Design , Application , and Factor Structure of a Cultural Capital Questionnaire : Predicting Foreign Language Attributions and Achievement

Culture, as a variable which explains a great part of individual differences, has proved to be effective in defining the factors to which individuals ascribe their success or failure. This study introduced a completely new perspective to the relationship between culture and foreign language attributions by making reference to Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital. To this aim, a questionnaire for measuring cultural capital was designed, applied, and validated. The Factorability of the intercorrelation matrix was measured by two tests, namely, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity the results of which indicated that the factor model was appropriate (0.65, p < .05). Moreover, the results of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) based on the performance of 476 undergraduate university students yielded a two-factor solution of Textual literacy and Musical literacy. Moreover, the survey explored the relationship between the new factors and learners’ foreign language attributions as measured by the Language Achievement Attribution Scale (LAAS) and the Causal Dimension Scale (CDS-II). Results from Pearson product-moment correlation revealed that the total score for cultural capital was significantly related to learners’ ability, effort, and personal attributions. In order to investigate the role of cultural capital in predicting learners’ foreign language achievement, Multiple Linear Regression Analysis was conducted. Results revealed that musical literacy was the best predictor of the listening and speaking skills, whereas reading, writing, and grammar were mostly predicted by learners’ textual literacy. At the end, statistical results were discussed, and implications for English language teaching were provided.


Introduction
The term 'cultural capital' has been approached several times by professionals in educational sociology.The sociology of education has been defined as the study of individual and his interaction with his cultural environment (Chandra & Sharma, 2004).Bourdieu (1990) describes the role of educational sociology as explaining the relations between cultural reproduction and social reproduction; that is, the educational system reproduces the structure of power relationships that exists between different classes in society by re-producing the structure of cultural capital distribution among different classes.Cultural capital has proved to be an important factor in students' progress in different areas of academic achievement such as school grades (DiMaggio, 1982;Sullivan, 2001), educational attainment (Nakhaie & Curtis, 1998;De Graaf, De Graaf, & Kraaykamp, 2000;Merenluoto, 2009;Khodadady & Zabihi, 2011;Pishghadam, Noghani, & Zabihi, in press), and student persistence (Sandefur, Meier, & Hernandez, 1999;Wells, 2008).
To the researcher's best knowledge, no study has to date explored the relationship between cultural capital and EFL learners' foreign language attributions and achievement.Thus in this paper, the researcher has attempted to examine ISSN 1925-4768 E-ISSN 1925-4776 68 the relationship between EFL students' cultural capital and their achievement scores in English language proficiency courses, namely, listening, speaking, reading, writing, and grammar.Moreover, the relationship between learners' cultural capital and their attributions for success and failure was examined.To these ends, the current study attempted to construct and validate a questionnaire of cultural capital through its application to EFL learners in the context of Iran.In this study, therefore, the researcher sought to find out answers to the questions: "What are the reliability and validity of the Cultural Capital Questionnaire when examined with EFL students?"And next, "Is there any significant relationship between EFL learners' cultural capital and their foreign language attributions and achievement?"

