The Associations between Language-Specific Social and Cultural Capital and Language Exam Acquisition

In Hungary, between 1996 and 2022, a law was in force that ordered to have an at least B2 level foreign language exam to be able to get the degree.The legislation was suspended during the COVID period and abolished in 2022.It is agreed that learning achievement is strongly determined by socio-economic status, but no multidimensional study has yet been carried out on the impact of language-specific social and cultural capital.In the present study, we aim to investigate these close relationship structures among students without a language exam at the end of university years.We hypothesised that language-specific social capital influences attitudes towards language learning and thus the chances of passing the language exam.We conducted a survey among students who graduated from two higher education institutions in the most populous but economically least developed regions of Hungary, but did not obtain a degree due to lack of language proficiency.As a control group, we also interviewed successful language learners who as university students, already had a language examination that met the exit requirements.The full survey was carried out through our online questionnaire sent out on Neptun (Neptun is a unified study system software, which performs the academic and financial administration and educational organisation tasks of Hungarian higher education institutions).Our results show that linguistic social capital in the network of contacts has a significant impact on language proficiency.Informal relationships also have an impact on the effectiveness of foreign language learning, as friends belong to a similar social group to the language learner.The significance of the study of the Hungarian context lies in the unique language examination requirement for higher education, but there are also international lessons to be learned.The cultural and social diversity of learners and students means that language learning cannot be left to families to motivate, create a foreign