Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages

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Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromsoe - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-09

Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages

10.1057/9780230274938 - Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages, Edited by Rosa Mª Jiménez Catalán


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Edited by

Rosa María Jiménez Catalán University of La Rioja, Spain




Selection, editorial matter and Chapter 5 © Rosa María Jiménez Catalán 2010 Chapters © their individual authors 2010

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–23262–4 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne


All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.


List of Figures and Tables

vii

Notes on the Contributors

x

Theorizing Gender Perspectives in Foreign and Second Language Learning Jane Sunderland

1

Part I Gender Tendencies in Lexical Acquisition, Development and Use 1 More Than Words: Inferential and Incorrect Units Recalled Cindy Brantmeier

23

2 Gender and L1 Influence on EFL Learners’ Lexicon Mercedes Díez Prados

44

3 Exploring the Role of Gender in Lexical Creations María Pilar Agustín Llach

74

4 Gender and Motivation in EFL Vocabulary Production Almudena Fernández Fontecha

93

5 Gender Tendencies in EFL across Vocabulary Tests Rosa María Jiménez Catalán

117

6 Boys’ and Girls’ L2 Word Associations Soraya Moreno Espinosa

139

Part II Gendered Words: Representation and Identities 7 A Case Study of Mrs Smith’s Words and Her Quiet Girls Allyson Jule 8 Gender Identity in Words for Professional Titles in Textbooks Mercedes Bengoechea and José Simón

167


Contents

188

v 10.1057/9780230274938 - Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages, Edited by Rosa Mª Jiménez Catalán

Contents

9 Humour, Vocabulary and Individuality in an EFL Task Julieta Ojeda Alba

212

10 Lexical Encoding of Gender Relations and Identities Antonio García Gómez

238

Index

264


vi


Figures 1.1 Literal Units Recalled for Boxing Passage by Gender 1.2 Distribution of Literal Units by Gender with Boxing Passage 1.3 Literal Units Recalled for Frustrated Housewife Passage by Gender 2.1 Examples of Grammatical Metaphor 2.2 Examples of Certainty and Doubt Adverbs for all Populations 3.1 Examples of Categories of Lexical Inventions 3.2 Distribution of Categories of Lexical Inventions for Boys 3.3 Distribution of Categories of Lexical Inventions for Girls 4.1 Cueword Scores per Sex 4.2 Mean Motivation Score per Sex 4.3 Cueword Scores and Motivation’s Positive Relation 6.1 Definition of Word Association Categories (Moreno, 2009:101)

33 34 36 61 65 79 82 82 100 101 104 143

Tables 1.1 Ranges, Mean Scores and Standard Deviations for Idea Units Recalled by Gender for Boxing Passage 1.2 ANOVA of Literal Units Recalled for Boxing Passage by Gender 1.3 Ranges, Mean Scores and Standard Deviations for Idea Units Recalled by Gender for Frustrated Housewife Passage 1.4 ANOVA Table for Frustrated Housewife Passage 2.1 Corpora Studied (number of words and compositions) 2.2 Measures of Lexical Competence per Subpopulation 2.3 Types and Amounts of Errors in Three ICLE Subpopulations 2.4 Type/Token Ratio Before and After Error Removal

32 32

35 36 51 56



59 59

vii 10.1057/9780230274938 - Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages, Edited by Rosa Mª Jiménez Catalán

viii List of Figures and Tables

68 79 80 80 81 83 83 99 100 101

102 102 102 103

103 126

126 127 127


2.5 Significant Differences in the Four Measures of Lexical Competence 3.1 Descriptive Statistics for Lexical Inventions 3.2 Descriptive Statistics for Composition Length 3.3 Descriptive Statistics for the Ratio Lexical Inventions/Composition Length 3.4 Results for Inferential Statistics 3.5 Absolute Values of the Categories of Lexical Inventions 3.6 Results for Inferential Statistics for the Categories of Lexical Inventions 4.1 Cueword Scores per Sex (MWW test: p-value = 0.019; K-S test: p-value = 0.016) 4.2 Mean Motivation per Sex (MWW test: p = 0. 006; K-S test: p = 0. 010) 4.3 Motivation Levels: Frequency and Percentage 4.4 Motivation Levels per Sex: Chi-Square Test. (a 1 cells (16.7 per cent) have Expected Count Less than 5. The Minimum Expected Count is 3.94) 4.5 Sex and Motivation Levels: Percentage 4.6 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation per Sex (MWW test: p = 0. 007; K-S test: p = 0. 020) 4.7 Correlation between Cueword Scores and Motivation, and Cueword Scores and Types of Motivation 4.8 Correlation between Cueword Scores and Motivation and between Cueword Scores and Types of Motivation per Sex 5.1 Means and Standard Deviations Obtained by Sixth EFL Learners across Tests 5.2 t-Test for Differences between Means Obtained by Girls and Boys, Taken all Together, in the Receptive Tests and in the Productive Tests 5.3 Mean and Standard Deviation in 1000 WT and 2000VLT Distributed by Gender 5.4 t-Test for Differences between Means Obtained by Girls and by Boys in the Receptive Tests 5.5 Means and Standard Deviations for Composition and Cue Word Tests by Gender 5.6 Correlation between Girls’ Results in the Four Tests: p < 0. 01 Level. Girls N = 105 5.7 Correlation between Boys’ Results in the Four Tests (∗∗ p < 0. 01 level) (∗ p < 0. 05 level). Boys (N = 105)

128 128 128



143 145 146 148 150 159 160 161 171 172 198 200 201 202 202 206 207 207 219 220 245 254


6.1 Mean Number of Tokens and Types Reported on an Individual Basis 6.2 Mean Lex30 Lexical Frequency Profile Following the Three-year Period 6.3 Correlations between Level zero words and the Vocabulary Levels Test 6.4 Mean Percentage of Associations by Class Word 6.5 Mean Percentage of Responses Given by Both Groups of Informants A.1 Fourth Grade: Top most frequent word association responses A.2 Fifth Grade: Top four most frequent word association responses A.3 Sixth Grade: Top four most frequent word association responses 7.1 Teacher Speech Acts 7.2 Student Speech Acts 8.1 Distribution of Samples (in our Corpus) 8.2 Sexist and Non-Sexists Denominations for ELE Materials 8.3 Frequencies of the 20 Most Common Professions 8.4 Ratios (Percentages of Total Tokens for the Most Common Professions) 8.5 Ratios (Percentages of the Total Tokens for All the Professions) 8.6 Gender Inflection (From González Hermoso and Romero Dueñas, 2007) 8.7 Gender Inflection (From Cerrolaza et al., 1999) 8.8 Excerpt from Activity 1, unit 7 (from Cerrolaza et al., 1999, 16) 9.1 Lexical Fields with the Highest Number of Types in FS 9.2 Lexical Fields with the Highest Number of Types in SS 10.1 Words Representing Categories of Affect in the Data 10.2 Words Representing Categories of APPRECIATION and JUDGEMENT in the Data

ix


María Pilar Agustín Llach works as an assistant teacher at the Department of Modern Languages at the University of La Rioja, Spain, where she teaches second language acquisition and linguistic courses. PhD in English Studies, she is a member of the Applied Linguistics Research Group (GLAUR) based at the University of La Rioja, where she has focused on the study of gender differences in vocabulary acquisition, development and use. She has published widely on these topics. Her most recent work is Gender Differences in Vocabulary Acquisition in the Foreign Language in Primary Education (University of La Rioja, 2009). Mercedes Bengoechea is Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics (Universidad de Alcalá, Spain). Her research on language and gender has focused on denouncing, on the one hand, the sexist usage of the language in the Spanish media and, on the other hand, normative linguistic policies and dictionaries of Spanish. She is a member of IGALA (International Gender and Language Association) Advisory Board; member of the Advisory Language Committee of the Instituto de la Mujer, NOMBRA (Ministry of Social Affairs); member of the Experts Committee on Gender and Childhood for the Institute of the National Spanish Television (Instituto Oficial de Radio Televisión Española) since 2005; and has been the co-ordinator of the 2006 Report of the Spanish National Observatory on Gender Violence. Cindy Brantmeier is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures of Washington University in St. Louis. Her investigations examine specific cognitive, linguistic and affective contributions to adult L2 reading capabilities. Some of her publications include Brantmeier, C., Schueller, J., Wilde, J. and Kinginger, C. (2007). Gender equity in foreign and second language learning. In S. Klein (ed.), Handbook for Achieving Gender Equity through Education (pp. 305–334). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, ‘Does gender make a difference? Passage content and comprehension in second language reading’ (Reading in a Foreign Language, 2003), and Brantmeier, C. (2002). The effects of passage content on second language reading comprehension by gender across


Notes on the Contributors

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Notes on the Contributors xi

Mercedes Díez Prados is Associate Professor at Alcalá University. Her research fields and publications are mainly concerned with discourse analysis, pragmatics and TEFL. She has published on gender and discourse, her most recent publications being ‘El Lenguaje dirigido a las mujeres frente al lenguaje dirigido a los hombres: ¿Igual o diferente?’, ‘Kimmy y Jules: Dos estereotipos de mujer en My Best Friend’s Wedding’ and ‘Women and Language in Female Magazines’. She is currently a member of the research project Efectos de las Políticas Antisexistas y Feminización del Lenguaje de los Medios, led by Mercedes Bengoechea and financed by the Spanish Instituto de la Mujer. Almudena Fernández Fontecha, PhD in English Studies from the University of La Rioja (Spain), teaches Applied Linguistics courses in the Department of Modern Languages. She is a member of GLAUR research group. Her main research interests are the implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIIL), Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and gender and motivation in foreign language learning. She is co-author of ‘Semantic Derogation in Animal Metaphor’ (Journal of Pragmatics, 2003) and author of several publications on mixed-sex education and foreign languages. Antonio García Gómez, PhD in English Linguistics, teaches Functional Linguistics and Discourse Analysis at the University of Alcalá de Henares de Madrid, Spain. His research interests focus on the construction of gender identities throughout oral and written discourse in different contexts. He is the author of Assertive Behaviour and Gender Roles in Interpersonal Communication: A Constrastive Study (Madrid: Magister Editorial, 2008), ‘Discourse, politeness and gender roles: an exploratory investigation into British and Spanish Talk show verbal conflict’ (Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense, 2000), ‘Sneaking gender into the EFL class’ (Porta Linguarum: revista internacional de didáctica de las lenguas extranjeras, 2006) and ‘ “Teenage Girls” Personal Weblog Writing: Truly a New Gender Discourse?’ (Information, Communication and Society 2009).


