Are Women Better Than Men at Noticing Language Details
Are Women Better Than Men at Noticing Language Details?
ABSTRACT:
Nowadays, people are concerned over whether females could notice more details in language learning than males. To tackle this problem, an experiment was carried out among the students in the pre-sessional course. They were asked to translate a sentence by comparing differences in English and Swedish grammar. The results showed female learners score higher in the test.
Introduction
It is widely accepted that in some certain areas men are better than women, such as engineering, architecture and cooking; while women are superior to men in nursing and teaching. However, consensus has yet to be reached concerning the interrelationship of gender and language, especially in identifying the details of unknown language.
This report focuses on how females differ from males in learning foreign languages. And in this report, the hypothesis was that women perform better than men in noticing language details.
Method
In order to prove the hypothesis, all students were formed as a group of three or two arranged by their gender to discuss and work out the experiment with others in their group and give their answers individually.
For the experiment, the students were given data in form of seven sentences in Swedish language with English translation. They had to read the data and look for differences between Swedish and English grammar in expressing ideas. After that, they had to translate one sentence given in English into Swedish by guessing from the data.
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Results
From the experiment, the average mark for 86 female students is 7.32 (Max: 12 Min: 3) while 24 male students also have their mark at 7.23 in average (Max: 11 Min: 3).
Discussion
As the statistical result shows, gender may be a possible factor in noticing language details. However, it is unreasonable to draw the conclusion that the hypothesis was confirmed as a result of limitations or problems during the experiment.
ABSTRACT:
Nowadays, people are concerned over whether females could notice more details in language learning than males. To tackle this problem, an experiment was carried out among the students in the pre-sessional course. They were asked to translate a sentence by comparing differences in English and Swedish grammar. The results showed female learners score higher in the test.
Introduction
It is widely accepted that in some certain areas men are better than women, such as engineering, architecture and cooking; while women are superior to men in nursing and teaching. However, consensus has yet to be reached concerning the interrelationship of gender and language, especially in identifying the details of unknown language.
This report focuses on how females differ from males in learning foreign languages. And in this report, the hypothesis was that women perform better than men in noticing language details.
Method
In order to prove the hypothesis, all students were formed as a group of three or two arranged by their gender to discuss and work out the experiment with others in their group and give their answers individually.
For the experiment, the students were given data in form of seven sentences in Swedish language with English translation. They had to read the data and look for differences between Swedish and English grammar in expressing ideas. After that, they had to translate one sentence given in English into Swedish by guessing from the data.
`
Results
From the experiment, the average mark for 86 female students is 7.32 (Max: 12 Min: 3) while 24 male students also have their mark at 7.23 in average (Max: 11 Min: 3).
Discussion
As the statistical result shows, gender may be a possible factor in noticing language details. However, it is unreasonable to draw the conclusion that the hypothesis was confirmed as a result of limitations or problems during the experiment.