noun phrase · academic

cultural capital

/ˈkʌltʃərəl ˈkæpɪtəl/CUL·tu·ral CAP·i·tal

Band 7+task2speaking

the skills, knowledge and cultural assets that give someone social advantage

Examples

Children from well-educated families often inherit cultural capital that helps them at school.

Teachers can help students build cultural capital by exposing them to books, museums and formal language.

Debates about access to cultural capital often appear in essays on social inequality.

Band 8 sentence

Policies that widen access to cultural capital — for example free museum programmes and arts outreach in schools — can reduce educational inequality.

Collocations

  • acquire cultural capital
  • possess cultural capital
  • lack cultural capital

Word family

cultural adjectivecapital nounculture noun

Common mistakes

culture capitalcultural capital

capital of culturecultural capital

Say it for a higher band

5culture6cultural knowledge7+cultural capital

Synonyms

cultural resources

Easily confused

social capital

Strong neighbourhoods often have high social capital because residents trust and help one another.

human capital

Investment in education is often described as investment in human capital.

Related words

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In Art & Culture

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