Student Capital in L2 Learning Investment Among Undergraduate StudentsAbstract:
This paper reports on a quantitative study about students’ investment in additional language (L2) learning at a Colombian public university. Based on Darvin and Norton’s investment model, where ideological, capital, and identity factors influence L2 learner commitment to their learning process, the study aimed at exploring the relationship between students’ symbolic and economic capital and their investment in L2 learning. Data about students’ investment were collected through a survey, while information related to their capital was taken from institutional academic databases. Results indicate that a dependency relationship between students’ symbolic and economic capital and their investment in L2 learning can be established quantitatively, and that results are consistent across the participants using different measures of capital.
Keywords:
investment; L2 learning; student capital; identity
Resumo:
Este artigo relata um estudo quantitativo sobre o investimento dos estudantes na aprendizagem de uma língua adicional (L2) em uma universidade pública colombiana. Com base no modelo de investimento de Darvin e Norton, onde fatores ideológicos, de capital e de identidade influenciam o compromisso do aluno de L2 no seu processo de aprendizagem, o estudo teve como objetivo explorar a relação entre o capital simbólico e econômico dos alunos e seu investimento na aprendizagem de L2. Os dados sobre o investimento dos estudantes foram coletados por meio de um questionário, enquanto as informações relacionadas com seu capital foram retiradas de bases de dados acadêmicas institucionais. Os resultados indicam que uma relação de dependência entre o capital simbólico e econômico dos alunos e seu investimento na aprendizagem de L2 pode ser estabelecida quantitativamente e que os resultados são consistentes entre os participantes utilizando diferentes medidas de capital.
Palavras-chave:
investimento; aprendizagem L2; capital estudantil; identidade
1 Introduction
Colombia is not a monolingual country. Even though Spanish is the dominant and only official language, many other languages are present in the country. On the one hand, we have the foreign languages that are brought about by speakers of different origins who come to the country for different purposes. On the other hand, we have 68 heritage languages that are spoken by the native and creole communities spread throughout the Colombian territory and are often neglected. Despite this multilingual context, the Colombian government has given priority to English as an additional language (L2), for its status as a language of wider communication and the positive effect it may have on the country’s economic development.
The prioritization of English as the target foreign language in Colombia is expressed in the national language policies, more specifically in what is called the National Bilingualism Program (NBP) (Colombia, 2006, 2015). This plan started in 2004 and has evolved in terms of strategies, but not as much in terms of goals and standards to be achieved. In all the forms it has taken, Colombian bilingualism policies are based on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), and henceforth were established as the guide to include English as part of the mandatory curriculum from elementary to higher education. Thus, attainment levels were specified for different grade levels, B1 being the minimum level of competence expected to be achieved at the end of college.
The research we report here takes place at a large public university that showcases the multilingual reality of the country; in this institution, multilingualism is promoted with the teaching of foreign languages and heritage languages, but only one, English, is the mandatory L2 in undergraduate programs. Drawing on Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment, we engaged in this quantitative research to understand L2 learning from the perspective of investment; thus, the purpose of the study was to identify what L2 students were invested in, the practices that evidenced their investment, and the factors that influenced their investment.
The study we partially report here starts a research journey to explore L2 investment and learner identity. It begins with a focus on the entire institution to understand this phenomenon in a large context, and gradually approach it through different methodologies. Even though the issue we explore has been typically addressed from an ethnographic perspective, we used a quantitative approach given the size of the population. Furthermore, we consider that studying this phenomenon from a quantitative perspective would allow us to create new tools to understand it from a broader perspective in large populations. This decision entailed several challenges upon which we will elaborate later in this article, which we hope become contributions to the model we used as our framework.
In this article, we discuss findings related to the factors influencing student L2 investment, that is, those factors associated with their economic and symbolic capital and their relationship with L2 learning investment. Understanding undergraduate student investment would provide us with baseline information to make decisions concerning the language programs offered at the institution to make them more relevant and aligned with learners’ identities.
2 Theoretical Framework
As mentioned earlier, this research was based on Darvin and Norton’s work to understand the relationship between language learner identity and their investment in the learning process. Their model of investment (Darvin; Norton, 2015) draws on the seminal work of Norton (1997, 2013) about language learner identity and learning investment, which is based on a postructuralist notion of identity.
2.1 Identity and Investment in Foreign Language Learning
Norton (2013, p. 45) defines identity as “the way in which a person understands their relationship with the world, how this relationship is structured in time and space and how a person understands possibilities for the future”. Norton (2013) uses Weedon’s (1987) approach to subjectivity, according to which it is through language that we build a sense of ourselves; thus, identity is multiple and changing; it is also a place of conflict. Based on these notions of identity, Norton establishes a more complex relationship between the language learner and his social world, drawing attention to the power relations that occur in the language learning process. Such notion helps us to think, for example, what are the material conditions that facilitate language learning and, furthermore, how language learners are granted or denied opportunities to express themselves, depending on the social categories to which they subscribe to or are associated to - in terms of gender, ethnicity, race, social class, etc. (Darvin; Norton, 2015).