instruction levels. In J. Hammadou Sullivan (ed.), Research in Second Language Learning: Literacy and the Second Language Learner (pp. 149–176). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Rosa María Jiménez Catalán is Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics at the University of La Rioja where she teaches Translation, SLA and TESOL courses. She leads a research project granted by Spanish


‘Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología’ and FEDER, Grant No HUM200609775-C02-02/FILO on the acquisition of vocabulary by Spanish EFL learners in classroom contexts. Head of GLAUR research group, her research focuses mainly on gender in foreign language learning and cross-linguistic analysis of gender in English and Spanish. Some of her publications in this connection are: The English Vocabulary of Girls and Boys: Similarities or Differences? Evidence from a Quantitative Study [Palgrave, 2008 (co-authored with Julieta Ojeda)], ‘Sex differences in L2 Vocabulary learning strategies’ (International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2003), ‘Semantic Derogation in female/male examples of Animal Metaphor’ [Journal of Pragmatics, 2003 (co-authored with Almudena Fernández)] and the co-edition of ‘Género’, Sexo, Discurso’ (Editorial Laberinto, Madrid 2002). She is also co-editor of Content and Language Integrated Learning (Multilingual Matters, 2009), where the issue of gender is also addressed. Allyson Jule, PhD, is Associate Professor of Education and Co-Director of the Gender Studies Institute at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, Canada. She is the author of A Beginner’s Guide to Gender and Language (2008) and Gender, Silence and Participation in the Language Classroom: Sh-shushing the Girls (2003). She is also the editor of Gender and the Language of Religion (2004) and Language and Religious Identity (2007) and co-editor of Being Feminist, Being Christian: Essay from Academia (2006). She also serves on the advisory board of IGALA (International Gender and Language Association) and on CASWE (Canadian Association for the Study of Women in Education). Her work focuses on the complementary and often contradictory ways that gender identity, religious identity and classroom talk work alongside each other in the lives of girls and women. Soraya Moreno Espinosa holds a tenure at the Official Language School in Logroño where she teaches English and co-ordinates several programmes on assessment. She was awarded with a four-year research fellowship by Comunidad Autónoma de La Rioja to conduct her PhD studies. A member of GLAUR research group, she has conducted research and published in the field of second language acquisition and teaching, particularly in the area of vocabulary acquisition and assessment. Her current research interests are in the role of gender and type of instruction in EFL learners’ word associations. Her most recent publication being ‘Young Learners’ L2 Word Association Responses in Two


xii Notes on the Contributors


Notes on the Contributors xiii

Julieta Ojeda Alba is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of La Rioja, where she teaches North American Literature courses. She has been visiting professor at Northeastern University and Bridgewater College. Her research work focuses on literary writers such as Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne; and on foreign language education. Member of GLAUR research group, she has published articles on gender such as ‘Representaciones de la mujer en la música tradicional y country norteamericana’ (Madrid, Editorial Laberinto, 2002) and ‘Hawthorne’s Scribbling Women’ (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2001); and co-authored The English Vocabulary of Girls and Boys: Similarities or Differences? Evidence from a Quantitative Study (Palgrave, 2008). José Simón is Senior Lecturer in Computational Linguistics (Universidad de Alcalá, Spain) and Information Technologies for Language Teaching and Research. He has developed a number of computational tools for corpus management/exploitation and dictionary compilation which have been used by several publishing houses in Spain, France and Portugal. Together with Mercedes Bengoechea he compiled a corpus of officialese in which sexist utterances were annotated. All these expressions together with proposals of alternative non-sexist wordings were collected in a database published by the Instituto de la Mujer under the name Nombra.en.red. Jane Sunderland is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, UK, where she teaches courses on Language and Gender to MA and PhD students. She is interested in gender and language both inside and outside the foreign and second language classroom. She is the author of Gendered Discourses (Palgrave, 2004) and co-editor of Gender and Language Research Methodologies (Palgrave, 2008).


Different Learning Contexts’ (Content and Language Integrated Learning, Multilingual Matters, 2009).





Jane Sunderland

Gender and language education The field of gender and foreign or second language education – of which the teaching and learning of foreign and second language vocabulary is part – is a long-established one, having been a concern for many researchers and language teachers since the inception of the modern women’s movement (for example, Schmitz, 1975). It is also a wide field and hence of interest to a wide audience, including language education practitioners, researchers interested in second language acquisition (SLA) and many who work in gender studies. Of course, many readers will fall into more than one of these camps. The field itself can broadly be divided into three areas. The first is the subject matter itself: the second or foreign language in question, in the senses of usage and use, langue and parole, competence and performance. Most obviously, something that has to be taught and learned is the ‘grammatical gender’ of nouns in languages such as French and Spanish (see Corbett, 2004), in contrast to the ‘natural gender’ of nouns in English. More controversial are social questions surrounding genderrelated language change. One example is the recent non-use of Fraulein to refer to single women in German, for example – instead, both married and single women are Frau. Similarly in Spanish, the use of Señorita to refer to single women is beginning to be replaced by Señora (for both married and single women). A second example is the new non-sexist terminology to replace or provide an alternative to sexist items (chair instead of chairman, for example). Certain gender-related vocabulary items may be alienating to or enjoyed by EFL learners – the relatively new Ms, the old-fashioned use of chairman to refer to women and men alike. Learners of Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) have to face similar


Theorizing Gender Perspectives in Foreign and Second Language Learning

1 10.1057/9780230274938 - Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages, Edited by Rosa Mª Jiménez Catalán


issues, for example in the terms Hombre (man) and Mujer (woman). Comparable to English, the former has two senses: specific (men as opposed to women) and generic (human beings in general). However, in contrast to English (in which there has been a movement to avoid use of the socalled ‘generic’ man), in Spanish there is a strong movement to avoid the specific use of hombre (to refer to the masculine), replace it by Varón and to use Hombre only to refer to both varones (men) and mujeres (women), that is, as a gender-inclusive term. Again, this may be something that learners of SFL welcome or dislike. As regards language use, gender variation can largely be seen as a matter of tendencies (that is, as ‘sex-preferential’). (I avoid the word differences as this suggests something absolute rather than relative.) In terms of vocabulary, there may be sex-preferential use of words associated with certain topics: one study of the British National Corpus of Spoken English for example found quid (English slang for one pound sterling) to be more characteristic of male than female speech and school more characteristic of female than male speech (Rayson et al., 1997). In certain languages, however, for example Japanese, not only are certain prosodic styles sex-preferential, certain pronominal forms are sex-exclusive in terms of use. These are of course grammatical rather than lexical (and, indeed, even these cases of sex-exclusiveness may be loosening) (Swann et al., 2000). The notion of discourse in general and gendered discourse(s) (see for example, Sunderland, 2004) in particular has, however, shifted a concern with the ‘who’ of talk (men or women) to the ‘what’ of talk (that is, a combination of topic and how a given topic is addressed) – and a similar ‘what’ may be articulated by both women and men. I would suggest that the idea of ‘gendered styles’, including the notion of vocabulary use, is now outdated. It is now recognized that ‘styles’ vary hugely with genre and with context, context both including and extending to the notion of ‘Community of Practice (CoP)’, and vocabulary use in talk will inevitably be related to the CoP in question. Taking on board language use, Community of Practice has been defined as an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in some common endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in short, practices – emerge in the course of their joint activity around that endeavor. A community of practice is . . . defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that membership engages. (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1992)


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A language classroom is a CofP, as is (say) a multi-lingual workplace. If a given CofP is gendered (that is, if gender is relevant in that CofP), then it is likely that talk in that CofP will be too – but there is no reason to expect that such gendered practices will map neatly on to other CofPs or to talk by women and men more widely. For most languages, then, ‘a gendered style’ should not be something that teachers try to teach or learners try to learn (although languages which include normatively sex-exclusive grammatical features raise different issues). The second area of gender and foreign or second language education which can be identified is processes – both learning and teaching processes. Most straightforwardly, language learning processes include those associated with attitude and motivation (with implications for subject choice, when this is available or required), together with learners’ own beliefs, expectations and models of language learning; all these may be gendered. Processes extend to learning styles and strategies, student-talk in the classroom (to the teacher and to other students, both on-task and off-task), which have also been found to be gendered (see for example, Sunderland, 1998; 2000a; 2000b) and cognitive or psycholinguistic processes. They also include performance and achievement in relation to each of the ‘four skills’, achievement including both rate and route of acquisition (Ellis, 1994), that is, do girls really learn languages faster and/or better than boys, and does their learning happen in a different way? Vocabulary acquisition, use and development are related to all these. In this book, Soraya Moreno deals with development through patterns of word associations in the same EFL learners throughout three school years (fourth, fifth and sixth grade of primary education) and Julieta Ojeda Alba compares use of humour over time: in their fourth year of primary education compared to their second year of secondary education. Teaching processes include those associated with teacher beliefs concerning, inter alia, whether (and how) gender is a factor in language acquisition. Such beliefs may extend to teachers’ classroom practices, encompassing teacher talk, which may similarly be gendered (male and female learners for example being addressed or treated differently, including with slightly different sets of lexis). To both teaching and learning processes, which may be variously gendered in the sense that gender is ‘already’ an aspect of the various dimensions identified, we can add the notion of gendering. This includes the active and constitutive ‘maintaining the genderedness’ of the language classroom or even ‘making the language classroom more gendered’. This may happen in different ways. One is that, as suggested above, teachers’ discourse may position girls and women as the better


Jane Sunderland



language learners. A second, given that many mixed-sex classes are largely populated by women and/or girls, may be the associated ‘gendering’ of those students who choose to learn a particular foreign or second language (for women and girls, in most contexts, as something unmarkedly feminine; for men and boys, something which has associations with a more peripheral, non-hegemonic masculinity). In Spain, although foreign languages are compulsory throughout primary (ages six to 12) and secondary education (ages 12 to 16) and girls and boys almost all attend mixed schools, most teachers of English as a foreign language are women, particularly in primary education. At university, English Philology studies (needed to become a secondary teacher) are mainly selected by females, only exceptionally by males. The third area is classroom materials: teacher-created handouts, commercially published textbooks, teachers’ guides, grammars and dictionaries, tests and curricula (see Sunderland, 2000a for an overview). How is gender represented in these various texts? Dictionaries are of particular interest in terms of vocabulary representation (for example, Hennessy, 1994; Marco, 1996; Vargas et al., 1998; Jiménez Catalán and Ojeda Alba, 2001), as regards the definitions, examples and indeed sequencing (prioritizing) of meaning of gender-related words, as well as the inclusion (or not) of newer, non-sexist items. As regards textbooks, questions of representation include whether women and men are represented equally or at least realistically in terms of numbers, as well as social, professional and discourse roles. This is important, given the concern with construction beyond the text [for example, in shaping beliefs or practices – see Fairclough’s (2003) construction/construal distinction here] – while remembering that students and teachers always have a degree of agency and can resist particular constructions. Of course, classroom materials alone are always mediated by what is done with them – how they are ‘consumed’ by the teacher and learners. For example, a text which is full of traditional gender stereotypes can be ‘rescued’ by a teacher (whose lesson may involve a spoken or written critical evaluation of the text); similarly, a teacher can undermine a progressively-written text (for examples, see Sunderland et al., 2002). Similarly, depending in part on their previous experiences, learners will interpret a given text in different ways – including critical rejection of its particular gender representation. It will be clear from the above that the word gender can be used in different ways. As the study of gender has advanced, meanings of gender have become more sophisticated and have multiplied. Gender has been studied from a psychological perspective, in the form of ‘sex


