A Study On The Relationship Between Language Tests And Family Background From Socialcultural Perspective

Bourdieu(2002)points out that there is a close relation between students' test performance and their family background.To be specific,family is the beginning of one's capital accumulation,and the inequality of capital possession will eventually lead to the inequality in the opportunities of accessing higher education.This study takes TOEFL and IELTS as an example to explore the relationship and mechanism between language tests and family background.Based on Bourdieu's cultural reproduction theory,it attempts to testify the correlation between language test performance and family background with both quantitative and qualitative methods.Besides,the case study of three students' testing experiences is conducted to probe into their correlation mechanism.The results of the study are that: 1)There is a positive correlation between TOEFL/IELTS scores and parents' occupation and education level,while the factor of family income bears no correlation.2)Students' TOEFL/IELTS performance is influenced by family economic capital,family cultural capital and family social capital,which are in the form of test fees,parents' education expectations,family cultural atmosphere and parents' social networks though students' testing experiences.Among them,the influence of economic capital are dual.3)The ways that family economic capital,family social capital and family cultural capital influence test performance are different.The former two change into corresponding cultural capital while the later plays a direct role by transmission.