The notion of investment that Norton has raised in the last twenty years complements the work of other academics (for example, Gardner or Dörnyei) on the relationship between motivation and language learning. While the traditional notion of motivation relates to learning languages for instrumental purposes or for integration with the community of native speakers of the language - and in this sense, as a property, a characteristic of the learner’s personality (Norton, 1997), the notion of investment refers to the subjectivity of the learner and how their social and historical background influence their commitment to learning a language (Norton, 1997; Darvin; Norton, 2015; Darvin; Norton, 2021). Norton (1997, p. 17-18) explains that the notion of investment,
[…] Conceives of the language learner as someone who has a complex social identity and multiple desires. The notion presupposes that when language learners speak, they are not only exchanging information with speakers of the target language but are also organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the social world. Therefore, an investment in the target language is also an investment in the learner’s own social identity, an identity that is constantly changing in time and space.
Darvin and Norton (2015) explain the difference between motivation and investment with an example: the case may be of a learner who is highly motivated to learn the language but does not invest enough effort in practicing it in the classroom if said practices are racist, sexist, or homophobic.
2.2 Darvin and Norton’s Investment Model
In this model, Darvin and Norton (2015) try to integrate the analysis of micro and macro structures of power that are present in the context of learning and use of languages, so that the analysis transcends what happened in specific communication situations, towards the communication systems control that such communication situations show. To perform such analysis of the micro and macro structures of power, the authors use the following constructs:
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◆ Ideology: Drawing on Bourdieu’s work, ideology is a set of normative ideas, built by symbolic power. Darvin and Norton use a notion of ideology that is not static, but permanently changing; a place of constant conflict, where ideas of domination and resistance confront each other, which is why they prefer to refer to the term ideologies. According to the authors, ideologies are
constructed and imposed by power structures and reproduced through hegemonic practices and consent, ideologies are dominant ways of thinking that organize and stabilize societies while at the same time determining modes of inclusion and exclusion, as well as favoring and marginalizing ideas, people and relationships (Darvin; Norton, 2015, p. 44).
For example, based on ideologies, speakers are positioned considering their identities in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, social class, etc., before they have even spoken.
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◆ Capital: This construct is based on Bourdieu’s characterization of economic, cultural (education, knowledge), social (connections with power networks) and symbolic capital (the configuration that these forms of capital take are perceived and recognized as legitimate). In this model, symbolic capital is particularly emphasized, due to its relevance in the notion of investment, since it is recognized that learners are already equipped with capital which, within the language learning process, is transformed into symbolic resources that can be highly valued in a particular context. Therefore, the capital that the apprentices bring should be treated as funds or assets in favor, not as obstacles.
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◆ Identity: In this model, Darvin and Norton build on Norton’s early work on identity, although they seek to emphasize the idea that identity is a place of conflict between habitus (defined by Bourdieu as the system through which people give meaning to the world; a set of dispositions forged by history) and desire; between conflicting ideologies and imagined communities.
Within this model, Darvin and Norton (2015, p. 45) insist that language learners, who are governed by different ideologies and possess different levels of capital, position themselves and are positioned in different contexts. These authors explain:
[…] Thanks to dominant ideologies, learners are positioned in certain ways by virtue of their gender, race, ethnicity, social class or sexual orientation. How apprentices are perceived by others is influenced by dominant notions of what it means to be male or female, black or white, middle class or working class, in a specific society. In the same way, also by habitus, apprentices in turn position others and grant or deny them power (Darvin; Norton, 2015, p. 46).
Darvin and Norton (2021, p. 8) argue that ideology and capital are key in explaining the difference between motivation and investment: as they explain, “what we know, and who we know” constitute resources that those in power use to determine whether they are valuable and legitimate. And, if they are, these resources become symbolic capital. The recognition on the part of teachers of this symbolic capital is what either empowers or disempowers students.
According to Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model, learners are invested in literacy activities either because they believe they will receive specific material or symbolic benefits in return or because they recognize they can afford to engage in them since their symbolic capital supports them to do so. Or, alternatively, they may recognize that their capital hinders their investment, because it is not valued within the power structures that are at play in the learning context.
In the literature, we can find some other studies that have used Norton’s and Darvin and Norton’s work to explain investment in L2 learning. Most of the research on the subject uses qualitative and/or quantitative data, although for descriptive purposes. For example, Collazos-Moná and Gómez Rodríguez (2019) performed a qualitative study of investment among EFL learners in a school in Bogotá. They found that these learners identified as high investors and low investors in their learning, depending on their own opinions about the usefulness learning English had in their lives. The authors also found that power relations influenced learners’ investment in the classroom and that high investors challenged those power relations by means of collaborative work. Similarly, in her study of investment among a group of Spanish learners’ experience in an immersion program in Spain, Quan (2019) found that learners negotiate competing and fluctuating identities and investments that reflect in contradictory behaviors in terms of language learning while in their experience abroad.