Review of the literature 2.1 Cultural capital in education
Cultural capital exists in three forms, namely, embodied state (long-lasting dispositions of body and mind), objectified state (cultural goods such as pictures, paintings, books, monuments, instruments, writings, machines, dictionaries, etc.), and institutionalized state (academic qualifications and degrees) (Bourdieu, 1986).
In his scientific construction of social space, Bourdieu (1996) regards the statistical distribution of economic and cultural capital as two differentiation principles which inscribe social agents or groups in the social space.The degree to which the individuals and groups differ from, or are similar to, each other is determined by their distance or proximity, with regard to different forms of capital they possess."The closer they are to one another, the more they share in those two dimensions (commonalities), and the more remote they are from one another, the lesser they have in common" (pp.13-4).
As Bourdieu and Johnson (1993, p. 21-27) put it, the process of culture acquisition is a cumulative process in the sense that "cultural capital attracts cultural capital."The family milieu, in which the initial necessary culture is inculcated in its members (children), plays the role of re-producing the cultural advantages for the children.So, although the owners of cultural competence partly owe its possession to school training, family inheritance is the main factor in determining the extent to which a child has acquired a particular cultural competence; and since not all families have the capacity to bequeath sufficient amount of cultural capital to their children (inequality among different social classes), similarly, not all children have the ability to acquire a cultural competence, not even through school training; however, the educational system treats these inequalities as though they were natural inequalities, while ignoring the individuals' social and cultural conditions of their families.So, it can be fairly said that school transforms the inequalities of culture to inequalities of success, while denying the link between culture and education.In their attempts to find an answer to the question "For whom does the school bell toll?", Beaulieu, Israel, Hartless, and Dyk (2001) conducted a study to examine the role of family, school, and community on students' educational achievement.They concluded that "… the school bell tolls for those students who have access to, and who actively engage in caring and guiding environments not only in the home, but also with other adults located with the school and broader community settings" (p.127).
There is a plethora of empirical studies which aimed to investigate the role of cultural capital in students' academic success (DiMaggio, 1982;Nakhaie & Curtis, 1998;Sandefur, Meier, & Hernandez, 1999;De Graaf, De Graaf, & Kraaykamp, 2000;Sullivan, 2001;Dumais, 2002;Lareau & Weininger, 2003;Wells;2008;Merenluoto, 2009;Tramonte & Willms, 2010;Khodadady & Zabihi, 2011;Pishghadam, Noghani, & Zabihi, in press).Based on students' self-reports of involvement in art, music, and literature, DiMaggio (1982) showed that cultural capital had a significant impact on students' high school grades.Nakhaie and Curtis (1998) studied the effect of parents' educational level (institutionalized state of cultural capital) on students' educational attainment and concluded that mothers' and fathers' education levels had strong positive relationships with children's educational attainment.Sandefur, Meier, and Hernandez (1999) also found that there is a positive relationship between parental education (i.e., a subpart of cultural capital) and students' likelihood of finishing high school, going on to post-secondary school and initially attending a four year college.In another study, De Graaf, De Graaf, and Kraaykamp (2000) showed that parental reading behavior (as one aspect of parental cultural capital) affects children's educational attainment in Netherlands.Sullivan (2001) investigated the impact of cultural capital on grades achieved in the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examinations.He found out that parents' cultural capital was a significant determinant of students' performance.In an attempt to examine the effect of cultural capital on school success with regard to gender differences, Dumais (2002) found out that cultural capital has a more positive and more significant influence on the grades of female students than on the male counterpart.Using ethnographic data, Lareau and Weininger (2003) showed how an African-American middle-class family exhibited cultural capital in a way that an African-American family below the poverty level did not; while the middle-class mother knew how to fight for her child, the working-class mother was unable to cope with the academic discourse because it was difficult for her to understand (e.g., because the teacher often used jargons such as "word attack skills" and "written comprehension").Wells ' (2008) investigation on college students evidenced that cultural capital had a positive effect on student persistence in postsecondary education.Based on a survey carried out among university students in Finland, Merenluoto (2009) revealed that cultural capital had a positive effect on students' success and attainment in higher education.In another study, Tramonte and Willms (2010) distinguished between static cultural capital (i.e., the highbrow activities and practices of parents) and dynamic cultural capital (i.e., cultural interactions and communication between children and their parents).The results showed that dynamic cultural capital had stronger effects than static cultural capital on students' schooling outcomes.In a recent study, Pishghadam, Noghani, and Zabihi (in press) observed that two subscales of cultural capital, i.e. cultural competence and literacy, were predictive of EFL learners' English language grades.

Attribution theory and cultural capital
Developed by Weiner (1985), Attribution Theory is an approach to motivation which constituted a great part of research on student motivation in the 1980s (Dörnyei, 2005).It focuses on people's beliefs about themselves and how they explain their perceived successes and failures.The theory, therefore, lies within the constructivist framework and deals with the ways by which individuals construct their own views and meanings from the world around them (Williams & Burden, 1997).It relates to motivation in the sense that attributions of success and failure can influence people's motivation to tackle future tasks (Jarvis, 2005).For example, the extent to which a person attributes failure to lack of ability or to lack of effort affects that person's future actions (Williams & Burden, 1997).Weiner (1986) introduces four sets of attributions, namely ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck, to which people tend to hang on their perception of success and failure.These attribution factors are related to three dimensions of locus (internal versus external), stability, and controllability.Aptitude, for instance, is internal, stable, and uncontrollable, while chance is external, unstable, and uncontrollable (Weiner, 2004).
Only a few studies have been conducted so far to explore learners' attributions in the area of learning a second or foreign language (Tsi, 2000;Williams & Burden, 1997;Williams, Burden, & Al-Baharna, 2001;Williams, Burden, Poulet, & Maun, 2004).These studies mostly focus on identifying second or foreign language learners' attributions for success and failure.Few of them, however, have focused on the extent to which other factors can affect individuals' attributions for success and failure in learning a foreign language.Cultural differences, for example, have proved to be effective in defining the factors to which individuals ascribe their success or failure (Brown, Gray, & Ferrara, 2005;Yang, 2009).Cultural capital, as a sociological variable which explains a great part of individual differences, is a case in point.However, no study, to the researcher's best knowledge, has been done to date to investigate the role of cultural capital in foreign language learners' attributions for success and failure.