4


5

differences’, and with an emphasis on the individual. It is this meaning that is important for many – though not all – of the studies reported in this collection. Alternatively, socially, while the notion of gender may have previously corresponded closely with ‘biological sex’ to mean biological sex’s assumed social correlates, gender now extends beyond socialization to social construction, that is, how women, men, boys, girls and indeed gender relations are represented and/or constructed in both written texts and talk, including their own talk and texts. Discourse has a clear role to play here. This means extending our understanding of gender from person-based (or even people based, that is, social group-based) to ‘ideas-based’. The social construction of gender is also an on-going, lifelong process which involves multiple and (synchronically and diachronically) shifting gender identities (see for example, Sunderland, 2002; 2004). There is however a lack of research on gender in both foreign language classrooms and second language settings more widely, especially in contexts in which English is not the target language. The fact that this book includes research on Spanish as an FL goes some way to addressing this gap. In particular, there is a lack of work on second and foreign classroom interaction (but again see Sunderland, 1998; 2000a; 2000b; also work by Chavez, 2000a; 2000b, on German as an FL classroom; AlcónSoler and Codina-Espurz, 1996; Alcón-Soler, 1996, on Spanish students learning EFL) and learning processes generally. In SLA more generally, sex (usually rendered ‘politely’ as gender) as an independent variable has been investigated less than other potentially relevant variables. The one area that has been widely explored is gender’s relationship with language (EFL) learning strategies, through work done by Rebecca Oxford and her colleagues in many countries (for example, Green and Oxford, 1995; Oxford, 1996; Young and Oxford, 1997). In Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages, the notion of gender (in its different meanings) is applied mainly to foreign languages in language education, in particular, the acquisition, development, production and teaching of vocabulary. The foreign or second language question is not always English, but in several chapters is Spanish. Cindy Brantmeier focuses on native speakers of English learning Spanish as a foreign language in the USA and Mercedes Díez compares the vocabulary used by native and non-native speakers of English in written essays. Mercedes Bengoechea and José Simón report a thorough analysis of dictionaries and other materials to teach Spanish as a foreign language. Notably, Spanish is spoken by more than 400 million speakers as a first and as a second language all over the world;


Jane Sunderland



the study of this language is increasing, in China and Japan as well as in European countries (Luján Castro, 2001). As regards the foreign and second language learning distinction, this book is not the place to theorize, debate and problematize this (but see Krashen, 1981 and also Zobl, 1995). Our working definition is that foreign language learning is that which is largely classroom-based, there being little or no use of the language in question in the wider community. In second language learning, on the other hand, the second language will be spoken in the student’s community and useful or even essential to him or her in his or her day-to-day life. Second language learning may thus take place outside the classroom as well as (or, often, instead of) inside the classroom. However, the distinction is rarely so clear-cut. An FL may have an important role in the beliefs of the community: English for example in Spain is thought to be an important language for prospective jobs, for travelling, for education, particularly because of the euro and within the European community. For ERASMUS exchanges, and the Bologna educational context, English is regarded as a lingua franca. Spanish students of EFL may well then need the language in their later day-to-day lives, but as children and adolescents (both primary and secondary school students) they are frequently unaware of this. Their immediate context is often their town, family and friends, with whom they tend to enjoy very close relations. And although their global and multilingual awareness may be changing with the coming of thousands of immigrants (for example, from Romania and Latin America), Spanish children and adolescents may not be consciously aware of the importance of foreign languages, their own concerns perhaps being more immediate to them.

Gender and second language acquisition Gender may be an issue in SLA in general and vocabulary acquisition in particular in more ways than are immediately apparent. Perhaps most obviously, there is the question of the rate of SLA (and hence vocabulary acquisition and development): I have already referred to the popular belief among language teachers that, just as little girls allegedly acquire their L1 faster than do little boys, girls just ‘are’ better L2 language learners than boys. And certainly in many countries, for example the UK, girls’ school grades are higher than those of boys when it comes to foreign languages (and indeed other subjects)1 – the gap being greater than for many other subjects in which there is also an achievement gender


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gap in favour of girls (see also Davies, 2004). But if girls and women are in some ways the ‘superior sex’ when it comes to foreign language acquisition, then we have to address the age-old dichotomy of nature and nurture: is it a question of linguistic hard-wiring in the brain, or are girls somehow socialized into thinking that language learning is either intrinsically good or for some reason important, which makes them engage with it more seriously and/or effectively than their male peers? As regards ‘innate’ sex differences in L2 learning, Lars Ekstrand claims that ‘almost all the behavioural variation may be explained by cultural factors’ (and even for L1 acquisition research comments on inconsistency of findings and the smallness of the differences) (1980:251). So, do girls and women just get on better with the task of learning a foreign or second language, for social rather than biologically determinist reasons? We need to add to the rather tired ‘nature or nurture’ debate a third possibility, that of agency, that is, that individuals can decide (up to a point) to learn particular things in particular ways, ways which may be related to a desire to perform or ‘display’ a certain masculinity or femininity in particular moments of their lives (see below). There may be a difference between foreign and second language settings here, with their different social characteristics and requirements. Bonnie Norton (2000) for example convincingly demonstrated that female migrants’ particular ‘investment’ in learning a second language in Canada was what helped them (again see below). Norton’s intrinsically social concept of ‘investment’ replaces the more individualistic concept of ‘motivation’, yet motivation does not have to be seen as solely individualistic. In this volume, Almudena Fernández shows that there is a relationship between gender, motivation and vocabulary performance, and that girls are more motivated than boys to learn English. This motivation may be applicable to academic work in general and as such subtly related to social factors: in the last few decades, Spain has undergone a profound change, in that women are now fully part of the professional world of work, with young women taking important jobs, and many women serving in the government.

Research on SLA and gender


Jane Sunderland

While it is important to remember that gender will not always be relevant, gender is in fact completely invisible in some accounts of SLA. Jiménez Catalán (2002) claims that gender (or even sex), in contrast with such variables as age, motivation and learning style, is neglected



in ‘well-known and widely-cited’ textbooks on second language acquisition (see Ellis, 1994 for an exception; see also critical reviews by Ehrlich, 1997; Pavlenko, 2001; Block, 2002). Susan Ehrlich criticises SLA work on gender ‘[removed] from its particular social, cultural and situational contexts’ (1997:427). With reference to naturalistic, second language learning settings she cites exposure to the target language as sometimes gendered. She also notes, echoing Labov, how women are often (and/or often seen as) either ‘cultural brokers’ (that is, ‘guardians’ of traditional language and culture) or, somewhat paradoxically, innovators. There is in fact now a range of work written from a largely non-cognitive perspective which shows how second language acquisition can be viewed as a social issue, and related to (gender) identity (see also Rampton, 1991; Norton, 2000; Pavlenko, 2001). In terms of cognitive processes in foreign language learning, in a study of British second year learners of French, German, Spanish and Italian, Julia Batters (1986) found that girls’ and boys’ attitudes to classroom activities varied. The boys were more negative than the girls in all areas, except speaking, where they were equally positive. Batters also found girls more likely to give a language ‘favourite subject’ status, that they showed a greater desire to meet and communicate with people from ‘target language’ countries and had significantly higher self-image as foreign language learners (see also Powell and Batters, 1985). Harris (1998) has suggested that boys are demotivated in part by their perceived lack of independence in the subject (see also Graham and Rees, 1995), although it is unclear why this should apply only (or more) to boys. It is of course not impossible that the requirement of adolescent boys in oral foreign language work to produce unusual sounds broadly coinciding with their voice breaking, in the presence of girls, may lead to embarrassment and negative affect – this would not in fact be inconsistent with Batters’s finding above, given that the boys she studied would have been aged 12 and 13. The concept of motivation, with its instrumental/integrative distinction, is such a familiar one in language education discourse (Gardner and Lambert, 1972) that – as suggested above – it perhaps warrants reexamination. Norton Pierce sees motivation as misleadingly to do with the ‘here and now’ and, as shown above, suggests the term investment, which ‘more accurately signals the socially and historically constructed relationship of [a given set of learners] to the target language and their sometimes ambivalent desire to learn and practice it’ (1995:17; see also Cohen, 1996; Norton, 2000). Boys’ (relative lack of) motivation


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Research on gender and vocabulary acquisition As regards research on gender and vocabulary acquisition specifically, the understanding of gender in many studies is often that of ‘sex’, and I suggest that, in some studies, ‘sex differences’ are sought (or sometimes just documented) simply because, given a mixed-sex group of research participants, it is straightforward to do so. While this means such studies are not gender-blind, at the same time, gender is not theorized in terms of, for example, to what extent any gender differences found are socially constructed, or indeed intentionally enacted, and the proportion of gender similarities is similarly often not emphasized. Scholars of gender and language (learning) need to be vigilant for these same points even when gender is a focus of the study. Further, it is important to remember that finding an association of ‘X’ with gender is just that – an association or relationship – and it cannot be said that gender is either somehow reflected in or causal of ‘X’. Results of studies of gender and FL vocabulary acquisition are mixed – unsurprisingly, given the range of ages, levels, classroom activities and social contexts relevant to the teaching and learning of second and foreign languages. In a study of two groups of Chinese students in Hong Kong (from the Chinese University and a banking college), Joseph Boyle (1987) found male students to have higher mean scores in ‘listening vocabulary’ – despite the female students performing better in general language proficiency. Boyle suggests that if L2 speakers follow the (presumed) L1 pattern of girls expressing themselves earlier than boys, then, in both, boys may be relatively ‘dependent on discriminating listening for a longer period than girls’ (1987:282). Boyle’s finding in favour of male students is rather unusual, however: other FL research on vocabulary and task has come up with findings in favour of female learners, or has identified no relationship between vocabulary acquisition and gender. For example, Martha Nyikos (1990) found that female university students of German as a foreign language performed better than their male peers in a memorization test of German vocabulary when using certain strategies. In some contrast, a study of University students starting French as a foreign language using L1 translations in a CALL


for language learning in many contexts could be seen in this way in terms of both perceptions of foreign language use (perhaps associated with careers for women) and of gender itself (the felt need to ‘perform masculinity’ by oppositionally avoiding those practices perceived to be associated with femininity) (see Johnson, 1997).