While the previous studies focused on the learners’ investment in one L2, studies like that of López Armendáriz and Cortez Román (2016) focus on multilingual speakers in a Mexican context, and how they were invested differently according to the L2. The differences in their investment varied depending on their desire to belong to an imagined community and on the possibilities they had to integrate to such community. Babino and Stewart (2017) explored Latino immigrants and children of Latino immigrants’ investment in bilingualism in Texas, USA, in the poorest school of the district. The authors found that learners were more invested in English due to its value in academic and social settings, while Spanish was only used in social situations and with Spanish monolinguals. Thus, they perceived English as needed to succeed.
There are some studies that used a quantitative methodology to study investment but as it relates to language proficiency (Ballinger, 2017; Casale; Posel, 2011), or its effects on earnings (Azam; Chin; Prakash, 2013). One study by Soltanian et al. (2018) was intended to apply an instrument to measure if language learners agree with Norton’s investment theory, or how willing they would be to invest in English language learning investment, not necessarily how much they were invested or the returns of those investments.
Some other studies have explored the influence of learners’ symbolic capital in the learning experience, although not necessarily from an investment perspective. For instance, Islam (2018) conducted a qualitative study to explore the attitudes of Pakistani learners, highly influenced by the significant symbolic capital attributed to English, towards the changing roles of this language globally. This idea shaped their preference for English, despite an apparent rejection towards the language due to its colonial legacy. Tajeddin, Kerfoot, and Fereydoonfar (2023) conducted a similar study in Iran, among English learners in a language institute, using Darvin and Norton’s (2017, 2018 apud Tajeddin; Kerfoot; Fereydoonfar, 2023) work and Bourdieu’s (1987 apud Tajeddin; Kerfoot; Fereydoonfar, 2023) notion of capital. The authors found that learners’ investment is influenced by the conflicting ideologies surrounding the learning of English in the country, where the state promotes the use of Persian in education and learners view English learning as the opportunity to engage the world outside Iran.
Although the influence of symbolic capital on academic achievement, drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, has been widely explored in education research, the literature on capital and language learning is limited. Generally speaking, researchers have found a connection between capital (cultural, social, linguistic) and academic success. These forms of capital come from the parents’ education and the children’s cultural resources available at home. For example, Diouani (2023) performed a qualitative study of the relationship between English language proficiency and social class. He found a relationship between the EFL learners’ home environments and their learning and agency. Similarly, Jantrasakul (2010) found an intertwining relationship between the learners’ cultural world and home and the institutionalized context in a Thai EFL class. In both cases, according to the authors, the greater the students’ cultural and symbolic capital, the easier it was for them to navigate school expectations. It is evident in all the previous studies that regardless of the learners’ capital, the symbolic status of English drives learners’ investment to learn this language.
3 Research Method
In our study, we explored L2 use and investment within a large population of undergraduate students, at a large public university in Colombia. Using a quantitative approach, we were able to establish connections between information related to their identities, their economic and symbolic capital, and their investment in L2 learning.
3.1 The Context
The institution where our research took place is one of the largest public universities in Colombia. Founded in 1803, it is distributed in more than ten different campi across the state, the one in the metropolitan area being the largest one. This comprehensive university offers more than 100 undergraduate and professional programs, housed in 25 academic units in the areas of fine arts, education, health, agriculture and veterinary sciences, social and human sciences; economy and administration; engineering; and natural sciences and mathematics. It hosts a very diverse population, with more than 35.000 enrolled students, the majority of which come from low-income families.
This higher education institution aligned its academic goals with the goals established in the National Bilingualism Program (Programa Nacional de Bilingüismo) as a strategy to strengthen internationalization processes. Even though there is no specific requirement that explicitly establishes an achievement standard for competencies in a foreign language in higher education, undergraduate students across different institutions are required to graduate with a minimum of a B1 proficiency level in English, according to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). Because universities have the autonomy to design and manage their own regulations, they create their own programs and pedagogical strategies to achieve the established national objectives. Consequently, this university not only established its own foreign language regulations, where it is stated that English is the mandatory foreign language in academic programs since it is “the most used in the academic and scientific field in the contemporary world” (Universidad de Antioquia, Agreement 0467, 2014), but also created its own foreign language program.
Consequently, an Institutional Foreign Language Education Program was created. This program is responsible for integrating and promoting different processes related to foreign language education; these include language courses, evaluation and certification of foreign language competencies, teacher professional development, and extracurricular activities for the promotion of multilingualism in the institution. Foreign Language Education is provided through two academic programs: the English program and Multilingua.
