Socio-Cultural Background and English Writing Skills of Tribal Students in Higher Education

Abstract

There are many factors which influence writing
skills. Those factors are beyond grammar, spelling and sentence
structure. Our thinking, attitude, approach and most importantly
socio-cultural backgrounds have an impact on our writing.
Geographical divisions and various other demographic factors
lead to socio-cultural differences as a result of which people
coming from various tribes have different socio-cultural
backgrounds. Hence, this paper endeavors to study in depth
whether there is any impact of socio-cultural backgrounds on
English writing skills of tribal population hailing from different
tribes. State of Odisha has 62 tribes and this current study
involves analysis of 28 different tribes. By English writing skills,
we are referring to three stages of writing (pre/during and post).
The samples for the study were taken from the students of
Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, KISS (Deemed to be
University) Bhubaneswar through a structured questionnaire. A
hypothesis was framed and tested using Chi-Square. From the
study, it came to the limelight that there is no significant
relationship between socio-cultural backgrounds of students from
different tribes with their English writing skills.