lesson found no gender differences in short- or long-term retention, or indeed in the time male and female students spent looking up translations (Grace, 2000). Similarly, a study of how vocabulary acquisition by Iranian EFL students through monolingual and bilingual dictionary use might vary with gender and ‘linguality’ found zero or non-significant relationships between vocabulary acquisition and gender (or indeed linguality) (Maghsoudi, 2008). Other work looks at gender variation in vocabulary use. In a recent study, Rosa María Jiménez Catalán and Julieta Ojeda Alba (2008) carried out a corpus investigation of compositions by Spanish primary school boys and girls learning EFL. They found many shared tendencies between girls and boys, including a shared distribution of words in different classes. An exception was adjectives, with eight occurring in the boys’ ‘top 50’ words and 13 (including colours) in the girls’ ‘top 50’. Girls also mentioned family and kinship terms more frequently than did the boys. Overall, the girls ‘ma[d]e use of a statistically significant greater number of tokens and a near-significant greater number of types than boys’ (2008:112). Although the focus of this study was not genderdifferential achievement, Jiménez Catalán and Ojeda Alba propose that the sort of linguistic production characteristic of the girls is positively related to ‘reading comprehension and writing performance, and . . . the chances of achieving good marks’ (2008:112). As in Nyikos’s study (above), emphasis in vocabulary learning research is often on achievement of vocabulary in relation to learning strategies, or perceptions of strategies used. This tends to be done via questionnaire studies of learners’ perceptions, which tell us about reported rather than actual strategy use (they may be closely related, but without further investigation via observation, we can never be sure). Yongqi Gu, for example, in a study of Chinese EFL learners found that ‘female students significantly outperformed their male counterparts in . . . a vocabulary size test and . . . reported significantly more use of almost all vocabulary learning strategies that were found to be correlated with success in EFL learning’ (Gu, 2002:35; again see for example, Young and Oxford, 1997). Gender in fact proved to be a more important factor in Gu’s study than academic major (‘female students outperformed male students no matter what academic background they were from’ (2002:42)). Gu cites social expectations (in China) as a possible explanation here:


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Women are generally expected to succeed in language learning, and for non-English majors in China, failure in English for female students may well be more face-threatening than for male students.


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Females’ alleged superiority in EFL could then become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rosa María Jiménez Catalán’s (2003) own work on vocabulary and EFL study involved primary, secondary and university students of EFL. The study was designed to investigate whether either number of vocabulary learning strategies or range of these strategies (as claimed by the respondents in a questionnaire) varied with gender. Females reported using significantly more learning strategies; as regards range, in addition to a large amount of gender similarity, females reported making greater use than males of formal rule strategies (such as analysing the part of speech), input elicitation strategies (such as asking a teacher or classmates for a translation) and rehearsal strategies (such as saying a word aloud when studying). Males reported greater use than females of strategies which involved forming an image of the word’s meaning. In general, females reported greater use of consolidating (rather than discovery) strategies than males. As noted above, however, Jiménez Catalán reminds us that these results may reflect perceptions of vocabulary learning behaviours as much as differently gendered patterns of vocabulary strategy usage. Studies of vocabulary and gender in ESL contexts are few but the results are again, unsurprisingly, varied. Male university ESL students in the USA performed significantly better than females on the speciallydevised ‘Test of Academic Lexicon’, which tests recognition, understanding and use of academic vocabulary (Scarcella and Zimmerman, 1998). Possible explanations, Scarcella and Zimmerman suggest, could be related to exposure to academic texts, leisure time reading, previous educational opportunities, different interaction in academic conversations, cultural background and/or learning strategies. As regards vocabulary learning strategies specifically, Nemati (2008) carried out a questionnaire study of pre-University ESL students in India and found no significant gender differences.

Gender as conceptualized by vocabulary studies


The fact that female participants spent more extra-curricular time on English learning provides support to this explanation. (2002:44)

Varied as the above reported studies are, and recognizing that they address gender similarities as well as differences, the emphasis is nevertheless very much on gender as something pre-existing and personrelated (as opposed to, for example, continually being constructed



and ‘ideas’-related (ideas about women, men, boys and girls)) that is, really, on biological sex as an independent variable. The studies are also, accordingly, overwhelmingly quantitative, with an emphasis on whether such and such ‘gender difference’ is, or is not, statistically significant. Notably, the majority of studies concern FL rather than SL settings. There are, I propose, several reasons for this particular profile. EFL contexts, the ‘site’ of most of the above studies, almost by definition are characterized by classroom language learning. ESL, on the other hand, is characterized by learning both inside and outside the classroom, by membership of a minority ethnic group, and perhaps by migration. In second language contexts the learning of the target language is in part a matter of identifying with the community of speakers or being resistant to it (or somewhere on that continuum), as some learners (immigrants or refugees) may feel that by acquiring the new language they are going to loose their own ‘native’ identity (which may be seen as a bad or good thing), or are adding to it in a positive way. ‘Identity’ is thus a key theme for work in SLA contexts – and is notoriously non-amenable to quantitative investigation. In contrast, for the foreign language learner, a language may be just another school subject. Identity in terms of ethnicity, at least (or at least in the monolingual, mono-cultural classroom), is much less at stake: learners are typically forging their own identities as adolescents, and their closest community members are their peers at school, with whom they share much. FL learners may feel attracted to learning the foreign language or scared of it, but ethnicity is unlikely to be the issue. In terms of gender, however, identity issues may become increasingly salient (see above) – notably, for boys. The focus in this collection is mainly (but not entirely) on the FL classroom, and it would seem that there is still plenty of room for nuanced quantitative research. But while such studies may be able to identify gender similarities and tendencies, it is important to take on board that these will always be just that, tendencies; that is, there will always be ‘gender overlap’ and indeed ‘intra-group differences’ (among girls, among boys) as well as inter-group similarities (between girls and boys). The professional relevance of the tendencies to FL practitioners thus cannot be straightforward: for example, it would seem counterproductive to teach girls and boys separately. However, it may be the case that some boys may need extra or a different type of tuition in (in this case) FL vocabulary, just as some girls may need extra tuition in those areas of the curriculum in which (in a given context) they tend


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to perform less well than boys. This is a matter for sensitive teacher education (pre-service and in-service) as well as flexibility in school organization and classroom management. Further, it would be a pity if FL classroom research and particularly research into vocabulary learning, use and development in relation to gender did not ultimately extend to more qualitative work (including ethnography and discourse analysis), which could not only interrogate and enrich the picture painted by quantitative work on vocabulary acquisition, but also develop our understanding of gender. Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages reports both qualitative and quantitative work, and is thus wide in scope. This is appropriate for a collection with gender as a key concept, given that gender can be explored cognitively or psychologically as well as socially. The former in several cases involves studies of ‘gender differences’ – or, better, ‘tendencies’ – for example in terms of lexical choice, lexical inventions, word association and lexical performance in tests. ‘Socially’ in contrast refers both to the relationship between vocabulary production and reception in terms of early socialization and on-going, life-long social construction – the latter extending to textual representation, discourse more widely and indeed individual agency, performance and resistance. It is taken as given that gender not only impacts on cognitive processes relevant to SLA, but also that SLA processes (in particular, in the classroom) have a role in the construction of gender. In this way the diverse contributions to this book contribute to a shared agenda. The collection is divided into two sections. Part I is entitled ‘Gender Tendencies in Lexical Acquisition, Development and Use’ and examines gender tendencies. Cindy Brantmeier looks at how English-speaking Anglo-American students of Spanish recalled ‘idea units’ from Spanish short stories and reports some statistically significant gender tendencies (in particular, in recall of literal ideas), and other cases that were not significant (recalled incorrect ideas). Mercedes Díez Prados follows with a chapter on a corpus study focussing qualitatively and quantitatively on the lexis produced by university student writers writing in English, native speakers of a range of European languages. The females in this study tended to produce more nominalizations and, interestingly, more certainty adverbs (which were also used more by Romanic than Germanic L1 speakers), but there were no significant gender tendencies in lexical density. Next, María Pilar Agustín Llach looks at ‘lexical creations’ in the work of 298 Spanish intermediate learners of EFL. Classifying these into interlingual (from the L1) and intralingual (from the


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L2), she reports, refreshingly, a high degree of gender similarity both in number and type of these creations. Almudena Fernández Fontecha then looks at gender and motivation in EFL vocabulary production in second grade secondary students of EFL. She reports a statistically stronger motivation in the girls than the boys, and some positive correlations between motivation and achievement (with a stronger correlation for the girls than for the boys). Penultimately, Rosa María Jiménez Catalán explores looks at 12-year-old Spanish students’ gendered variation in performance in EFL vocabulary tests (both productive and receptive). Gender similarities were found in the receptive tests and differential gender tendencies in the productive tests (composition and cue word tests), the latter possibly being related to greater motivation and/or use of learning strategies. Last in this section, Soraya Moreno Espinosa looks at productive vocabulary knowledge from a longitudinal perspective in the form of late primary school boys’ and girls’ word association responses and (like Agustín Llach) reports gender similarities rather than differential tendencies. Importantly, although these Part I studies look for relationships between gender and some aspect of vocabulary in language education, they do not see such relationships as either straightforwardly causal or absolute (they are talking about tendencies rather than differences), and do see them as often nuanced (relevant ‘third factors’ including L1, age or general proficiency). Further, the relationships identified between gender and vocabulary acquisition may not be enduring, and may even be context- (for example, classroom- and test type-) specific, hence of limited generalizability. However, given the large number of EFL learners studied, the characteristics of the population from which the (representative) samples were drawn, and the statistical tests of significance applied to the data, the results may be generalizable, with caution, to other populations with comparable characteristics (of course, no two populations will ever have identical characteristics). A second important point is that the above researchers are all looking for (and willing to find, and report) similarities as well as differential tendencies – and, importantly, often find both differential tendencies and similarities, thus acknowledging that gender is always complex and nuanced. Part II is entitled ‘Gendered Words: Representation and Identities’. This concerns gender representation, identities and ideologies. In this section gender is conceptualized as an idea, often shown through representation, rather than something person-focussed. This section engages fully with newer understandings of gender as continually being constructed in an on-going way in every area of life and ‘Community of


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practice’ – at least potentially. The importance of discourse, individual agency and resistance are all acknowledged, as are material, social and linguistic practices. First, Mercedes Bengoechea and José Simón conduct an in-depth study of the incorporation of non-sexist professional Spanish titles in Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) textbooks. From a feminist or even equity perspective, their findings are depressing in terms of gender representation and lexical choices. Bengoechea and Simón analysed a large number of important books, looked at revised legislations of equity and still found a strong resistance to promoting equality of women and men through the incorporation of titles of professions explicitly indexing women as well as men. Both socio-political and linguistic factors may be relevant here (see also Pauwels, 1998). Next, reporting her work in a primary ESL classroom in Canada, Allyson Jule explores both qualitatively and quantitatively how gender (and ethnicity) can be ‘rehearsed’ in class, largely through teachers’ words. Julieta Ojeda Alba then focuses on gendered and gendering patterns of humour and identity in primary and secondary education in student compositions (the instructions for which did not require humour) and reports female students using humour less than males (whose humour often consisted of boastful exaggerations). Ojeda Alba puts this down to ‘social habits regulating choice’, including the social habit of males daring to express themselves humorously. Lastly, Antonio García Gómez, in a quantitative and qualitative study, considers students’ creative writing in terms of self-expression and gendered discourse. Trainee primary teachers were asked to write adverts for toys for girls, for boys and for a ‘unisex’ toy. Despite the adverts’ progressive aims, García Gómez argues that the result is distorted versions of gender equality.

