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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Cultural Background and Second Language Acquisition

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Abstract Knubb‐Manninen, G. 1988. Cultural Background and Second Language Acquisition. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 32, 93‐100. The article examines – on the basis of a research study carried out in Swedish‐speaking schools in Finland – the significance that cultural conditions, such as gender and social background, have for second language learning. A model with gender and social background serving as the exogenous factors, school learning capacity and language use as the intervening variables, and proficiency in Finnish (second language) as a dependent variable was tested by means of the Lisrel method. The findings indicate that social background influences the learning of Finnish, because students from homes with a higher social status use Finnish more frequently outside school. This, again, appears to be the result of better opportunities for contacts. Gender does not influence knowledge of Finnish, but it does influence school success in Finnish, which seems to be due to better adjust...