The correlation between the socio-economic variants and the EFL educational gain of video gaming in light of the VLT test results of secondary school students

Abstract

Nowadays learning English is offered at all schooling levels as this language has proved to be necessary in almost all walks of life. Nevertheless, with regard to the student’s socioeconomic status, the ultimate goal of reaching the highest skills is rarely attainable for all. Research has revealed that better-educated parents, with a wider mother tongue (L1) vocabulary, may supply room for their children’s second (L2) or third (L3) language acquisition, thus setting higher demands for their children. Parents with higher socioeconomic status can also provide special education to their children, such as extracurricular classes or fee-paying schools. Such educative options may give deeper perceptions of the target language and culture, therefore gifted students living in a disadvantaged situation should not be abandoned by the educational system. This research seeks answers to the facilitative factors of foreign language learning in relation to the student’s socioeconomic status and video gaming. The collected data of the secondary school students (n= 890) also provides their school grades in their English language courses, which are used as indicators of correct language use and the devices on which the video gamer students can play. The results indicate that the VLT test results of the participants correlate highly with their socioeconomic status and school grades in English.