Conclusion Vocabulary is self-evidently crucial for foreign and second language use and hence for foreign and second language learning, as scholars in vocabulary research have repeatedly observed. EFL learners’ vocabulary has been found to be related to language achievement: the higher the number of words, the higher the degree of language achievement (Meara and Jones, 1987; Read, 2000); academic success as measured by good marks: the higher the number of words, the better the marks (Meara and Bell, 2001; Laufer et al., 2004); and errors: the higher the vocabularies of EFL learners, fewer their errors (Meara, 1984). The


Jane Sunderland



number of words known is thus one of the key factors in language learning, particularly in the first stages (see Nation, 1990; 2001; Meara, 1996; Laufer, 1998a; 1998b). Even in an FL setting, the FL may be important for future academic life in terms of transition from secondary to higher education. In Spain, for example, getting into Higher Education requires school students to pass a final written EFL examination, which entails a certain EFL vocabulary threshold. Hence, vocabulary acquisition, development and use arguably merit more research than has been undertaken to date. And the acquisition of the vocabulary of foreign and second languages other than English merits particular study, given the gap in research here (and the increase in the teaching of other FLs). Vocabulary research and research into gender and language rarely meet (as evidenced by the few research studies on precisely this topic). We hope this volume has shown that, when they do, the results are fruitful. Vocabulary acquisition, use and development may be related to gender in a myriad of ways – some context-specific, some more widely generalizable – something of interest to the wider field of SLA. At the same time, gender cannot assumed to be omni-relevant, and similarities need acknowledging with no need for regret about a ‘non-finding’. For gender, vocabulary in the L1, SL and FL can be seen as a resource for constructing oneself and others (in gendered and non-gendered ways) – both inside and outside the ever-changing, social site that is the language classroom.

Note 1. See http : / / news.bbc.co.uk / 1 / hi / education / 6958992.stm, accessed 29 May 2009.

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Block, D. (2002) ‘Language and gender and SLA’, Quaderns de Filología. Estuis Lingüístics, 7, 49–73. Boyle, J. P. (1987) ‘Sex differences in listening vocabulary’, Language Learning, 37, 2, 273–284. Chavez, M. (2000a) Gender in the Language Classroom. USA: McGraw-Hill. Chavez, M. (2000b) ‘Teacher and student gender and peer group gender composition in German foreign language classroom discourse: An exploratory study’, Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 6, 1019–1058. Cohen, M. (1996) Fashioning Masculinity: National Identity and Language in the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge. Corbett, G. (2004) Gender (2nd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davies, B. (2004) ‘The gender gap in modern languages: A comparison of attitude and performance in Year 7 and Year 10’, Language Learning Journal (Summer), 2, 9, 53–58. Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (1992) ‘Communities of practice: Where language, gender and power all live’, in Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference. Hall, K. et al. (eds) Berkeley, CA: Women and Language Group. Ehrlich, S. (1997) ‘Gender as social practice: Implications for second language acquisition’, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 4, 421–446. Ekstrand, L. (1980) ‘Sex differences in second language learning?: Empirical studies and a discussion of related findings’, International Review of Applied Psychology, 29, 205–259. Ellis, R. (1994) The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. Gardner, R. C. and Lambert, W. C. (1972) Attitudes and Motivation in Second Language Learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Grace, C. A. (2000) ‘Gender differences: vocabulary retention and access to translations for beginning language learners in CALL’, Modern Language Journal, 84, 2, 214–224. Graham, S. and Rees, F. (1995) ‘Gender differences in language learning: The question of control’, Language Learning Journal, 11, 18–19. Green, J. M. and Oxford, R. (1995) ‘A closer look at learning strategies, L2 proficiency and gender’, TESOL Quarterly, 29, 2, 261–297. Gu, Y. (2002) ‘Gender, academic major, and vocabulary learning strategies of Chinese EFL Learners’, RELC Journal, 33, 1, 35–54. Harris, V. (1998) ‘Making boys make progress’, Language Learning Journal, 18, 56–62. Hennessey, M. (1994) ‘Propagating half a species: Gender in learners’ dictionaries’, in Exploring Gender: Questions and Implications for English Language Education. Sunderland, J. (ed.), Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall. Jiménez Catalán, R. (2003) ‘Sex differences in L2 vocabulary learning strategies’, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 13, 1, 54–77. Jiménez Catalán, R. (2002) ‘La Representación del factor sexo/género en manuales y revistas en la lingüística aplicada’, in ‘Género’, Sexo, Discurso. Vigara Tauste, A. and Jiménez Catalán, R. (eds) Madrid: Editorial El Laberinto, Colección Hermes, 229–262.


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Jiménez Catalán, R. and Ojeda Alba, J. (2001) ‘Sex/Gender in the illustrations of an ESL dictionary’, in Estudios de la mujer en el ámbito de los países de habla inglesa. Antón Pacheco, A. et al. (eds) Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 67–96. Johnson, S. (1997) ‘Theorizing language and masculinity: A feminist perspective’, in Language and Masculinity. Johnson, S. and Meinhof, U. (eds) Oxford: Blackwell. Krashen, S. P. (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. OUP: New York. Laufer, B. (1998a) ‘The development of passive and active vocabulary in a second language: same or different?’, Applied Linguistics, 19, 2, 255–271. Laufer, B. (1998b) ‘What percentage of text-lexis is essential for comprehension?’, in Special Language: From Humans Thinking to Thinking Machines. Lauren, C. and Nordmann, M. (eds) Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 316–323. Laufer, B., Elder, C., Hill, K. and Congdon, P. (2004) ‘Size and strength: Do we need both to measure vocabulary knowledge’, Language Testing, 21, 2, 202–226. Luján Castro, J. (2001) ‘La enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera en Europa: cifras de la situación actual y manifestaciones de los estudiantes’, II Congreso de Internacional de la Lengua Española, Valladolid: University of Valladolid. Meara, P. (1984) ‘The study of lexis in interlanguage’, in Interlanguage. Davies, A., Criper, C. and Howatt, A. P. R. (eds) Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 225–235. Meara, P. (1996) ‘The dimensions of lexical competence’, in Performance and Competence in Second Language Acquisition. Brown, G., Malmkjaer, K. and Williams, J. (eds) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 35–53. Meara, P. and Bell, H. (2001) ‘P_Lex: A simple and effective way of describing the lexical characteristics of short L2 texts’, Prospect, 16, 3, 323–337. Meara, P. and Jones, G. (1987) ‘Tests of vocabulary size in English as a foreign language’, Polyglot, 8, 1, 1–40. Maghsoudi, M. (2008) ‘Type of task, gender, linguality and type of dictionary in incidental vocabulary acquisition’, http://bibliotecavirtualut.suagm.edu/, date accessed 30 May 2009. Marco, A. (1996) ‘Estereotipos de género en el Diccionario de la Lengua Española’, in Estudios sobre Mujer, Lengua y Literatura. Marco, A. (eds) Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria/Universidade de Santiago de Compostela: Servicio de Publicacións da Universidade de Santiago, 87–111. Nation, P. (1990) Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. New York: Newbury. Nation, P. (2001) Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nemati, A. (2008) ‘Use and Rankings of Vocabulary Learning Strategies by Indian EFL Learners’, http://www.languageinindia.com/.html, date accessed 28 April 2009. Norton, B. (2000) Identity and Language Learning: Gender, Ethnicity and Educational Change. London: Longman. Norton Pierce, B. (1995) ‘Social identity, investment and language learning’, TESOL Quarterly, 29, 1, 9–31.


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Oxford, R. (ed.) (1996) Language Learning Strategies Around the World: CrossCultural Perspectives. Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawai’i. Pauwels, A. (1998) Women Changing Language. London: Longman. Pavlenko, A. (2001) ‘Bilingualism, gender, and ideology’, The International Journal of Bilingualism, 5, 2, 117–151. Powell, R. and Batters, J. (1985) ‘Pupils’ perceptions of foreign language learning at 12+: Some gender differences’, Educational Studies, 2, 1, 11–23. Rampton, B. (1991) ‘Second language learners in a stratified multilingual setting’, Applied Linguistics, 12, 3, 229–248. Rayson, P., Leech, G. and Hodges, M. (1997) ‘Social differentiation in the use of English vocabulary: Some analyses of the conversational component of the British National Corpus’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2, 1, 133–152. Read, J. (2002) Assessing Vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scarcella, R. and Zimmerman, C. (1998) ‘Academic words and gender: ESL student performance on a test of academic lexicon’, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20, 1, 27–49. Schmitz, B. (1975) ‘Sexism in French language textbooks’, in The Cultural Revolution in Foreign Language Teaching. Lafayette, R. (ed.) Skokie, IL: National Textbook Co. Sunderland, J. (1998) ‘Girls being quiet: A problem for foreign language classrooms?’, Language Teaching Research, 2, 1, 48–62. Sunderland, J. (2000a) ‘State of the art review article: Gender, language and language education’, Language Teaching, 33, 4, 203–223. Sunderland, J. (2000b) ‘New understandings of gender and language classroom research: texts, teacher talk and student talk’, Language Teaching Research, 4, 2, 149–173. Sunderland, J. (2004) Gendered Discourses. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sunderland, J., Cowley, Mairie, A. Rahim, F. Leontzakou, C. and Shattuck, J. (2002) ‘From representation towards discursive practices: Gender in the foreign language textbook revisited’, in Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis. Litosseliti, L. and Sunderland, J. (eds) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Swann, J., Deumert, A., Leap, W. and Mesthrie, R. (2000) Introducing Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Vargas, A., Lledó, E., Bengoechea, M., Mediavilla, M., Rubio, I., Marco, A. and Alano, C. (1998) Lo femenino y lo masculino en el diccionario de la Lengua de la Real Academia Española. Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales. Instituto de la Mujer. Young, D. J. and Oxford, R. (1997) ‘A gender-based analysis used to process written output in the native and foreign language’, Applied Language Learning, 8, 1, 43–73. Zobl, H. (1995) ‘Converging evidence for the “Acquisition-learning” distinction’, Applied Linguistics, 16, 1, 3–56.


