The Correlation Between Family Background And English Achievement In Junior Middle Schools

Social factors have a major impact on second language proficiency. They may help to shape learner's attitude that, in turn, influences learning outcomes. Among the various social factors that may influence L2 learning are those factors that related to learner's family background. Achievements vary from learner to learner due to the difference of family background. Even in the compulsory educational stage, there is no exception. Family factors have a typical influence upon English achievement of the students in junior middle schools, keen as they are to the adolescence. To learn about the characteristics of students' family backgrounds and their influences is helpful to English teaching in middle schools. So far many researches about the relationship between family background and L2 learning have been published abroad. However, the findings are not theoretically applicable to the L2 learning in the typical reality of the society of China. The structure of China's social classes is not compatible with that of the West. On the other hand, though in the field of education many researchers have been engaged in the study of relationship between family background and the students' development, few studies of this kind deal with L2 learning. In view of this situation and inspired by the relevant researches home and abroad, the present study tries to probe into the influence of the different types of family background on L2 learning achievements by means of an investigation on 420 students in Junior Two. The result suggests that there are two types of factors—objective and subjective factors—that may produce strong impact on the achievements of L2 learning. The objective factors include family income, parents' educational level, and occupation, the learner's time of starting to learn English, English learning tools, etc. and the subjective factors include parents' expectation, attitude to children's English achievement, communication with children and the teachers, etc. The result shows that the subjective factors have a greater impact than that of objective factors.