Purpose of the present study
The present study attempted to construct and validate a questionnaire of cultural capital through investigating the role of EFL learners' cultural capital in their attributions for success and failure in learning a foreign language and also their foreign language achievement.Therefore, this research was conducted to find out answers to the following questions: Q1: What are the reliability and validity of the 12-item cultural capital questionnaire?Q2: What are the best predictors of cultural capital in foreign language achievement?Q3: Is there any significant relationship between cultural capital and EFL learners' attributions?

Method 3.1 Participants
A sample of 476 university students, 325 female and 151 male, participated in the present study.They studied English Language and Literature (n = 257, 54.0%), Teaching English as a Foreign Language (n = 149, 31.3%), and English Translation (n = 70, 14.7%) at three universities in Mashhad, a city in north-eastern Iran.The participants' age ranged from 19 and 29 (M= 21.57, SD= 1.71).They all had passed their language proficiency courses, namely, Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Grammar in their respective majors.No distinction was made between students majoring in English literature, teaching English, or translation and also between evening and day students.

Causal Dimension Scale (CDS-II)
Developed by McAuley, Duncan, and Russell (1992), this questionnaire was designed to measure causal attributions for performance.It comprises 12 items measuring four attribution dimensions, namely, locus of causality, stability, personal control, and external control that are scored on a 9-point Likert-scale.Subscales scores can range from 3 to 27, with higher values representing attributions that are more internal, stable, personally controllable, and externally ISSN 1925-4768 E-ISSN 1925-4776 70 controllable.The reliability estimates for the four dimensions are as follows: locus of causality, r = .60 to .71;stability, r = .66to .68;external control, r = .71to .92;personal control, r = .72 to .90 (McAuley, Duncan, & Russell, 1992).In the present study, Cronbach Alpha estimated the reliability of the whole items as .81.

Language Achievement Attribution Scale (LAAS)
The questionnaire was developed by Hsieh and Schallert (2008) to measure causal attributions for success and failure in language achievement.This self-report instrument comprises eight questions that are scored on a 6-point Likert-scale.It measures six subscales of ability, effort, task difficulty, luck, mood, and teacher.Because each subscale was measured by only one item and because each item in the questionnaire was so different from the other, it does not make sense to measure the internal consistency of this questionnaire.

3.2.3
The newly designed 12-item Cultural Capital Questionnaire (CC-12) In order to measure the participants' levels of cultural capital, the researcher designed a questionnaire.Since, to the researcher's best knowledge, nobody has designed a questionnaire of cultural capital that takes a comprehensive account of cultural capital indicators, the questionnaire was first constructed, piloted and administered to EFL learners (see Appendix).

Procedures
To design the questionnaire, the researchers elicited the indicators of cultural capital from a collection of previous studies (Lareau & Weininger, 2003).Joint consultations were held to make the best items out of the previously made checklist and also to revise the items.The questionnaire comprises 12 items.The items are scored according to a 5-point Likert-scale ranging from (1) "strongly disagree" to (5) "strongly agree".The questionnaire was distributed among 476 EFL students from three universities in Mashhad, a city in northeast Iran.The questionnaire was administered to them during class hours and they were asked to fill out the questionnaire.

