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Are women better at learning languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3886 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes  Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 49 of 76 10 October 2013 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Learning math, physics (hard sciences) have two components: 1. Natural ability (this is the subject of this thread). 2. Sheer drive/need to persevere. Women, in general, do not need to work as hard as men to attract the opposite gender. A good job for a man is a necessity in the dating market. Not so for the women. Hence women give up on math/physics/engineering when it gets tough. Men have to deal with failure, and still keep going day after day. This is what is needed to become good at math. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4511 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 50 of 76 10 October 2013 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
Would you please go be sexist about men somewhere else. Thank you. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5138 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 51 of 76 10 October 2013 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hm. I think you basically lost me here. I do not follow you in your reasoning as to why men often are very good at focusing - but I do agree that it is more common for men than for women to become VERY interested in a particular topic. I call it my one male quality though, as I otherwise tend to fall neatly into all the stereotypes for women, but I do get extremely single minded when a particular topic interests me. I think you underestimate women when it comes to perseverance. If you tried your reasoning with a fisherman's wife up in Northern Norway who had to be a single mom with 4 kids, run the farm and keep up a day job months at the time while her husband was out fishing, she would laugh so hard that she would fall off her chair. "Give up when it gets tough", indeed. I could give you a lot of other examples, but I do not want this to turn into a war of the genders. I do disagree with you most strongly though. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3886 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 52 of 76 10 October 2013 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
I didnt say women do not have perseverance, I should been more clear that they dont have the *need* to persevere in math type fields. Also, we are talking about teenagers, as that is when kids decide whether to pursue hard sciences or not. Talking about adults, with kids and responsibilities, it can be said that in many cases the mothers have more of a need to persevere than the fathers. Edited by Gemuse on 10 October 2013 at 4:20pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6713 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 53 of 76 10 October 2013 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know either. I saw a statement like that recently, something like "girls are generally better at langagues, while the boys are better at English, thanks to video games". The step from encountering certain terminology (and maybe getting some degree of interaction with other people) to having "learned English from video games" is huge. I know exactly where I saw some words for the first time (roleplaying games, video games on the C64), but that alone didn't make me a speaker of English (nor have I had that much use of it). If anything, I think text chatting and forums play a more important part, as long as the kids are able to put together full sentences... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 5844 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 54 of 76 10 October 2013 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
Strangely enough I studied a Hard Science (Biochemistry) at University. The gender ratio in the final year was two thirds women. Most of the women in that class went on to study PhD, MSc, etc and work in the field while the men I graduated with mainly gave up on the field within five years. Also all first class degress went to women and the majority of 2.1 to women. All the passes and third class degrees went to men. Getting back to the topic. All the language classes I have ever attended usually had more women in them than men. I've had only one female teacher in all of the classes and I haven't noticed a style of teaching more centred towards women than men. The only noticeable difference between the genders (admittedly with small sample size and age of students) is that the women were more likely to try to speak the language and not get embarrassed about making mistakes. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5570 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 55 of 76 10 October 2013 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
Studying engineering. )= I'm not a woman. Guess I need a mastectomy and genital reconstruction surgery, then. And tell my boyfriend he's gay. But seriously, could you not phrase these things as if they were true for any given member of either sex? Now in my country, most STEM fields, but especially the E, have significantly fewer female students enrolling, even though in high school females do slightly better than males in the sciences. Of those who are enrolled, slightly fewer females drop out of university. I've been told that in those fields that are considered the hardest, like areospace engineering, even fewer females enroll, but those who do enroll, finish their degree. I cannot find statistics to prove or disprove that statement, though, because there are so few graduates overall. Interstingly enough, female graduates are more likely to not work in the field than their male counterparts. Why? They certainly are just as qualified as the males. More than that, German companies in many sectors claim to desperately need engineers. So why? My answer is: Most likely family planning. Engineers are often expected to work more hours than their contracts say. It is illegal to make pregnant employees work overtime. During pregnancy, women should be protected from certain things like chemical agents, loud noise, physical excertion, night shifts etc, and they have the right to paid leave. There's an additional option to parental leave of up to three years for either parent or to be split (used to be only for the mother), but men most likely use it when they already work in professions that are female dominated. For the employer this means that they aren't allowed to fire their employee; the contract has to continue once the employee returns from their parental leave. At the same time, in many areas of especially West Germany finding day care for children under 3 years is a problem. Then there's social pressure on women to not give their toddlers to day care, and there is social pressure on women to start thinking about having children in their late 20s. The old myth that fertility rapidly decreases after the early 30s is still very much alive. Now, if engineers have been out of their job for a year or longer, they are considered to be out of touch with current developments in many sectors. Or at least that's the reason given for why German companies tend to recruit young engineers from other countries and not unemployed 50+ German ones. Cynics may say they don't have to pay the younger ones as much ... One of the most enlightening reports I recently read about gender bias in employment and education in Germany highlighted that young adults, when choosing their major or choosing whether to go to university at all, consider these things. One of the main criteria for young women choosing their major is whether they are likely to be able to reduce their working hours hours to part time when they need to look after possible future children. Also, women are more likely to change jobs and work jobs they are overqualified for. What does this have to do with language learning? Possibly that women are overrepresented in social sciences in my country, and in many other western cultures. Here, translators are often self-employed and can work from home. Teaching is considered a relatively secure profession - and there'll surely be demand for language teachers in Europe. So there might just be many women with high motivation to persevere in their language studies, even though it's a long and arduous journey. Oh, wait, women whose life plan is to marry well and to let their man 'do the hard work'? I personally can't remember having met a single one of those. I do know couples where the steady income of the woman allows the man to pursue his education, build up a business etc. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. I know couples that started dating when they went to university together, then she got pregnant. Some of the women dropped out, others managed to graduate. And may or may not be employed in the sector ... But this *still* doesn't say *anything* about any one individual's personal circumstances. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6401 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 56 of 76 10 October 2013 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
Also, in your situation there are two possible advantages for someone who's not a native speaker of English: -if they speak it, they have more experience than someone who's learning their first foreign language -if they don't speak it, their need for German for their survival is much stronger, and they also can't live in an English bubble (or possibly even a native language bubble, but that varies - Turkish speakers can definitely do that in Germany, for example) And yeah, no need to be sexist and condescending towards any gender. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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