Sociolinguistic competence of foreign national college students

Theoretical Framework 
This study ushers the theoretical assumption that the phenomenon of sociolinguistic 
competence is associated to the socio-cultural theory and social-psychological theory of 
second language acquisition. This is the reason for choosing a set of students with diverse 
nationalities as respondents of this study to set the conditions of exploring into a variety of 
socio-cultural contexts as represented by the foreign national college students. 
Socio-structural perspective is characterized by attempts at dealing with the influence 
on bilingualism of ‘objective’ community characteristics. Both demographic and political 
aspects, together with socio-economic status are under this perspective (Gardner, 2012). In 
this study, these variables are age, sex, gender, and nationality. In here, Garner’s Socio-
psychological Theory is applied. 
On the other hand, socio-cultural theory (SCT) argues that human mental functioning 
is fundamentally a mediated process that is organized by cultural artifacts, activities, and 
concepts. Language use, organization, and structure are the primary means of mediation. The 
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process through which cultural artifacts, such as language, take on a psychological function is 
known as internalization. This process, along with mediation, is one of the core concepts of 
SCT. 
Vygotsky (as cited by Lantolf & Thorne, 2007), proposed that the key to 
internalization resides in the uniquely human capacity to imitate the intentional activity of 
other humans. In this study, this perspective comprises the number of years studied the 
English language, the length of stay in the Philippines, and the exposure to the English 
language. Hence, Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Theory is applied in this perspective. 
The third perspective is the language learning characteristics which consists of the 
attitude, motivation, and the Can-Do Tasks. Cognitive characteristics are individual 
differences in language learning that reflect differences in abilities or approaches to the task 
at hand (Gardner, 2012). In this study, the cognitive variable to be used is language learning 
strategies such as attitude, motivation, and Can-Do Tasks. These variables have shown 
appreciable relations to measures of achievement. 
Attitude and motivation approach was originally conducted by Gardner and Lambert, 
who reported that achievement in the second language is loaded on two independent factors: 
social motivation and language aptitude (Gardner, 2012). 
Can-do tasks, on the other hand was used by English Testing Service in 2009 to 
administer a self-assessment inventory to TOEIC examinees in Japan and Korea and found out 
that the everyday language tasks in English of the respondents has a significant relationship with 
their TOEIC speaking test scores (Educational Testing Service [ETS], 2010).