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Are women better at learning languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3887 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes  Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 25 of 76 08 October 2013 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Nope, not married to German speakers, recently moved, one native English, the two other not.
No, I think they are not that much smarter than the smart men in our group (lots of doctors). But the men are doing way worse, its not even close. Come to think of it, the class is being taught by a woman - that might mean the teaching method is geared towards women. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5365 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 26 of 76 08 October 2013 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
There you go. You just have to wait for the first snow falls, and the perfect challenge presents itself, to enhance your feelings of self worth. In the meantime, I hope you are not intending to accept this apparent position of male inferiority lying down. Where is your manly competitive instinct? Pauken, pauken, pauken. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4814 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 27 of 76 08 October 2013 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think any teaching method is geared towards women or that just women are basically more interested in spending time chatting and communicating and therefore they are better in the class. But it is well possible that those particular women find the methods well suited to their needs while those particular men you are comparing them to don't. I just don't think it is a gender based thing.
An exemple. My exboyfriend had German at highschool for two years. It was a technical highschool so most were boys and all the students (including the several girls) were much more interested in technology, logic, physics than humanities. But the teacher chose methods that would suit better people with exactly opposite needs (perhaps things you would consider geared towards women). And guess what. After two years, both boys and girls sucked just the same at German, they were totally unable to put together a simple sentence. It's about the particular group of people and their needs, not about gender. In my classes at highschool, the methods were quite mixed and so were the results. There were both girls and boys who did really well and those who didn't. In the private group classes I used to use, it was just the same. I think all the discussions of "are xxx naturally better at learning languages" have one major flaw. And it doesn't matter whether the xxx are the women, the people with high IQ, the scientists, the dog/cat people or the bartenders. Learning a language doesn't require just one skill, one talent. It is a complex structure. You need both good memory and logical thinking. You need good communicative skills in general and you need ability to sit down with some input. And I could continue for a few more paragraphs. You have obviously got three women whose personal skills and talents are obviously going well with the methods used in your class. They are either putting in the work outside the class or they are just as good without it. Good for them. Now, the question is not "Does their different physiology/psychology/evolution/social role give them an unfair advantage?." That is a bit childish, in my opinion. The correct question, which is not always easy to ask, is: "What should I do to get just as good as they are or even better?". 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| LanguagePhysics Newbie United States Joined 3951 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 28 of 76 08 October 2013 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Translators and language teachers seem to be disproportionately women in my experience, so I definitely think there is some truth in this.
Whether this is because women are better at learning languages or whether they are just more interested in studying languages is hard to say. Edited by LanguagePhysics on 08 October 2013 at 4:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4814 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 29 of 76 08 October 2013 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think either of these options is the number one reason.
translator: one the best jobs when you want flexible schedule teacher, including language teacher: again a job that allows you to have a flexible schedule (or holidays in public schools) or it is often a job men escape to gain more money elsewhere. So, no wonder many women who plan to have children/have already got them are going for these. And men who plan to feed a family/already feed one don't. On the other hand, there are many men who create new online language teaching tools. In the end, I think the % of men and women in the language related fields won't be that different. Edited by Cavesa on 08 October 2013 at 5:01pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5186 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 30 of 76 08 October 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Even if you could prove without a doubt that women or men are generally better at learning languages (or any other task) than the other gender, it would never be the case that all women are better than all men (or vice-versa). In other words, there is way too much variation between individuals for this to matter or affect you in whatever you choose to study.
8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5150 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 31 of 76 08 October 2013 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What women can do and what they actually wish and choose to do are two very different things, the latter being a mystery more inscrutable than the intricacies of the atom.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5346 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 32 of 76 08 October 2013 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would argue that men are inherently no better or worse than women at learning
languages. The only way in which I could see that being true would be if you looked at the different ways men and women are socialized in the context of education (and even then you'd have to account for different cultures). If you looked at it from that point of view you'd want to see if women have been by and large taught skills (consciously or not) that lend themselves to language learning. But, again, you'd have to look at it on a global scale when talking about things like Goethe Institute courses in which people from around the world are taking classes. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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