Women. There’s a lot of jokes going around about them, most popularly the tea one. Moreover, women’s topics are the highest at the peak for any humour. Current research on how men and women learn a language appears to show that females do have a real advantage. A number of reasons have been put forward for the gender difference.
Our Brains Process Language Differently :
The left side of our brain processes analytic and logic functions whilst the right side controls visual, oral and non-linguistic functions. According to the experiment, it shows that women use both sides of the brain when they talk and men only the right side. Women put a lot of effort into work just so they can talk, you agree as well? But again, why not use the given power!
Females Use More Learning Strategies:
Do you have any idea how females actually put hard work into learning languages?But you are just making fun of it!Females tend to take a stronger interest in the culture, the country and the speakers of the target language. Their studies employ all four key skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) and language elements (vocabulary, grammar etc). Male peers generally keep to a narrow range of familiar study methods.
Females Talk More:
Most of us would probably not disagree with this statement. And women take advantage of being a. better communicators and build more social connections. And because of these connections, women get more opportunities to practise their listening and speaking skills. They are able to ask questions and get answers to reinforce their comprehension of the target language. Of course, not all women are talkative and not all men are reticent, so undoubtedly some males also benefit in the same way from having good social skills.
Females Have Better Motivation:
This is perhaps the most controversial of the reasons put forward for gender difference in language learning as it is more difficult to prove. Let’s go back to highschool! This argument stems from how females and males react to studying in high school. It seems that female high school students are more likely to take up or continue language studies than their male peers. There’s a biassed argument that this is because both boys and girls view languages as being female subjects, with boys opting for more male dominated subjects such as maths and physics.
At last, clearly all of the reasons above are based on broad generalizations. Gender is a factor in language learning, it’s not considered the most important. Men too can make great language learners!
Writer,
Fatema Tuz Zannat Oyshi
Content Writing Department
YSSE