is valued by the culture or community of the learner is an important indicator of the motivation to learn a language. Gender, as a social factor, also influences SLA. Females have been found to have higher motivation and more positive attitudes than males for second-language acquisition. However, females are also more likely to present higher levels of anxiety, which may inhibit their ability to efficiently learn a new language. There have been several models developed to explain social effects on language acquisition. Schumann's Acculturation Model proposes that learners' rate of development and ultimate level of language achievement is a function of the "social distance" and the "psychological distance" between learners and the second-language community. In Schumann's model, the social factors are most important, but the degree to which learners are comfortable with learning the second language also plays a role. Another sociolinguistic model is Gardner's socio-educational model, which was designed to explain classroom language acquisition. Gardner's model focuses on the emotional aspects of SLA, arguing that positive motivation contributes to an individual's willingness to learn L2; furthermore, the goal of an individual to learn an L2 is based on the idea that the individual has a desire to be part of a culture, in other words, part of a (the targeted language) mono-linguistic community. Factors, such as integrativeness and attitudes towards the learning situation drive motivation. The outcome of positive motivation is not only linguistic but non-linguistic, such that the learner has met the desired goal. Although there are many critics of Gardner's model, nonetheless many of these critics have been influenced by the merits that his model holds. The inter-group model proposes "ethnolinguistic vitality" as a key construct for second-language acquisition. Language socialization is an approach with the premise that "linguistic and cultural knowledge are constructed through each other", and saw increased attention after the year 2000. Finally, Norton's theory of social identity is an attempt to codify the relationship between power, identity, and language acquisition. A unique approach to SLA is Sociocultural theory. It was originally developed by Lev Vygotsky and his followers. Central to Vygotsky's theory is the concept of a zone of proximal development (ZPD). The ZPD notion states that social interaction with more advanced target language users allows one to learn a language at a higher level than if they were to learn a language independently. Sociocultural theory has a fundamentally different set of assumptions