While the first program, the English program, is a compulsory program embedded in undergraduate curricula, the second one, Multilingua, offers gratuitous foreign and heritage language education, to students with a high Grade Point Average (GPA). The foreign languages offered include Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, German and Portuguese, while the heritage languages offered include three indigenous languages and one creole language (findings related to these are not analyzed in this article). While the English Program is structured into five levels (complemented with some disciplinary courses taught in English in some undergraduate programs), Multilingua’s European languages courses are made up of 6 levels that students may study voluntarily. In both cases, the courses have a duration of one academic term (16 weeks, 64 hours). The expected level of proficiency to be achieved is B1, according to the CEFR, although this is not a graduation requirement. In the case of Asian languages such as Japanese and Chinese, courses have a duration of 2 levels.
In sum, we set up this research to explore L2 use and investment in a large university in Colombia, characterized by a population of students coming from diverse geographic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds. Thus, our research question was: what is the influence of students’ identity and [social, economic and cultural] capital on their L2 investment?
3.2 Research Design
This study followed a quantitative design, where a combination of institutional data and survey data were used. A quantitative approach was more convenient considering, on the one hand, the size of the population under study and thus the considerable amount of data to analyze; on the other hand, the need for generalization, since we intended to draw on results of this research to inform decisions concerning the foreign language program at our university and future research projects. In the preparation of this endeavor, we faced the challenge of unpacking Darvin and Norton’s model, drawing categories from it and operationalizing these categories in order to: 1) identify material from the institutional databases that would provide us with information about those categories, and 2) formulate clear questions to be included in the survey, for individuals with whom we would not have direct contact.
We began by translating the constructs that make up Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model into categories or observable behaviors about which we could ask for in the survey or identify in the available sources of data. In other words, drawing on the model, for the dimension Identity, we brainstormed sociodemographic and academic categories about which we could obtain information from the databases; for example, age, original residency, ethnicity, academic program and field of knowledge; or for the dimension Capital, we identified the category level of competence in English at time of entry, the highest level of education of the mother, and some socioeconomic measures. We performed the same exercise of brainstorming categories in the case of L2 investment, focusing on observable behaviors or practices about which we could inquire in the survey; for example, listening to music in L2, speaking with friends in the language, reading, writing, practicing contents learned from class, taking extracurricular language courses, among others, that evidenced students’ investment in language learning.
Once the categories were established, we identified the institutional and external databases that had this information and proceeded to request institutional authorization to access it. In the case of the questionnaire, we went on elaborating multiple choice questions to inquire about L2 investment, since there was little about this topic in the databases. After the data was preprocessed, we continued with the creation of the questionnaire.
3.3 Data Collection
Data collection procedures were designed to find a relationship between students’ symbolic capital and their forms of investment in language learning and use. Thus the first step was to identify relevant demographic information about the students and their capital and then, create a survey to inquire about the students’ forms of investment in their L2 learning and use.
3.3.1 Survey
The questionnaire was intended to identify learners’ L2 use and investment of eleven international foreign languages (English, French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Korean and Arabic). We selected these languages because they are the most prominent foreign languages in our context and most of them are taught in the institutional foreign language program. Students were also asked about their use of six Colombian indigenous and creole languages that are not reported in this article. Additionally, participants were invited to report any other L2 that they were using or learning. For each of these languages, students had the option to identify as either speakers or learners and answer a set of questions for each language used or being learned. The questionnaire inquired about the frequency of different literacy practices, how they were learning the language and their expected and obtained benefits for learning the language. The same set of questions was asked concerning every one of the languages selected by the students. Lastly, students were invited to share their thoughts about learning an L2 in the university context through an open-ended question.
We designed a non-random convenience sampling; thus, the questionnaire, written in Spanish, was sent to all undergraduate students from the university through their institutional email addresses; however, to access it students needed to log in to their institutional accounts. We offered a reward (a gift card) to be raffled among participants. The questionnaire was available on the institutional website for two months, in 2020. All participants were informed about the purpose of the study and that their participation was voluntary; they would express their willingness to participate by submitting their answers. A total of 1366 valid answers were collected; the sample includes students from 22 academic units, and 8 campi. See Table 1 below for the technical specifications of this survey.
3.3.2 Academic and Sociodemographic Data
The data collected through the survey was cross-referenced against several other institutional databases to account for socioeconomic and academic information of the students that were sampled. In addition, we gathered sociodemographic information about the students that was collected by the Colombian Institute for the Evaluation of Education (ICFES) when they took the national standardized test called Pruebas Saber 11. This is a national standardized test administered to all Colombian students before graduating from secondary education and it is intended to assess student’s knowledge in five key areas: critical reading, mathematics, social sciences, natural sciences, and English.
As part of the test, a sociodemographic questionnaire is administered; through this questionnaire, students provide information about household income, assets, nutrition habits, and their parents’ educational attainment level. It was possible to cross-reference the results of the Saber 11 test with the survey respondents thanks to an interinstitutional agreement between the university and ICFES that allowed us to have access to such data.