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Gender Tendencies in Lexical Acquisition, Development and Use


Part I





More Than Words: Inferential and Incorrect Units Recalled Cindy Brantmeier

Introduction People make inferences routinely in comprehending their surroundings, and these inferences are a critically important feature of human cognition. The fact that such inferences can lead one astray, and that people can recollect vividly events that they only inferred, is a small price to pay for the inventiveness and adaptiveness of the human mind. (Roediger and McDermott, 2000:123) Correct and incorrect inferences about incoming information are a natural outcome of the cognitive system. During the silent act of reading, as readers go from a literal to an interpretive understanding of a text, inferences are made. Little research has been conducted on L2 inferences (Horiba, 1996), and no L2 studies have specifically examined male/female inference generation. One goal in most advanced levels of L2 instruction at the university level is to prepare students for the target language literature courses by developing reading skills such as summarizing, paraphrasing, skimming, scanning and making inferences. In most advanced levels of instruction, students are supposed to follow essential points of authentic written discourse and move beyond this by drawing inferences. They process words, sentences and the relationship between them. Many questions on standardized reading exams expect readers to demonstrate a surface level of understanding and also to generate inferences. For example, in the reading section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), to demonstrate the ability to analyse meaning, the comprehension questions specifically ask examinees to


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Gender Tendencies in Lexical Acquisition and Use

identify inferences. Furthermore, the guidelines for proficiency-based global assessments of L2 reading label the ability to make inferences as an advanced reading ability. In the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency guidelines (1999) for reading, the description of a Distinguished reader includes, ‘able to relate inferences in the text to real-world knowledge and understand almost all sociolinguistic and cultural references by processing language from within a cultural framework.’ Likewise, in the Second Language Evaluation Reading Test of French in Canada, the description of the highest level of reading proficiency states, ‘ability to understand most complex details, inferences and fine points of meanings; ability to read with good comprehension specialized or less familiar material.’ In a discussion about L1 skilled readers, Underwood and Batt (1996) claim that true comprehension requires the ‘construction of a mental model in which the formation of inferences acts to link the individual propositions in a unified representation’ (217). In a recent report on revisited directions in reading research, Bernhardt (2003) comments on the process of inferencing and how L2 readers need to attach a relevant or meaningful semantic field to words in order to fully understand authentic texts. As demonstrated, making inferences while reading a text is generally viewed as a more advanced skill, and the goal of many advanced L2 language courses is to teach students to go beyond the literal meaning of texts by understanding meanings that are not directly stated in the text. After this level is reached, students enter the target language literature courses where they are expected not only to infer meaning but also to produce a critical understanding of the text. (See Alderson, 2000 Chapter 2 for an extended discussion about the difficulty involved in defining levels of understanding.) While reading authentic texts the connections between sentences are not always obvious, and sometimes during the process of reading readers must access existing knowledge to understand the relationships between characters and actions. When making inferences, the reader supplements basic literal understanding with prior knowledge. Bartlett (1932) investigated the role of schema in L1 reading and claimed that when readers recall texts they use a schema to integrate new information into an organized, mental framework. Since the 1980s, a plethora of research that examined the role of schemata in L2 reading comprehension (Carrell, 1981;1983; Johnson, 1981; Hudson, 1982; James, 1987) has revealed that what students already know (the knowledge stored in their existing cognitive domain) significantly affects their comprehension of L2 reading materials. But knowing that prior knowledge affects


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reading comprehension is not enough (Nassaji, 2002) and therefore the present study attempts to reveal the nature of the units recalled.

It is common knowledge that there is more to reading than understanding the ideas expressed directly in the text. Readers often go beyond the explicit text by making inferences (Kintsch, 1974; Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983). The act of drawing inferences is often viewed as a more advanced reading skill (Pressley and Afflerbach, 1995). Research that examines inferencing is relatively recent in first language reading and psycholinguistic research, and is scant in L2 reading research. Keenen et al. (1990) review the variety of testing procedures used to analyse inferences in L1 studies, and they also show that the majority of studies on inferencing focus on word-level inferencing and not on connected discourse levels. Graesser and Kreuz (1993) contend that situational factors are key in research on inferences. For instance, the type of text, the participant’s orientation to the text, the criterion task the participant expects and characteristics of the participant (such as prior knowledge of a text’s topic) are all variables involved in drawing inferences. Zwaan and Brown (1996) show the importance of inferencing as readers build mental models during the reading comprehension process. Hammadou Sullivan (2002) points out that making generalizations about inferencing from L1 studies is problematic because the methods and procedures are inconsistent across studies. However, the fact that L1 researchers are considering inferences as a key variable in the studies demonstrates the significance of inferencing in the reading process. As is evident from the L1 studies, readers make inferences to fill in meaning voids in a text. Lee and Van Patten (1995) talk about the importance of inference to second language learners. Students may be unfamiliar with words and expressions in a script, but they may deduce meanings through the process of inferring. When discussing L2 reading, they refer to Perkins’s (1983) notion of elaborative function of schemata and how readers rely on background knowledge to draw inferences from the content of the text. The study of inference as a key variable in L2 reading studies began with Hammadou Sullivan (1991). This investigation examined the differences in inferencing according to topic familiarity and levels of language proficiency. She found that beginner students of French drew more overall inferences from the texts than did the more advanced readers, but the advanced readers that indicated greater familiarity with the topic of the


Studies on inferences



passage showed fewer incorrect inferences. With four groups of readers (L2-intermediate, L2-Advanced, L1-Japanese, L1-English) Horiba (1996) found that L2 intermediate readers did not generate both backward, or bridging, and forward, or elaborative, inferences, but that the L2 advanced readers generated both types of inferences. More specifically, the L2 intermediate readers ‘reported much more frequently on analysis of words and sentences, commenting neither on inferences nor on general knowledge associations’ (465). Barry and Lazarte (1998) examined three types of inferences: within-text inferences, elaborative inferences and incorrect inferences. They found that lower levels of background knowledge produced more inaccuracies in readers’ inferences, and that high-knowledge readers generate richer and more accurate inferences than low-knowledge readers. In other words, when readers have sufficient access to the knowledge of the content domain, they generate inferences even when text difficulty levels increase. In a case study on L2 reading, Hammadou Sullivan (2002) examined whether ten advanced learners of French were aware of their inferencing while reading authentic texts. Results showed that participants were aware of their thought processes as well as their inferencing. This study also considered the differences in the written recall protocol and oral open-ended sentences as comprehension assessment tasks, and more specifically, she examined the differences in inferencing with these two assessment measures. The written recalls revealed few inferences, but the oral open-ended questions produced more inferences that were particularly based on the readers’ prior knowledge. She concluded that the L2 readers of French recreated the text plot without adding inferences in the written recall measure. She states, ‘In answering comprehension questions, successful readers sometimes discovered clues to the content of the text that they had not fully understood’ (233). This difference in inferencing could be due to oral versus written procedures as well as questions versus recall. In an L2 study on anxiety and reading comprehension with third semester students of Spanish, Sellers (2000) assessed comprehension of a passage with a free written recall protocol, and she classified the pausal units hierarchically into high-level, mid-level and low-level units. High-level units consisted of central ideas, mid-level units were supporting details and low-level units were additional information that was unimportant or could be omitted. She reported that reading anxiety affected the number of high pausal units but that anxiety had no affect on low pausal units recalled from the text. She concluded that highly anxious students recalled more interfering thoughts than their less anxious counterparts.


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From the review of research on inferencing in both L1 and L2 studies, it is evident that inferencing is a critical part of the reading process and, as indicated, different methodologies have resulted in different answers to the question about whether an inference is drawn. It is important to note that none of the studies analyse male and female differences in inferencing.

Gender differences in L2 reading Bügel and Buunk (1996) reported that the topic of text is a significant variable explaining differences by gender among scores obtained on the reading part of the national foreign language examination in the Netherlands. More specifically, males achieved higher scores than females on the multiple choice comprehension items for essays about laser thermometers, volcanoes, cars and football players, and females scored higher than males on the comprehension tests for essays on text topics such as midwives, a sad story and a housewife’s dilemma. With native English speaking men and women enrolled in Spanish courses, Young and Oxford (1997) reported no significant differences by gender for text topics such as economics, the presence of foreign cultures in work, leisure and history. They also found no differences by gender in the familiarity ratings with passage topics or background knowledge of any of the passages. With students studying German as a second language, Schueller (1999) revealed that, in some cases, males outperformed females only in multiple choice questions and never in open-ended questions with a passage about a fairy tale. Brantmeier (2003) found that male and female readers from the intermediate level of Spanish language instruction scored significantly better on both multiple choice questions and written recalls for passages with high self-reported familiarity levels. More specifically, men achieved higher scores than females on comprehension tasks for a passage about boxing, and females achieved higher scores than males on comprehension tasks for a passage about a frustrated housewife. With the same passages and comprehension tasks, no reported differences were noted between males and females who were enrolled in advanced level Spanish courses (Brantmeier, 2002). The contrasting findings in studies that have examined gender and passage content suggest need for further investigations of this nature. Brantmeier (2003) found significant gender differences in the number of idea units recalled from authentic texts by second language readers at the intermediate levels of language instruction, but not at the advanced stages of acquisition (Brantmeier, 2002). If the same recall assessment tasks are assessed in terms of other criteria (Hammadou Sullivan, 2002),


Cindy Brantmeier



data may yield further results. The present study uses the same research design and methods as Brantmeier (2002; 2003) and utilizes participants from the intermediate level of language instruction (Brantmeier, 2003) to examine the quality of units recalled from L2 texts in order to provide a richer and more in-depth understanding of male and female comprehension. This study goes beyond counting word-level criteria and analyses more than isolated words. It looks at the inferential and incorrect ideas (isolated words or groups of words) recalled by gender.