Data Analysis
The internal consistency of the questionnaire was measured with the Cronbach Alpha reliability estimate.To validate the questionnaire, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used.First, PCA extracted the underlying factors by calculating the eigenvalues of the matrix greater than 1.0.For conducting factor rotation, Varimax (orthogonal rotation) with Kaiser Criterion was used.The result was a rotated component matrix and a transformation matrix.The rotated component matrix indicated the variables loaded on each factor so that the researcher came up with the new factors.
Data were processed with SPSS 16 program.Cultural capital data were matched with the students' academic records in language proficiency courses and also their attributional tendencies.The researcher performed Multiple Linear Regression Analyses with a Stepwise Method to detect the best predictors in foreign language achievement in terms of cultural capital scores.

Reliability and construct validity of the 12-item Cultural Capital Questionnaire (CC-12)
Initially, Cronbach Alpha estimated the reliability of the whole items as 0.70.Next, the Factorability of the intercorrelation matrix was measured by two tests, namely, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity.The results obtained from the two tests (0.65, p < .05)indicated that the factor model was appropriate (Table 1).
The construct validity of the Cultural Capital Questionnaire was examined through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA).PCA extracted 4 factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.0 which accounted for 59.1% of the variance.Results from the Scree Test showed that a two-factor solution might lead to a better grouping of the items in the questionnaire.The researcher, then, inspected orthogonal rotation.The result of Varimax with Kaiser Normalization was a rotated component matrix.The results of this analysis are shown in Table 2.The results indicated that the two components each consisted of 6 items.
Finally, the researcher analyzed the items comprising each factor and named the two components as Textual literacy and Musical literacy.Items representing each factor are displayed in Tables 2 and 3, and the validated questionnaire is given in Table 7.

Correlations between cultural capital and components of learners' attributions
To see whether there is any significant relationship between learners' cultural capital and foreign language attributions, Pearson product-moment correlation was applied to the data.The results indicated that there is a significant positive correlation between cultural capital and ability attributions (r = 0.327, p < 0.01), effort attributions (r = 0.304, p < 0.01), internal attributions (r = 0.152, p < 0.01), stable attributions (r = 0.144, p < 0.01), and personal attributions (r = 0.092, p < 0.05).On the other hand, a negative relationship was found between cultural capital scores and learners' luck (r = -0.166,p < 0.01) and external attributions (r = -0.155,p < 0.01) (Table 4).

Regression coefficients predicting foreign language skills
To further analyze the data, regression analysis was conducted.Table 6 presents the results for language proficiency course grades being regressed on the variables of interest in this study (musical and textual literacy).The results reveal which variables are important in predicting achievement of foreign language skills.The listening skill explained 17% of the total variance, (Adjusted R² = 0.17, p < .05)using a combination of musical literacy and textual literacy.Having high levels of these two types of literacy was the best predictor of high scores in the listening skill.Likewise, the speaking skill had 21% of the total variance, (Adjusted R² = 0.21, p < .05)using a combination of musical literacy and textual literacy.On the other hand, reading, writing, and grammar explained 12% (Adjusted R² = 0.17, p < .05),10% (Adjusted R² = 0.17, p < .05),and 11% (Adjusted R² = 0.17, p < .05) of the total variance, respectively, with textual literacy as the only variable which entered the regression model.Having high levels of textual literacy was the best predictor of high scores in reading, writing, and grammar.These findings are presented in Table 6.

Validation of the questionnaire
This study sought to examine, in the first place, the reliability and validity of the 12-item cultural capital questionnaire.The results of this analysis were used to name each factor.Textual Literacy is the label for the first factor which consists of 6 items.As it is shown in Appendix A, items 2 and 9 ask learners whether they enjoy reading (general reading and reading literature); item 5 measures learners' knowledge about literature; items 7 and 11 ask learners if they frequently buy/borrow books and also if they have lots of books at home; item 10 refers to learners' parents and if they used to encourage their children to read.The second factor is called Musical Literacy, and refers to reading the pitches, rhythms, and also the meaning of music.This factor consists of 6 items.Items 1 and 8 ask learners' if they like to attend symphony concerts and if they enjoy listening to classical music, respectively; Item 4 asks if the learner knows all famous music composers; While items 6 refers to the frequency of learner's visiting museums, theaters, or attending concerts, item 12 asks whether the learner used to take art or music classes outside school; and item 3 measures learners' self-image and asks whether they think they are cultured because they understand music well.