Concerning students’ academic information about language learning, we used data from the Multilingua program enrollment database (from August 2016 to December 2019). In this database we identified whether the respondents had been enrolled in any courses in Multilingua in this timeframe. Also, we used the university’s library loan database (from January 2017 to January 2020) to identify students’ loans of materials and books in languages other than Spanish in a period of three years. We selected these sources of data under the belief that registering voluntarily in language courses and borrowing materials in an L2 evidenced students’ investment practices in language learning.
After undertaking the preprocessing of the data, identification of data sources, organization of data, and design of instruments, we proceeded to establish the measures to use in the analysis of the information gathered. As mentioned before, we report in this article results corresponding to the relationship between some aspects of students’ identity, their symbolic capital, and their investment in foreign language learning.
3.4 Data Analysis
After having collected data from the survey and institutional and external sources, we cross-referenced socio-demographic and academic data from the respondents and their answers in the questionnaire. Since external sources did not contain information about all the respondents, we decided to conduct the analysis with the respondents for whom we had complete data (n=702).
3.4.1 Measures
Several measures were used to analyze the categories capital and investment from Darvin and Norton’s Investment model (2015). These categories were selected since they could be operationalized quantitatively, as described earlier. Basically, we identified in the available data variables that could be relatable to the student capital and practices that evidenced their investment in language learning (see Table 2).
In the following lines we will explain each of these variables.
3.4.1.1 Student Socioeconomic Level
This is a latent variable from multiple item responses in the Saber 11 socioeconomic questionnaire. This variable classifies students’ socioeconomic conditions into four categories, from level 1 to 4 (level 1 being the lowest), based on a multidimensional perspective. This means that it not only covers household income, but also household assets, nutrition habits, and information about parents’ education and occupation (ICFES, 2019). According to ICFES (2019), the description of these categories could be summarized as follows:
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◆ Level 1: The family has no computer or access to internet connection at home, parents’ highest educational level is elementary school or lower, parents usually work in manual and informal labor.
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◆ Level 2: The student’s mother took at least secondary education, the family has access to the internet and basic electronic devices, and the family has some digital and physical books at home.
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◆ Level 3: The student’s mother has at least completed secondary education or technical and professional education in some cases. The student has access to electronic devices. Parents usually have assisting or technical jobs and some of them are freelancers or small business owners.
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◆ Level 4: The student’s family has access to the internet, computers, video game consoles and a car. Parents are usually professionals and, in some cases, postgraduates.
As described above, these categories refer not only to monetary income. Therefore, it could be argued that this measure is not only related to economic capital but overlaps with other forms of symbolic capital.
3.4.1.2 Mother’s Schooling Level
This variable refers to the higher schooling level achieved by the mother in the Colombian Schooling system, from preschool education to postgraduate education. Having access to both parent’s education, we decided to select the mother’s only, since there are more possibilities in our society that the mother, rather than the father, is the head of the household, at least in lower income families. Besides, the mother’s educational level is considered a proxy measure of a family’s socioeconomic level (Labin; Taborda, 2014).
3.4.1.3 Number of Books at Home
This is the number of books in the student’s house. It is reported as a category including four ranges, from zero to more than one hundred books (ICFES, 2019). As a cultural possession, the number of books can be a proxy for the cultural capital a student might inherit at home.
3.4.1.4 English Proficiency Level
This is the result of the English language component of the Saber 11 test on a scale ranging from A-, a level that is considered lower than A1, to B+, a level that is considered higher than B1 but lower than B2, based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL). This section of the multiple-choice written test assesses students’ ability to read, including grammar and vocabulary. It is divided into seven sections that are intended to measure students lexical, pragmatic and grammar abilities, as well as literal and inferential reading comprehension.
3.4.1.5 Student Library Loans in L2
This is a dichotomous variable that represents whether the student has loaned any books from the library in a language other than Spanish in a three-year span. This variable could be understood as a proxy for L2 use among students.
3.4.1.6 Courses Taken in Multilingua
This dichotomous variable represents whether the student has taken any Multilingua courses in a two-year time span. This measure shows how students might be invested in language learning since these courses are not part of the official curriculum and students need to show high academic performance to be eligible for the program. Some students might have studied more than one language in the program.
3.4.1.7 Literacy Practices Level
In the survey, students were asked for the number of times they used the reported language in several literacy practices namely, writing, reading, interacting, and practicing the language, by selecting in a range from Never to Daily in a six-item scale. Answers were coded as numbers from 0 to 5. In the case of having reported more than one language, answers were added across each of the practices (thus, giving more relevance to the frequency of practices rather than the language practiced or used).
