The development of cultural capital through English education and its contributions to graduate employability

Graduates’ employability has been an important goal of education and requires further research to uncover how education can support employability. Particularly in this globalized and multicultural world, English language and cultural understanding are acknowledged as two primary factors for desirable career outcomes. This study, therefore, investigates the development of cultural capital through learning English language and how such cultural capital contributes to English language learners’ employability. The study was guided by (Tomlinson, 2017) framework of graduate employability and employed semi-structured interviews with eleven participants from eight academic and professional disciplines. The findings revealed that cultural capital could be developed through the diversity of formal, non-formal, and informal forms of English language learning. The findings also indicated that cultural capital was evidently crucial in a way that it serves to develop human, social, psychological, and identity capital, all of which are components of graduate employability. Pedagogical implications and directions for future research are recommended for effective development of cultural capital in different forms of education (formal, informal, and non-formal) and for further exploration of cultural capital and employability in Vietnamese higher education.