Abstract:
This study aimed to compare the underlying measures of male and female
high- school students’ social capital in terms of regional variations and gender
and investigate the relationship between those measures and the students'
foreign language (FL) achievement. To this end, a number of 904 third-grader
high school students (278 male and 626 female) from two educational districts
(privileged district (PD) and less-privileged district (LD)) participated in the
study. They filled out the Student Social Capital Questionnaire and took an
English language achievement test. The results showed that the students in the
PD outperformed their counterparts in the LD. Furthermore, group statistics
and t-test results suggested variations among the groups of students in terms
of such factors as mothers’ involvement, institutional trust, intergenerational
closure, and parents’ educational aspiration. Pearson product-moment
correlation indicated that there was a significant negative correlation between
male and female students' participation in social networks and religious
activities on the one hand, and their foreign language achievement on the
other hand. However, there was a significant positive correlation between
intergenerational closure and parents’ educational aspiration and female
students' English scores on the S-test. The findings have implications for
families and school members to provide students with hopeful and positive
aspirations and intimate family environments and learning environments,
which can enhance their FL achievement.
Machine summary:
"The SCQ used in this study is an acculturated questionnaire designed based on other previous studies done by sociologists and researchers for indicating the most frequent measures of SC including family income, geographic mobility or length of residence, parents’ education and their familiarity with a foreign language, number of siblings, elders’ educational degree, type of house, parents’ roles (length of existence at home and their educational aspiration, parent-child discussion, family structure, family educational aspirations, and their expectations), family cohesion, friends’ expectations, visiting relatives, the extent of parental acquaintance, telephone conversation, religious participation, participation in extracurricular activities, students’ attitude toward their schools and teachers, trust, being valued by the society, school quality, and social stratification (Anderson, 2008; Blaxter, Poland, & Curren, 2001; Camro, 2009; Crosnoe, 2004; Dika & Singh, 2002; Garmon & Lopez-Truly, 2005; Jager & Holm, 2007; Parcel & Dufur, 2009; Smith, Beaulieu, & Israel, 1992).
Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient showed negative significant correlations between factor 6 "Participation in social networks" and factor 9 "Religious participation" on the one hand, and the English scores in male and female groups on the other hand, indicating a reverse relationship between these two factors and boys’ with foreign language achievement(Table 3).
4. Discussion The study aimed to explore the relationship between male and female high school students’ social capital measures and their foreign language achievement in terms of gender and regional variations."