Given that the four variables were highly correlated, having in each case a Pearson correlation higher than 0,78, we decided to use a method to reduce data dimensionality. A Bartlett sphericity test was performed to examine whether a dimension reduction method such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) could be applied to the variables. The results of the test were significant (chi-square = 3615,420, p<0,01), then rejecting the null hypothesis and concluding that the correlation matrix was not a correlation of identity. By applying a PCA method to the four variables, we obtained a single component that has an eigenvalue higher than 1, and captures 85.5% of the total variance which, consequently, can be considered a synthetic index of literacy practices. The four variables belong to the first component and their loads are similar: practices (0.272), interacts (0.268), reads (0.269) and writes (0.272). Thus, we took the first principal component as a literacy practice index. In order to be able to conduct a cross-tabular analysis with other categorical variables, we decided to convert this index into a categorical variable by dividing the distribution into quartiles, being the first quartile, very high; the second, high; the third, low; and the fourth, very low.
The literacy practice frequency index is a measure that not only synthesizes different literacy practices in a single index. As the practices of different languages are included in the index, it also indirectly captures students’ plurilingualism. Students who reported learning or speaking more than one language tended to have higher frequency levels of literacy practices. Thus, this variable might be very useful to estimate students’ investment in L2, as it synthesizes both various literacy practices and plurilingualism.
3.5 Statistical Analysis
With the aim of analyzing the relationship between Capital and Investment, we decided to look for the dependency of the measures regarding the literacy practice level. As most of these variables were categorical, we decided to conduct a cross-tabulation analysis and Chi-square tests to assess the statistical significance of these relationships.
Four measures of Capital (Student socioeconomic level, Mother’s schooling level, Number of books at home, and English proficiency level) and two measures of Investment (Student library loans in L2, and Student courses in Multilingua) were cross-tabulated against the literacy practice level. Additionally, Pearson’s Chi-square tests were performed on all the relationships. The null hypothesis to be tested was that the following variables are independent:
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Student socioeconomic level and literacy practice level.
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Mother’s schooling level and literacy practice level.
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Number of books at home and literacy practice level.
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English proficiency level and literacy practice level.
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Student library loans in L2 and literacy practice level.
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Courses taken in Multilingua and literacy practice level.
3.6 Ethical Considerations
Since this study involved sensitive personal information about participants, some ethical considerations were contemplated for data collection and analysis. Firstly, when submitting survey answers, all the participants were informed about the purpose of the study and provided their informed consent allowing the research team to have access to their personal information for academic purposes only. Additionally, access to the institutional databases was granted by the university’s Planning and Development office. Students’ records were anonymized and were only manipulated by the research team.
4 Results
As explained earlier, in this article we present the results that correspond to the relationship between some aspects of students’ identity, their symbolic capital, and their investment in L2 learning. In the first section we describe students’ profiles and their capital; in the second part we present the results from the cross-tabular analysis between the different measures of capital, investment and the literacy practice level.
4.1 Student Profiles and Their Capital
Table 3 summarizes key demographic characteristics of the university’s student sample. Here we see categories about which we were able to draw data from institutional databases and ICFES data:
In terms of L2 use, we found that 89.45% of sampled students self-identify as either speakers or learners of the English language. This is not surprising taking into account that Colombian and university linguistic policies require students to learn English as part of the official curriculum of most academic programs. This result also points to the fact that most users of other languages are also users of English. Other Western European languages such as French, German, Italian and Portuguese seem to be preferred over Eastern European or Eastern languages such as Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean, or Chinese. Apart from English where the ratio is similar, most students tend to identify as learners rather than speakers of other languages.
4.2 Student Symbolic Capital and Their Investment in the Learning of L2
The analysis of various measures of students’ capital and their investment, estimated by their literacy practice level, shows that the different measures of capital and investment are not independent from the literacy practice level. In all the cases, we rejected the null hypothesis of independence of variables after performing Chi-squared tests. Then we concluded that the literacy practice level is not independent from the student socioeconomic level, the mother’s schooling level, the number of books at home, the English proficiency level, student library loans in L2, and the courses taken in Multilingua, as shown in Table 4:
We found that there is a dependent relationship between students’ symbolic capital and their investment in L2 learning. In the next section we will elaborate on the relationship between the variables previously mentioned.
4.3 Student Socioeconomic Level and Literacy Practice Level
Our analysis evidenced that the level of literacy practices is dependent from the students’ socioeconomic level. Let us recall that in the category called “literacy practice level”, we grouped the intentional practices of language use, in processes of reading, writing, practice, and interaction with others. Of the total number of respondents who have a level 4, which means being among students with high socioeconomic levels, 35% have a very high level of use of foreign languages, while 15% are at very low levels of literacy practices.
4.4 Mother’s Schooling Level and Literacy Practice Level
Data show that there also is a dependent relationship between the students’ mother’s educational attainment level and their level of L2 literacy practices. The most prevalent educational attainment levels reported are high school (30.8%), professional (undergraduate, 23.6%), and technical or technological (22.5%), followed by elementary school education (11.8%). The lower percentages are for students’ mothers with a graduate degree (7.8%) and no education (3.4%).
