Girls and boys

 As we write our new edition of The Language Teacher Toolkit, we have to decide what to keep in and what to leave out. I had written a section on the differences between boys and girls. But ultimately we feel that, although the research is interesting, there's not a lot you can do with it in practical terms. So, we'll not include this section in the book. Instead, I'll park it here, in case you are interested in what research has said about gender differences in second language learning. If you are interested in any of the references, I'm sure you'll be able to find them.

A couple of fairly well known points about competition and subject usefulness emerge, as you'll see below.

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Much has been written about the underperformance of boys in L2 learning. Across the world more girls choose to study languages and their achievement tends to be higher. Many assumptions have been made about the causes of this phenomenon. What does the research say? Studies in this area are still quite sparse.

Van de Slik, van Hout and Schepens (2015) analysed gender differences with 27,119 adult immigrant L2 learners of Dutch. Female learners consistently outperformed males in speaking and writing proficiency in Dutch as a second language.

 Research indicates that girls in the UK on average outperform boys when it comes to language learning (they do in all subjects in general, but the differences are far more notable in languages). Burstall (1975) and Davies (2004) observed lower attainment scores for British boys learning French. However, a study by Clarke and Trafford (1996) noted that in some schools certain boys did equally well as girls. The researchers found that the lower the socio-economic group, the less well boys achieved compared with girls. 

The interviews they carried out found that these boys had a clearer idea of how a second language could be useful to them in business and international affairs. Moreover, a number of students spent their holidays abroad and had contact with foreigners on a regular basis. In other words, they had a higher level of extrinsic motivation and empathy with, and interest in the L2 country.

Clarke and Trafford’s finding coincides with our own experience and explains why, in international school settings where parents are not only quite affluent, but also more used to travelling and more frequently in contact with foreigners, boys’ motivation to learn another language is substantially higher than in many schools.     

Are the above studies which show an advantage for females to do with motivation or brain differences? Several studies have attempted to answer this question.

Burman, Bitan and Booth (2008) tested boys and girls between the ages of 9 to 15 using a type of brain scan called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during various spelling and writing tasks. The students were asked to read words without hearing them as well as hear and identify words without seeing them. The researchers found that girls showed greater activation in language areas of the brain such as areas associated with listening and speech production. Boys’ brains, however, were activated in purely auditory and visual areas. The study suggested that girls rely on a ‘supramodal’ language brain network (activating more than just visual and auditory processes), whereas the boys processed words differently depending on whether they saw or heard them. The girls also performed better on other language tests. The authors conclude: “Assuming a nature-based, genetic difference in the female and male equipment in L1 and L2 acquisition does not preclude that nature (genes) and nurture (environment) interact in intricate ways and on various levels ranging from the individual to the societal” (online source).

In contrast, a study by Boyle (1987) with two sets of Chinese college students (nearly 500 in total) found that, although the females were superior in general language proficiency, the males had higher average scores in two tests of listening vocabulary.

Motivational differences. What do we know about gender-specific affective factors which influence L2 learning? Research findings diverge slightly in some areas, but research carried out in England has produced some findings which will not surprise practising teachers.

q  Williams, Burden and Lanvers (2002) found that boys have a less positive attitude to other languages than girls. They found that girls had a significantly higher degree of desire to learn French and that they also put in more effort to learn the language.

q  Girls are more likely to find languages important than boys. A study in Canada by Kissau (2006) found that both classroom and societal factors (e.g. perceptions of the L2 culture) had an influence on motivation and that boys often reported that language learning was more for boys than girls.

q  Boys perceive the subject to be more difficult than girls. Their expectancy of success is lower than girls’. In schools where students are grouped by ability this phenomenon is exacerbated by the fact that in England most top-set classes are dominated by girls, which reinforces boys’ perception of that languages are for girls.

q  Girls are more likely than boys to attribute success to hard work rather than ability (Callaghan, 1998).

q  Boys appear to be more instrumentally motivated than girls. Oga-Baldwin and Fryer (2020) found that boys in Japanese elementary schools had lower ‘high quality’ motivation for L2 learning in general than girls, but did show evidence of ‘low-quality’ motivation (e.g. extrinsic rewards). In other words, girls showed more autonomous motivation that boys, who needed more external guidance.

q  View of self. Sung and Padilla (1998) investigated the motivation of public school students in California for learning Chinese, Japanese and Korean. They found that girls scored more highly than boys and concluded this had more to do with perceived roles than any natural advantage (see Kissau, 2006, above).  Carr and Pauwels (2006) concluded boys often hold basic beliefs about language study: it is not something that boys do, not something that boys are good at. Beyond the scope of this book are further issues to do with how males and females ‘construct’ their self-view. Some researchers have argued that males tend by nature to be more focused on independence than communal behaviour. Since language learning is a social, communal activity, this would tend to favour girls. Other scholars take an opposing view, that ‘self-construction’ is a societal process and nothing to do with any natural predisposition.

q  Boys tend to be more competitive than girls (Niederle and Vesterlund, 2011). This is anecdotally reported so often that it has become commonplace for teachers to create competitive activities in lessons, partly to cater for the perceived needs of boys.

q  Lesson style. Jones and Jones (2001) showed a link between low achievement and disaffection. Of the causes they identified, of note was the fact that some boys found the large amount of target language use demotivating, This was allied to a perceived lack of content beyond the purely linguistic. In other words, some boys wanted the subject to be ‘about something’. Some felt that languages lack relevance and usefulness, and are more difficult than most subjects to get to grips with.