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Are women better at learning languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4081 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes  Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 1 of 76 07 October 2013 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Then men?
In the Goethe intensive class I have been taking, the men (some very smart ones) outnumber the women, but the top 3 in class are all women. They just seem to retain information and vocabulary easier. It annoys me to no end. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4702 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 2 of 76 07 October 2013 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In general - I wouldn't generalize based on your experience in this one class. For one, the sample size is tiny.
There is some evidence that women and men learn language differently (see this article), but I don't think we can extrapolate from there to the idea that women are better at second language acquisition. More importantly, I don't see why it's strange in the first place that the top three in your class are all women. It seems like you feel that shouldn't be the case because some of the men are "very smart". So what? I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything.
It would be nice if you could applaud these women for their hard work, and not devalue their success by suggesting they're only good because they're women. 24 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4252 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 76 07 October 2013 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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^That post said everything necessary. I'd like to expand just a little that if men and women do learn languages differently it would just make sense that women do better with some approaches than men. I've noticed that women generally struggle a bit more in Michel Thomas recordings so it might be that that approach favors men? I don't have the credentials to make such assumptions but my point is that you should be happy for them instead of being irritated.
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| bela_lugosi Hexaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 6453 days ago 272 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English, Finnish*, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish Studies: Russian, Estonian, Sámi, Latin | Message 4 of 76 07 October 2013 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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We must also take into consideration the inherent interest women have for social interaction (vs. men generally being more analytically and technologically oriented). I believe it helps in second language acquisition because learning the grammar and all the new words serves a concrete purpose for most women. I know a lot of guys who would never voluntarily start learning a foreign language if not in a school class. Some time ago, however, I read a newspaper article on Finnish schoolboys who actually performed a lot better in English classes than their female peers.. According to that article it was all thanks to video games that are most often available only in English - a factor which obviously made the young lads use the language on a more frequent basis. ;)
In conclusion, I think women may be advantaged in the learning process itself but in the end it all depends on motivation. I remember that for me it was rather easy to learn foreign languages at school, but only because I was interested in learning them! I'd use a combination of two methods (visual & auditory) and use everything I learned actively in order to be able to retain all that information. Some of the girls got better marks than I did but I guess they haven't used any of the languages we studied (German, Swedish, Italian) after the long school years. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4143 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 76 07 October 2013 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
This post is...odd. Does it annoy you that they know more vocab than you? Or that they're women and they know more vocab than you? I don't quite see where you're going with this. I teach intensive full-time ten-month language courses to adults. Based on my experience, neither men nor women learn better as a gender. Some men learn faster than some women, and some women learn faster than some men. Whether they're men or women, the people who put the most effort into using new vocab in context learn it the fastest. And the people who read the most - in any language - tend to pick up new language structures the most quickly. Ten points for books. 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4081 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 6 of 76 07 October 2013 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
Being smart means acquiring knowledge quicker. And these smart men are smart by way of their highly technical and competitive scientific professions (and the education they have had for reaching this stage). Two of the women dont really have any professions.
You seem to be implying that these women are at the top mainly because of their hard work. This is what I am questioning. Half of the men (all the smart guys) work very hard (they need it professionally), and they supplement classwork with extra video lectures and outside work. But still they are struggling. Since this is an intensive course, the effect of just one class can be judged. At the end of each class, the men are all struggling with the new knowledge. These women seem to assimilate it, and apply it at the end of class itself. Since we are talking about new knowledge just given in that class, both genders have worked the same amount. Edited by Gemuse on 07 October 2013 at 8:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4081 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 7 of 76 07 October 2013 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
It annoys me that there is a group of people who are learning the language, way faster and seemingly easier, than highly skilled professionals. It just happens that this group is gender based. If this top group also consisted of highly skilled (women) professionals, then it would have made sense. If these top group had consisted of, say, similarly educated Swedish men, I would have been just as annoyed. Edited by Gemuse on 07 October 2013 at 9:10pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 4172 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 8 of 76 07 October 2013 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I teach English, and I can't say I've noticed a difference tbh. I have more women in all of my classes, and I'd say that in the adults classes, there were actually a greater percentage of men at the higher levels than the lower levels. But with teenagers, I really haven't noticed a difference.
I did read once upon a time that on average, men know more languages than women, but of the ones they know, women know them to a higher level on average. I can't remember where I read that though, so it could be nonsense. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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