Method The present study was designed to address the relationships between the following variables (a) reader’s gender and correct inferences drawn, (b) reader’s gender and incorrect idea units recalled. Participants All 78 subjects (29 men and 49 women) were enrolled in a fifth-semester Spanish class at a midwestern university. This course counts toward a major or minor in Spanish and it is an elective course that is taken between the intermediate and advanced levels of Spanish. One goal of the course is to prepare learners for the level of reading, writing and speaking necessary to be successful in the advanced language, literature and civilization courses. The course, conducted entirely in Spanish, entails the reading of encyclopedia-like passages and short stories written by Hispanic authors. By the time the students have completed this course, they should have a general synopsis of the histories and cultures which make the Spanish-speaking world what it is today. Only those students who had previously taken second-year Spanish at the university were included in this study. To further ensure homogeneity of subjects, only students whose native language was English were included, and only those students who completed all tasks on both days were included in the study. Reading passages Most texts used at the intermediate level of language instruction include a plethora of authentic short stories by male and female authors, and works by Elena Poniatowska and Julio Cortázar are often incorporated in syllabi. The short stories ‘La casita de sololoi’ by Poniatowska and ‘La noche de Mantequilla’ by Cortázar were selected for the present study. The Cortázar passage is about male spectators at a boxing match and all


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of the characters are men. The Poniatowska passage focuses on a frustrated mother and wife who visits her college room mate, and all the characters are women. Both short stories are often used in anthologies for the intermediate level of instruction. The stories were not used in their entirety. Each vignette consisted of about one and a half pages of text and contained approximately 600 words. For the present study, each passage was also analysed for syntactic complexity using Barry and Lazarte’s (1995) rubric. Syntactic complexity was defined by the number of embedded clauses per sentence for each of the reading passages (see Barry and Lazarte, 1998 for a detailed description on how to determine levels of syntactic complexity). The researcher and an assistant separately identified the embedded clauses for each passage, and then compared those results. The total number of embedded clauses for the passage on boxing was 98 and the total number for the passage about a frustrated housewife was 94. Both passages were given to students in an introduction to literature course to identify words that caused them difficulty, and instructors and supervisors for the course were also consulted about the glossed words. Ultimately, each passage contained the same number of glossed words. A description of key concepts in the title was included more than half a page length above the title of the passage because the titles contained unfamiliar and misleading terms (Brantmeier, 2001; 2002; 2003). Written recall With the written recall there is no tester interference. There are no retrieval cues provided as is the case of sentence completion and multiple choice comprehension tasks. The written recall protocol asks readers, without looking back at the passage, to recall and write down as much as they can of what they have just read. This protocol does not influence a reader’s understanding of the text (Bernhardt, 1991). The emphasis on the quantity of correct information recalled with written comprehension assessment tasks has been used widely (Carrell, 1983; Barnett, 1986; Lee, 1986a; 1986b; Khaldieh, 2001; Brantmeier, 2002; Maxim, 2002; among others) and is completed in the learner’s native language, English (Lee and Ballman, 1987; Bernhardt, 1991; Wolf, 1993; Brantmeier, 2002).


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Topic familiarity Participants completed a questionnaire that included information such as sex, age, major, native language and number of years of Spanish



study in high school and university. Topic familiarity was assessed via multiple-choice questions with five possible choices that ranged from ‘I was really familiar with this topic’ to ‘I was not familiar with this topic at all’. The five-point scale was used to encourage more precision in rating and encouraged respondents to show greater discrimination in their judgements.

Procedures The experiment was conducted in subjects’ regular classrooms during regular class time during the fifth week of classes. All subjects read both passages and completed written recalls for both passages on two different days. The researcher and instructors for the courses were present during all data collection sessions. For methodological purposes, the order of presentation of the male content passage and the female content passage were counterbalanced (Steffenson et al., 1979; Johnson, 1981). The order of presentation was also counterbalanced according to the readers’ gender (Bacon, 1992). Students were instructed not to look back at any previous pages while reading and completing all tasks.

Data analysis Using Riley and Lee’s (1996) criteria for a ‘correct unit of analysis’, which may be an idea, proposition or a constituent structure, the researcher and two trained assistants divided the reading passages into idea units. More specifically, a literal unit was classified as a correct fact based on the usual meaning. The total number of literal idea units possible from the boxing passage was 20 and for the housewife passage was 25. In each participant’s written recall for both passages, the total number of correct literal ideas units was calculated. In some instances, isolated words were counted as a literal idea unit. No embellishments or distortions of the original text were counted as a literal unit. Then, the researcher and two trained assistants counted the inferred propositions in each participant’s written recalls (Barry and Lazarte, 1998). An inferred unit was classified as ‘a step beyond the text, using generalizations, synthesis and/or explanations’ (Hammadou Sullivan, 2002). Again, an inferred unit could include an isolated word that was not in the original reading but was ‘inferred’ from the text. Finally, the number of incorrect idea units (including both incorrect literal and inferential units) was counted for each written recall. These incorrect idea units could also consist of an isolated word that was clearly incorrect. The incorrect


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inferential units included information that contradicted the text (Barry and Lazarte, 1998). The literal and inferred units were then compared to the texts again to ensure that the information in the written recall appeared in or was implied in the reading passage. The investigator and two assistants scored the written recalls and reported an interrater reliability of 0.96. Then incorrect idea units were compared to the texts to be sure that the information recalled was not correct in any way. In the present study the independent variables were reader’s gender and passage content, and the following were identified as the dependent variables: self-reported topic familiarity, number of correct literal idea units recalled, number of correct inferences recalled, number of incorrect idea units recalled. The recall scores (number of literal units recalled; number of inferences recalled; number of incorrect idea units recalled) were submitted to an ANOVA for reader’s gender with repeated measures on the dependent variables.

Results Topic familiarity To measure self-reported degree of topic familiarity, a five-point Likert scale that ranged from ‘I was really familiar with this topic’ to ‘I was not familiar with this topic at all’ was utilized. The five-point scale was used to encourage more precision in rating. The participants answered the topic familiarity question after completing all comprehension assessment tasks (Brantmeier, 2002). The lower the mean score, the more familiar the subjects were with the passage topic. Results revealed that the male participants were more familiar with the passage on boxing (M = 3. 00, SD = 1. 07) than the females were (M = 3. 79, SD = 0. 80), and the female participants were more familiar with the passage about the frustrated housewife (M = 2. 82, SD = 0. 78) than the males were (M = 3. 51, SD = 1. 02). The results of the Kruskal Wallis non-parametric test indicated that there was a significant difference in self-reported topic familiarity ratings with male and female learners for both of the texts (p < 0. 05) (Brantmeier, 2003).


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Recall: literal, inferential and incorrect idea units for boxing passage The range of scores for the three types of idea units for the boxing passage as well as sample means and standard deviations are listed in


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Total

Male

Female

Literal Idea Units – – – –

– Min Max M (SD)

– – – 5.5 2.7

– 1 13 6.6 2.6

– 1 11 4.8 2.5

Inferred Idea Units – – – –

– Min Max M (SD)

– – – 1.1 1.5

– 0 4 1.4 1.2

– 0 8 1 1.6

Incorrect Idea Units – – – –

– Min Max M (SD)

– – – 1.3 1.4

– 0 4 1.7 1.2

– 0 5 1.4 1.5

Note: n = 78 subjects, 29 males and 49 females.

Table 1.1. For this passage the maximum number of literal idea units recalled was 17 and the minimum was 1 idea unit recalled. As Brantmeier (2003) indicated, the results of the ANOVAs yielded significant interactions between independent variables readers’ gender and the boxing passage content as they affect dependent variable recall of total idea units (F(1, 76) = 8. 26, p = 0. 01, N2 = 0. 10). In further analysis of the recalls, the results of the ANOVA (Table 1.2) revealed a significant interaction between independent variables readers’ gender and the boxing passage content as they affect dependent variable literal idea units recalled (F(1, 76) = 8. 43, p = 0. 01, N = 0. 09).

Table 1.2 ANOVA of Literal Units Recalled for Boxing Passage by Gender Source

df

SS

MS

F

Between Within Total

1 75 76

54.87 494.51 549.39

54.87 6.51 –

8.43 – –

P


Table 1.1 Ranges, Mean Scores and Standard Deviations for Idea Units Recalled by Gender for Boxing Passage

0.01∗ – –

Note: ∗ p < 0. 05.


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6.5

6.0

5.5

5.0

4.5 Male

Female

Respondent's gender Figure 1.1

Literal Units Recalled for Boxing Passage by Gender

Figure 1.1 illustrates this significance and Figure 1.2 graphically displays the distribution of literal ideas/units by gender. The results of the ANOVA revealed no significant interactions between readers’ gender and the boxing passage content as they affect inferential idea units recalled as well as incorrect idea units recalled. Recall: literal, inferential and incorrect idea units for housewife passage For the passage about a frustrated housewife, the range of scores for the three types of idea units as well as sample means and standard deviations are listed on Table 1.3. For this passage the maximum number of literal idea units recalled was 20 and the minimum was 1. As Brantmeier (2003) reported, the results of the ANOVAs yielded significant interactions between readers’ gender and housewife passage content as they affect recall of total idea units (F(1, 76) = 15. 90, p = 0. 00, N = 0. 18). The results of the ANOVA (Table 1.4) revealed a significant interaction between independent variables readers’ gender and frustrated housewife passage content as they affect dependent variable literal idea units recalled (F(1, 76) = 12. 77, p = 0. 00,


Mean literal units for boxing passage

7.0


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10

6

4

2

0 .00

2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00 10.00 12.00 1.00 3.00 5.00 7.00 9.00 11.00

# of Literal ideas recalled Participant's gender Male Figure 1.2

Female

Distribution of Literal Units by Gender with Boxing Passage

N = 0. 17). Figure 1.3 illustrates this significance. The results of the ANOVA (Table 1.4) yielded significant interactions between readers’ gender and housewife passage content as they affect generated inferences (F(1, 76) = 7. 72, p = 0. 01, N = 0. 15).

Discussion The hypothesis that content of texts affects L2 reading comprehension is not new. However, examinations on male and female differences and similarities in L2 reading are innovative (Chavez, 2001). Data from a prior study (Brantmeier, 2002) across various levels of instruction indicate that male and female L2 readers are not familiar with the same topics and that reader’s total correct idea units recalled from authentic texts is affected by gender at the intermediate level of instruction (Brantmeier, 2003). The findings in the present study relate to (a) the literal idea units generated by male and female readers with different passage content, (b) the inferential idea units generated by male and female readers with different passage content and (c) the incorrect understandings by gender with different passage content.


