GENDER AND

LANGUAGE IN THE
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
CLASSROOM

Presented by: Muizzah Tahir
Roll No. 23011702-017
 
Classroom interaction (teacher-to-
student and student-to-teacher
talk, as well as student-to-student
talk).
 Language learning and
assessment
 Language teaching materials.
Classroom interaction

Teacher-to-student talk

 In the 1970s and the 1980s studies ….
 Teachers gave unequal attention to boys and
girls.
 Spender (1982) found that she spent more time with
boys than girls.
 Merrett and Wheldall (1992) also found that teachers
in secondary schools gave more positive
and negative responses to boys than to girls.
 
 Kelly (1988) stated that, across different age groups
and a number of countries, girls obtained less of
teachers’ attention in class.
 Swann and Graddol (1988) have suggested that
teachers giving more attention to boys is usually
unintentional and should be considered as
differential teacher treatment by gender rather than
bias.
 
 Sunderland (1996) examined specific ways in which
the teacher tended to treat the girls and boys
differently.
 The concept of solicit.
 The quality or the kind of teacher attention was more
important than the quantity of teacher attention.
 The teacher interacted more often with the boys, but
this interaction did not involve any academic
exchanges. On the other hand, girls seemed to be
more academically involved in the interaction.
Student-to-teacher talk

 For instance, answering questions or asking for
clarification.
 Male students had a tendency to talk more to the
teacher than female students.
 Kelly (1988) indicated that the girls were as
willing as the boys.
 Batters (1987) found that male students were
dominating oral and participatory activities.
 Baxter (2002) found that girls are positioned by
competing classroom discourses.
 Sunderland’s research

 Sunderland (1996) also looked at student-to-teacher
talk. She found that there were more similarities
between girls’ and boys’ talk to the teacher than
differences.
 Sunderland pointed out that teachers and
researchers should be cautious with the ‘more is
better’ interpretation when analysing interactions in
the foreign language classrooms, and that we also
need to look at what is done and achieved in that
talk.
 Student-to-student talk

 During group work and pair work activities.
 Holmes (1994) found that men tended to openly
disagree more than women did.
 Gass and Varonis (1986), observed that there was
more negotiation in mixed-sex pairs than in single-
sex ones.
 Provo (1991) found that male students were talking
more.
Language learning
and assessment

Researcher’s point of view

 Ekstrand concludes that almost all the behavioural
variation may be explained by cultural factors.
 Ehrlich (1997) discusses the importance of the setting
where learners are exposed to new L2 forms.
 Ehrlich (1997) and Ogbay (1999) criticize earlier
studies for disregarding the gendered nature of
interaction in such classrooms.
 
 Norton and Pavlenko (2004) identify gender as one
of the important aspects of social identity which
interacts with other factors.
 Ludwig’s (1983) study found no significant
differences in terms of motivation among college
learners of German, French and Spanish.
 Batters (1987) found differences between girls’ and
boys’ attitudes towards language learning activities.
 
 Goh and Foong (1997) found that female Chinese
ESL learners in Singapore used compensation
strategies.
 If girls/women are more likely to commit
themselves to building up on newly presented
language forms, they may also be expected to be
more successful as language learners.
 The relationship between gender and language
testing is an important one since test results are
needed to partially explain girls’ superiority as
second and foreign language learners.
 Components of language
testing

 The topic: When topics are ‘female-oriented’…
 The task: boys have a tendency to do better
in certain types of test.
 Morris (1998) also stated that women
ESL writers had a tendency to follow the guidelines.
 The tester: may have a positive or negative effect on
the test outcomes in a number of ways. They may
mark female and male students preferentially.
Language teaching
materials
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 Textbooks
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 Research showed that female characters in teaching
materials were poorly represented in terms of their
visibility, and negatively represented in terms of
personal traits and occupational roles, both in text
and illustration.
 At the same time, content analyses of language
teaching textbooks revealed that male characters
were overrepresented.
 Hellinger’s research

 Hellinger’s (1980) analysis of 131 passages from three
ELT textbooks used in German schools revealed that 80
per cent of the speakers in the passages were men.
 Women’s roles in those language teaching textbooks
were not only limited in variety, but also less powerful
and influential in social terms.
 Jimenez Catalan and Ojeda Alba (2000) found that men
appeared in illustrations more often than women. They
also found many more prestigious jobs in the
illustrations of men (66 jobs), compared to 21 lower
status jobs for
women.
 Linguistic analyses

 Female characters in textbooks seem to give more
encouraging verbal feedback to their conversational
partners.
 Interrupt less in mixed-gender conversations.
 Participate less in conversations.
 Suggestions by
Sunderland

 Teachers need to be vigilant about problematic
representations of gender in teaching materials.
 Policy – with the aid of research – can support and
promote the use of gender-inclusive materials, a
range of curriculum topics and texts that appeal to
both girls and boys, as well as gender-awareness
information and training for teachers.
Thank You