We found that students whose mothers have reached education beyond a professional degree reported higher literacy practice levels: for those whose mothers had a professional degree, 25% reported a very high practice of L2, while 19.3% of them reported a very low L2 literacy practice. Similar was the case of students whose mothers have a graduate degree, with 11.4% reporting a very high frequency of L2 use compared to 5.1% reporting a very low level.
4.5 Number of Books at Home and Literacy Practice Level
We also found a dependency relationship between the number of books at home and the level of literacy practices, which evidences the use of foreign languages. With a confidence level of 95%, it can be established that the greater the number of books at home, the greater the index of literacy practices; that is, the greater the recurrence of language use, evidencing a greater level of commitment to their learning. In this research, the number of books is used as a marker of students’ cultural capital.
Thus, students with more than 100 books at home reported a larger percentage of recurrences of literacy practices (22.7%), and fewer of these students indicated a very low recurrence of literacy practices (12.5%). By contrast, students with 0 to 10 books at home reported a higher percentage (17.6%) of very low recurrency of literacy practices in comparison to those of them reporting a lower percentage (11.4%) of high recurrency of literacy practices.
4.6 English Proficiency Level and Literacy Practice Level
The results show, with a confidence level of 95%, that there is a positive relationship between the results in the national standardized English tests (Saber 11) and the index of literacy practices; that is, the higher the score, the higher the practices index, which shows a greater commitment to learning the language. This contrasts with those who register lower test scores at the end of eleventh grade, who in turn present a lower recurrence in literacy practices and, in this sense, may indicate that they are less “committed” to learning the language.
For example, while students with lower scores in the English section of the national standardized test (levels A-, A1, A2), reported lower literacy practice levels - that is, a higher percentage of these students (7.4%) reported lower frequency in their use of the foreign language, with very few of them (1.7%) reporting a higher frequency -, those who reported higher scores in the standardized test (B1, B+) reported higher literacy practice levels (40.3% and 40.9% respectively).
4.7 Student Library Loans in L2 and Literacy Practice Level
We analyzed if there was a relation between having loaned books in L2 and the literacy practice level. As shown in Table 4, a high proportion of students who have very high (30.1%) and high (28%) literacy practice frequency levels have loaned books in L2, compared to those who ranked low (15.4%) or very low (14.2%). Nevertheless, a high proportion of students (78.1%) have not loaned L2 books in the library in the examined time span. This could be due to various factors including the reduction in the use of hard copies among students, and the access to digital databases and electronic books. For this reason, this variable might have some limitations as a measure of students’ investment in reading in L2s in the university context.
4.8 Student Courses in Multilingua and Literacy Practice Level
We also examined the relation between having been enrolled in Multilingua and the literacy practice frequency index. As can be seen in Table 4, a higher proportion of the students who ranked in very high (18.2%) and high levels (17.1%) of literacy practices frequency are part of the Multilingua program, compared to students who ranked low (8.6%) or very low (5.1%). In the case of students who have not taken any courses in Multilingua, there seem to be no clear differences between different levels of literacy practice frequency. Despite this trend, students that have not taken Multilingua courses may have high levels of literacy practices in L2. This shows that many students might be learning and using L2s in other contexts apart from the university.
5 Discussion
The results of this quantitative study provide evidence to conclude that there is indeed a relationship between undergraduate students’ symbolic capital (economic, cultural, and linguistic), and their investment in L2 learning, as illustrated in Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment and in the literature discussed earlier in this article. This shows that there are some material and symbolic conditions that facilitate undergraduate students’ learning, like socioeconomic, cultural, and family-related circumstances that provide them with a baseline to support their educational experience. As argued by Darvin and Norton (2015), we found that the learners’ social and historical backgrounds influence their commitment to language.
From this finding we may infer that students’ symbolic capital contributes or hinders possibilities for them to recognize opportunities for language learning; they capitalize on these opportunities to engage more recurrently in actions that trigger their learning. This does not only happen as part of their commitment to a language course, but also as part of their use of the language for purposes beyond the language classroom. This issue has implications not only for students themselves but also for universities and their capacity to participate in global knowledge flows through the institutional linguistic capital (Chardenet; Ferreira-Meyers, 2020).
Students’ economic capital (socioeconomic profile), as well as their cultural (mother’s education, number of books at home) and linguistic capital (English scores in the national standardized test, at the end of their secondary education), are used in this research as markers of symbolic capital. The fact that there is a dependency relationship between these forms of capital and students’ commitment to their language learning signifies that those having more forms of symbolic capital may be better equipped for language learning as adults as well as for their educational experience in college. This may be problematic, as it engenders a greater educational gap that favors some students and prevents others from L2 learning.
