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.