Examining the effects of socio-economic status and language input on adolescent English learners' speech production outcomes

Abstract Relatively little research has been devoted to examining the predictors of early foreign language learning outcomes despite the global trend of early foreign language instruction. The current study focused on two contextual predictors, learners' socio-economic status (SES) and input, both of which have been demonstrated to play a prominent role in first language development and second language (L2) development in an immersion context. The current study also investigated the relationship between SES, input and L2 learning outcomes and the mechanism through which SES influences L2 outcomes. Participants included 97 tenth and eleventh grade students from Taipei, Taiwan. All participants completed a story-telling task and a survey providing information about their language input in middle and high school. Their parents also filled out a survey providing information about their family profile and learner participants' input in preschool/kindergarten and elementary school. Results from the study showed that both SES and input played a role in adolescent learners’ speech production outcomes, but the effects differed by speech dimensions (i.e., accuracy, fluency, and complexity). Although both SES and input predicted L2 speech production outcomes, the two variables were closely related to each other, and the effect of SES was indirect and mediated by input.