Concepts of Sociolinguistic Competence

CHAPTER II. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
2.1. Profile of Foreign National College Students
The profile of the foreign national college students is described in terms of sociostructural perspective (nationality, age, sex, and native language), socio-cultural perspective (number of years studied the English language, length of stay in the Philippines, exposure towards the English language), and language learning characteristics (attitude, motivation, and can-do tasks).
On Nationality. The table showsa variety of 11 nationalities represented from the totality of the respondents. The nationalities include Indian, Nepalese, Nigerian, Somalian, Sudanese, Ghanaian, Syrian, Yemeni, Chadian, Samoan, and Iraqi. It is also apparent that majority of the respondents are Nigerians comprising 24.0 percent as compared to Somalians, which is the least, consisting only 8.0 percent of the total number of respondents.
The deliberate choice for students with varied nationalities to serve as the respondents of this study is theoretically supported having been based on the conceptual framework of the studies of Hammadou (2011). Hammadou (2011) wherein it was contended that prior knowledge like cultural familiarity affects comprehending a second language. Thereby, the close link between culture and prior knowledge (schema) justifies the theoretical assumption too that the variety in nationality (and cultural affiliation) will represent variations in terms of schema. ⁶
As with the finding on the large fraction of the population having Nigerian nationality, this is not merely incidental. Nigerians started to migrate in the Philippines and attended schools in the Philippines as early as the 1960s (Igbokwe, 2011), and that friendly ties have been maintained between the two countries especially that educational opportunities in the Philippines are known to be inexpensive compared to those offered in other countries.
As of 2014, about 8,000 Nigerians are studying in the Philippines (Aderemi, 2014), and that has likewise been their exposure and challenge to learn the English language, since the Philippines is a country that takes English as a Second Language and a lingua franca in enterprises related to the government, industries and the academe.