The impacts of students’ socio-economic background on English language learning: a study of challenges in rural Bangladesh

Abstract

This qualitative study explored how the socioeconomic background of secondary level students influence their English language learning and the perceptions of students, guardians, and teachers regarding the challenges and opportunities related to English language learning in the rural settings. Fifteen secondary school students, three guardians and three teachers were chosen for semi-structured interviews to collect data for this study. The collected data from the participants were analyzed through coding, categorizing and finding prominent themes. The major findings of this study includes the influences of socio-economic background in English language learning which are availability of resources, access to private tutoring, scaffolding by parents, self-confidence and anxiety and proper food supply. It also includes the student’s, teacher’s, guardian’s perception on the challenges and opportunities of English language learning. The findings of this study can be beneficial for the guardians, educators and policymakers to reform the English language teaching procedure of the rural secondary level students in a more effective way irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds. Overall, this study is applicable to all the ESOL contexts where the non-native English language learners have to face different problems because of their lower socio-economic backgrounds.