged family as well as practitioners in that it shows the possibility to enlarge students’ vocabulary bank as they become familiar with and make frequent use of metacognitive strategies, which, unlike SES, is changeable.
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Motivation and Vocabulary Achievement
Even more encouraging is the finding that motivation was a significant predictor of vocabulary achievement. In fact, among all the independent variables, motivational intensity was the one and only variable that is accountable for English lexical learning (Beta = .309, p = 0.012). In other words, the 28.8% increase in explanatory power after the addition of motivational intensity, four motivation types, and metacognitive strategies with the effect of SES removed is mainly ascribed to motivational intensity.
This positive relation reaffirms the causal link proposed in Gardner’s socio-educational model (Bernaus & Gardner, 2008; Gardner, 1985): the higher motivation intensity is possessed, the higher achievement will be reached.
In contrast, none of the four types of motives in inquiry – intrinsic motivation (Beta = -0.033, p = 0.781), extrinsic motivation (Beta = 0.166, p = 0.058), amotivation (Beta = -0.104, p = 0.210), and requirement motivation (Beta = 0.081, p
= 0.338) – was found to significantly explain English lexical learning. Apparently, as far as this sample of vocational high school students are concerned, reasons driving them to learn English cannot explain their different width of English vocabulary knowledge. This result surprisingly differed from Peng’s (2001) study, where the researcher looked into senior high school students’ English learning motive types and correlated them with achievement. Peng’s result suggested a strong positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and achievement and a negative one
= 0.338) – was found to significantly explain English lexical learning. Apparently, as far as this sample of vocational high school students are concerned, reasons driving them to learn English cannot explain their different width of English vocabulary knowledge. This result surprisingly differed from Peng’s (2001) study, where the researcher looked into senior high school students’ English learning motive types and correlated them with achievement. Peng’s result suggested a strong positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and achievement and a negative one