Relationship between cultural capital and foreign language attributions
This study aimed to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL learners' cultural capital and their foreign language attributions.From the results of the correlation analyses, cultural capital positively correlated with ability, effort, internal, stable, and personal attributions.In other words, those learners who possessed higher levels of cultural capital attributed their successes and failures in learning a foreign language to more internal, stable, and personal factors.On the other hand, luck and external attributions were negatively correlated with cultural capital.These findings indicate that possession of cultural capital is positively correlated with the extent to which learners feel responsible for the outcome of the tests they take.As other studies have shown, learners' taking responsibility for their success and failure in turn leads to higher levels of achievement (e.g.Hsieh, 2004;Hsieh & Schallert, 2008;Pishghadam & Zabihi, 2011).It is thus recommended that English teachers remind learners that learners are responsible for the successful or unsuccessful outcomes.

Prediction of English language skills achievement
The present study sought to investigate if there was any relationship between Iranian EFL learners' cultural capital and their achievement of foreign language skills.As stated earlier, Bourdieu puts emphasis on the role of family in initially providing children with cultural capital.According to Bourdieu and Johnson (1993, pp. 21-27), family inheritance is the main factor in determining the extent to which a child has acquired a particular cultural competence.Therefore, it can be fairly said that family plays a significant role in learners' achievement of a foreign language through its taking control of and providing cultural resources (musical and textual) as well as cultural activities that set the scene for learning another language along with the mother tongue.
The results obtained in the current study may be fruitful for understanding better the ways in which parents and teachers can help EFL learners promote their academic performance.With regards to Listening and Speaking, musical literacy was the variable which proved most important in promoting foreign language achievement.This means that those who attend music classes, theatres, and concerts more frequently are more successful in the listening and speaking skills.Nino (2010), likewise, showed that music improved foreign language learners' oral performance.Music fruitition is regarded as an important technique in second language classrooms from a theoretical standpoint.Both Krashen's (1982) Affective Filter Hypothesis and Gardner's (1993) theory of Multiple Intelligences encourage the use of music in second language classrooms.
On the other hand, Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Grammar are mostly predicted by students' textual literacy.This finding is quite in line with Bourdieu's emphasis on the important role of school _ where textual literacy is expected to be developed _ as the second source of providing and appropriating cultural capital (Bourdieu & Johnson, 1993).English teachers should be familiar with the cultural goods and resources such as different books and dictionaries, multi-purpose audio and visual softwares, and different English language testing services.They should also try to enhance their learners' cultural awareness.To this end, however, teachers should first try to improve their own cultural capital.
Literacy, musical or textual, was found to be a highly significant factor in explaining foreign language achievement.Literacy is regarded as a social practice (McKay & Hornberger, 1996, p. 438) and it is not only achieved by individuals, but also it can be obtained at schools, in families (family literacy), in the workplace, etc. (Kern, 2000, p. 24).Literacy is also related to power.Having recognized this, McKay and Hornberger (1996) suggest that language teachers enhance collaborative literacy practices in language classes, while encouraging learners to gain a critical understanding of texts (p.440).Furthermore, literacy is related to culture.Since foreign language learners might come from different cultural backgrounds, it is recommended that foreign language teachers become aware of the different kinds and levels of literacy that learners bring with them to the language classroom.Kern (2000) contends that the meaning of literacy has been extended to other areas of topical knowledge so much so that we frequently encounter phrases such as 'science literacy', 'economic literacy', computer literacy' and so on.Professionals in language testing have regarded topical knowledge as a potential source of test bias (Bachman and Palmer, 1996).Eliminating topical content from language tests, however, might not always be the best solution.Accordingly, Bachman and Palmer suggest that language test developers should consult with content specialists in determining the extent to which they can include topical content in language tests (pp.120-127).
read each statement, and then answer the degree you agree with the each statement.Note that SD = Strongly Disagree, D = Disagree, N = Neither Agree nor Disagree, A = Agree, SA = Strongly Agree

Table 2 .
Rotated components and their loadings obtained via Principal Component Analysis

Table 4 .
Correlations between students' foreign language attributions (both LAAS and CDS-II) and their cultural * Shows the existence of significant relationship at the level of 0.01 * Shows the existence of significant relationship at the level of 0.05 *

Table 5 .
The results of correlation between components of cultural capital and foreign language skills * Shows the existence of significant relationship at the level of 0.01Vol.1, No. 1; June 2011 *

Table 6 .
Multiple regression analyses predicting foreign language achievement

Table 7 .
The newly designed cultural capital questionnaire