Role of Socio-Economic Status in Developing English Language Proficiency: A Case of Chepang Students

Abstract

The thesis entitled‘Role of Socio-economic Status in Developing EnglishLanguage Proficiency’:‘A Case of Chepang Students’was an attempt of theresearcher to findout the effect of family background (parents’ education,parents’ occupation,structure of the family, ethnicity, etc.) of Chepang studentson their English language achievement. Itfurther aimedto assess the role ofeconomic status in developing the English language proficiency.Both theprimaryand secondary sources of datahave been used in the study. Descriptiveand analyticalstudy design along with bothqualitative and quantitative datahave beenused.A sample ofthree lower secondary level community schoolsfrom Dhading district has been taken randomly selected 10 Chepang and 10Non-Chepang studentsfromeachof the schoolsfor the purpose of the study.The study found thatfamily background plays significant role in developingEnglish language proficiency of the children. It determines theachievementlevel of student’s performance on language learning.Parent’s educationalstatus has direct relationshipwiththeir children’s education. Educated parentsare socially more aware and fully dedicated to their children’s education.Parent’s occupationhassignificant rolein their children’s education. It is foundthat the economic status of children (as well as of the family) also determinestheir achievement of language proficiency.Language learning needs sufficientexposuretoboth time and language. Chepang students’attendance at school isvery low. Further, they give only two hours time per day to learn English whichis not sufficient exposure to learn a second/foreign language. Their carelessnessto school education is mainly due to theirfamily background and their socio-economic statusand partly due to low level of social awareness.The thesis has beendivided intofour chapters.The first chapter deals with the general background, literature review, objectives and the significance of thestudy. The second chapter contains the methodology which is sub-chaptered asthe sources of data, sampling procedure, tools for data collection, process ofdata collection and the limitationsof the study. The third chapter includes theanalysis and interpretation of the data obtained from the field. Thefourthchaptercontainsthe findings and recommendations of the study.