Thus, this situation represents greater challenges for higher education: on the one hand, there needs to be compensation for those students whose cultural capital does not coincide with the habitus, thus hindering their learning. On the other hand, there should be greater recognition of funds of knowledge that is not traditionally valued in higher education contexts. Additionally, not only universities but the whole society should work on providing equitable and prompt access to different forms of cultural capital, as they might play a determinant role in the later access to language learning in higher levels of education. To do this, educational policies are key in paving the way by establishing guidelines, norms, and responsibilities to the different stakeholders.
6 Conclusions
Investment in L2 learning, viewed within the perspective of learner identity, is a complex issue. Analyzing aspects of learner identity, like the social, cultural, and economic factors that shape who they are and how they position themselves in the world, adds new nuances to be considered in understanding language learning.
The results of this research contribute to the body of literature that counters the pervasive idea that students do not engage in L2 learning simply because they are not interested or motivated to do so. Rather, what this research shows is that there are certain factors and circumstances that create a fertile context for students to learn, and that shape their desire to do so. Instead, we argue that not only higher education institutions, but also society at large - the government, civic organizations, the productive sector, schools, etc. -, should create and invest in opportunities for children and youth to access diverse forms of cultural capital: access to resources like books, diverse forms of art, etc. Such endeavor demands a strong articulation between higher education and schools, as well as between schools, families, and other organizations outside schools, like public libraries and cultural institutions. This may result in better chances for a more equitable education for all students.
Similarly, the results of this research imply that higher education institutions should envision the L2 curriculum beyond the scope of a L2 program or syllabus. Rather, L2 education should provide spaces outside the classroom, where learners are exposed to a wide array of cultural artifacts and exchanges with other L2 users (native and non-native) that enrich the language learning experience and contribute to creating new forms of symbolic capital.
In terms of the methodology used to explore the relationship between language use and students’ cultural capital, we designed new tools to understand Darvin and Norton’s model of investment (2015) from a quantitative perspective. The literacy practice level and other measures of students’ symbolic capital obtained through different data sources show the potential this phenomenon has to be studied quantitatively. These tools provided useful insights and solid statistical bases to understand the relationship between cultural capital and L2 learning investment in a large population. However, we acknowledge that one of the limitations of our design was the volunteer effect on the data collected through the survey, given the possibility that those students who are highly invested in L2 learning felt more inclined to answer the questionnaire than those who are not.
We also acknowledge that the quantitative approach used in this study has some limitations in the understanding of some aspects of the model of investment. Some of the constructs of the model such as identity and ideology were not addressed in this study, since they are complex phenomena that require qualitative approaches to be better explored and understood. For this reason, further studies could benefit from drawing on mixed-method designs to obtain both an understanding of the general picture and the nuances that are provided by qualitative data.
Acknowledgments
We want to thank the other members of our research team: Diana Quinchía and Paola Acosta, for their embarking on this journey with us and for their reviews of this paper.
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Data Availability Statement
The institutional data supporting the results or analyses presented in this paper can be partially found at Universidad de Antioquia (c.2020). Other data are available only under permission.
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Funding
This work was supported by the School of Languages, Universidad de Antioquia.
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Ethics Committee Report
This research was approved by the Research Committee of the School of Languages, Universidad de Antioquia, Acta 58, May 08, 2019, following ethics guidelines; and by the University’s Research Development Committee, Acta 2019 25613, August 15, 2019.
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Use of AI
The authors declare that no AI was used in the writing of this article.
Open Peer Review: Student Capital in L2 Learning Investment Among Undergraduate Students
About the reviewerSCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGSAs part of the commitment made by the Brazilian Journal of Applied Linguistics to Open Science, the journal publishes the reviews issued regarding its published works, when authorized by all parties involved.
Review 1
The article is well written and offers a relevant contribution to understanding Darvin & Norton’s model of investment in language learning. It presents the context and describes the variables identified for the three categories: identity, capital, and investment. Although the results are not surprising, the text would benefit from a deeper reflection on the implications of the study beyond what it is already stated: Additionally, not only universities but the whole society should work on providing equitable and early access to different forms of cultural capital, as they might play a determinant role in the later access to language learning in higher levels of education.
- Recommendation:: Revisions Required.
Open Peer Review: Student Capital in L2 Learning Investment Among Undergraduate Students
About the reviewerAs part of the commitment made by the Brazilian Journal of Applied Linguistics to Open Science, the journal publishes the reviews issued regarding its published works, when authorized by all parties involved.
Review 2
The article reports results of a quantitative research that investigated L2 learners’ investment in a Colombian university. Overall, it’s well-written, objectively clear, and it presents a relevant and instigating discussion. It offers a good theoretical and methodological framework, which may also serve as a model for future studies. There’s a good and meaningful interrelationship between the literature review and the discussion. Good job!
- Recommendation:: Accept Submission.
