Strategies to Improve Linguistic, Cultural and Social Capital Triumvirate in Tertiary Students: A Study Among Undergraduate Teacher Trainees in South India

Learning English is more a skill than a subject. In language classrooms, it is discussed predominantly as a subject that paves for a lack of competence among the learners. The present century demands linguistic, cultural and social capital from the learners to be successful in society. This capital triumvirate is crucial for a student to be successful in their career. Unfortunately, in some cases, a student’s vernacular language gets infused with their English language use and affects their linguistic, social and cultural capital. Students from a rural background who are academically sound possess low self-confidence because they need more fluency in English. English linguistic capital helps the student get acquainted with the sociocultural community at the global level and helps the student navigate the sociocultural matrix easily and confidently. The language (L1 and L2) teachers must impart cultural, social and linguistic capital to the students. The present paper focuses on the role of cultural, social and linguistic competence in an undergraduate student's academic and sociocultural context. The present study uses a structured questionnaire, a demographic profile, a pretest and a post-test to measure the developments in the various competencies of the selected students. The study designs and trains the students through various classroom intervention activities to create awareness of the three capitals and presents the result. The study insists on developing linguistic, cultural and social skills among tertiary-level students to succeed globally.