# of Participants

8


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Total

Male

Female

Literal Idea Units – – – –

– Min Max M (SD)

– – – 7.5 3.8

– 1 12 5.7 3.0

– 2 20 8.7 3.7

Inferred Idea Units – – – –

– Min Max M (SD)

– – – 1.8 1.4

– 0 3 1.3 1

– 0 5 2.1 1.5

Incorrect Idea Units – – – –

– Min Max M (SD)

– – – 1.1 1.2

– 0 3 1.1 1.1

– 0 5 1.1 1.2

Note: n = 78 subjects, 29 males and 49 females.

In the present study, significant differences were found in selfreported topic familiarity levels by gender with the two passage topics: male readers reported being more familiar with the boxing passage than female readers did, and female readers were more familiar with the passage about a frustrated housewife than the males. Prior L1 research on passage content and gender predicted significant differences in comprehension scores achieved by male and female readers (Doolittle and Welch, 1989; Hyde and Lynn, 1988). In the present study, with readers from the intermediate level of Spanish language at a university in the USA, there were significant differences in the literal idea units recalled by both men and women for both passages. Women were able to ‘read the lines’ (Gray, 1960) better for a passage in which they reported high levels of topic familiarity, and their male counterparts recalled more ideas that were directly stated in the text with higher reported familiarity levels. Both men and women accurately recreated the explicit text plot with passage topics of higher familiarity. With the boxing passage, the data for the present study indicate that the interaction of reader’s gender and passage content does not significantly affect inferential units generated during a written recall


Table 1.3 Ranges, Mean Scores and Standard Deviations for Idea Units Recalled by Gender for Frustrated Housewife Passage


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Table 1.4

ANOVA Table for Frustrated Housewife Passage

Source Between Within Total

df 1 75 76

SS 158.19 916.76 1074.95

MS 158.19 12.39 –

F 12.77 – –

P 0.00∗ – –

ANOVA of Inferences Recalled for Frustrated Housewife Passage by Gender Source Between Within Total

df 1 75 76

SS 13.92 133.48 147.41

MS 13.92 1.80 –

F 7.72 – –

P 0.01∗ – –

Note: ∗ p < 0. 05.

with readers from the intermediate level of instruction. The male readers indicated higher familiarity with the passage on boxing, and they recalled significantly more literal idea units than the female readers. But, an examination of the generated inferences for this passage revealed no differences between male and female readers. These results indicate

Mean literal units for housewife passage

9.0 8.5 8.0 7.5 7.0 6.5 6.0 5.5 Male


ANOVA of Literal Units Recalled for Frustrated Housewife Passage by Gender

Female Respondent's gender

Figure 1.3

Literal Units Recalled for Frustrated Housewife Passage by Gender


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that even though male readers report more familiarity with the topic of boxing than female readers, they do not generate a higher average of inferences from that passage at this level of instruction. Both male and female readers recalled an average of only one inference from this passage. To be sure that inferences could be generated from the boxing passage, the vignette was given to ten different native speakers of Spanish. The readers were asked to complete the written recall procedure. The results revealed an average of seven different inferences from this passage. Readers may not have supplemented their basic, literal understanding with prior knowledge to generate inferences in the written recall procedure. These findings contradict Barry and Lazarte’s (1998) findings where readers with high knowledge of the passage content generated more inferences in their written recalls even with texts of greater difficulty. In the present study, the boxing passage may be slightly more difficult than the housewife passage in that it includes more embedded clauses. However, it is difficult to make comparisons between these two studies because knowledge of passage content was determined via different tasks, which could have affected the outcome. Hammadou Sullivan (2002) found that the assessment task used to measure comprehension could affect whether or not inferences were generated. Readers may not report inferences of their own accord in their reconstruction of the ideas presented in a text during a written recall procedure. The task that the reader is expected to attend to after reading may affect the outcome (Bernhardt, 1991; Graesser and Kreuz, 1993; Wolf, 1993). Perhaps readers at this level of instruction would be able to answer open-ended questions related to meanings not directly stated in a text. Hammadou Sullivan (2002) reported that participants (male and female) produced more inferences with the oral, open-ended questions than with the free, written recalls. In the present study, male readers indicated being more familiar than female readers with the topic of boxing, but male readers did not produce more inferences than female readers in the written recalls with that text. Readers may be accustomed to revealing textually implicit understandings while recalling ideas from a text. In verbal reports while reading, Horiba (1996) found that L2 intermediate readers of Japanese reported more frequently on analysis of words and sentences, never commenting on inferences. A closer look at the frequency data in the present study (Figure 1.3) reveals that more than half of the total number of female participants did not generate any inferences from the boxing passage, but that almost half of the male participants generated at least one inference from this passage. The most frequent


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inference made by the male participants was the following: ‘Napoles is a confident boxer.’ In the passage, Napoles is the boxer who wins the match. The only inference made by the female readers was: ‘Walter seemed restless.’ Walter is a spectator at the boxing match, and the women may have inferred this idea from his dialogue with the other male spectator. With the housewife passage, the present study revealed that females reported higher levels of topic familiarity than males, and the female readers generated one more inference than male readers for that passage. Generating inferences consists of relating the reading to relevant existing schemata, and female readers may have been able to supplement the propositional text base with prior knowledge to generate more inferences on the written recall. Perhaps text familiarity motivates female readers to gain a deeper reading of the text. The most frequent inferences reported by the female readers for this passage were: ‘The two women seemed to trust each other’ and ‘One woman was bored with her routine lifestyle’. The only inference generated by the male readers was the following: ‘The passage emphasizes the differences between the two houses that each woman lives in.’ Females may be more accustomed to generating inferences in a narrative like fashion that is similar to the recall procedure, that is, they are used to synthesizing and explaining a text (Hammadou, 2002). First language researchers have found that women more than men typically choose to elaborate on situations with descriptions of feelings (Coates, 1996), and that this talk can take a more narrative like style. Perhaps the written recall procedure utilized in the present study favoured female readers because of the narrative like style, and therefore included more inferences. However, female participants only generated one more inference than their male counterparts for only one passage. If open-ended questions were used that required male readers to integrate text information with stored knowledge, perhaps males would also generate inferences. More research needs to be conducted on differences in inferencing with varied comprehension assessment tasks by gender before any generalizations can be made. As indicated earlier, the ability to generate inferences is often used to characterize good comprehenders. The data from the present study revealed that male and female readers recall more direct, literal ideas from a text with familiar content. The data from this study also revealed that female readers draw more inferences from a familiar text than their male counterparts. More research that examines inferencing abilities between male and female readers needs to be conducted in the second


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language setting where these abilities are assessed by means of different tasks and across levels of language instruction. Data for the present study also indicate that the interaction of reader’s gender and boxing passage content does not significantly affect incorrect units generated. There were no gender-linked differences in the incorrect idea units recalled from both passages. This finding indicates that at this level of language instruction, topic selection may not predispose one gender to recall more incorrect idea units than the other. With both male and female readers, distortions of the original text did not occur with familiar and unfamiliar texts, and details were not exaggerated. At the intermediate stages of second language acquisition, when male and female readers encounter familiar and unfamiliar text topics, the recollections of the stories are not distorted in their written recalls. With students from third semester Spanish and a Spanish conversation course, Sellers (2000) reported that highly anxious students tended to experience more interfering thoughts than the less anxious readers. The present study utilizes students from fifth semester Spanish, so perhaps anxiety was not a factor because students are more accustomed to reading in a foreign language by the time they reach this level of language instruction. In summary, in the present study, the surface ideas (literal ideas) of the texts are affected by gender and content, but the inferential ideas recalled from the texts were not always affected by gender and content. The incorrect ideas recalled from the texts were never affected by gender and content.

Limitations and suggestions for future research The degree of variation within gender groups should also be discussed. In the present study no significant differences were found within gender groups. In other words, within the group of female participants no significant differences were revealed, and the same can be said for the male participants. It is important to note that in the present study there was not a balance of men and women. All participants were enrolled in an intermediate level Spanish course at the university, and Chavez (2001) reports that women outnumber men four to one in romance language courses, and the higher the level of instruction, the wider this gap becomes. Methods used to assess comprehension may be biased by gender. Future studies should examine the affects of assessment tasks by gender with gender-neutral texts. More research needs to be done on the


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procedures involved in generating literal recall, inferences and incorrect recalls with L2 texts (Nassaji, 2002). At higher levels of language instruction, are more inferences drawn with these same passages? Would word frequencies or specific vocabulary input affect recalls? Would oral recall protocols be more appropriate for inference generation at this level? In the present study, types of inferences were not analysed because of the low numbers of inferences generated by the intermediate level learners. A future study could examine the types of inferences (bridging or elaborative) that are generated by readers at more advanced levels with these same passages (Keenen et al., 1990).

Conclusion At the intermediate level of language instruction, topic familiarity does influence male and female ability to recall literal idea units from an authentic L2 text. It is well documented that in order to fully understand many texts, readers also need to make inferences about the relationships between characters and actions. More studies need to be conducted with different passage topics and assessment tasks before generalizations can be made concerning gender. The complicated nature of meaning construction during the reading process can be appreciated further by considering inferences drawn by men and women with different topics, varied comprehension tasks and varied instructional levels. Overall, topic familiarity should be recognized as influencing literal and inferential idea units recalled from a text. Therefore, instructors should make attempts to allow topic familiarity to facilitate performance rather than allowing its absence to hinder performance.

References Alderson, C. A. (2000) Assessing Reading. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Bacon, S. M. (1992) ‘The relationship between gender, comprehension, processing strategies, and cognitive and affective response in foreign language listening’, Modern Language Journal, 76, 160–178. Barnett, M. A. (1986) ‘Syntactic and lexical/semantic skill in foreign language reading: Importance and interaction’, Modern Language Journal, 70, 343–349. Barry, S. and Lazarte, A. (1995) ‘Embedded clause effects on recall: Does high prior knowledge of content domain overcome syntactic complexity in students of Spanish?’, Modern Language Journal, 79, 491–504. Barry, S. and Lazarte, A. (1998) ‘Evidence for mental models: How do prior knowledge, syntactic complexity, and reading topic affect inference generation in


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a recall task for nonnative readers of Spanish?’, Modern Language Journal, 82, 176–193. Bartlett, F. C. (1932) Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bernhardt, E. B. (1991) Reading Development in a Second Language: Theoretical, Empirical and Classroom Perspectives. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Bernhardt, E. B. (2003) ‘Challenges to reading research from a multilingual world’, Reading Research Quarterly, 38, 1, 112–117. Brantmeier, C. (2001) ‘Second language reading research on passage content and gender: Challenges for the intermediate level curriculum’, Foreign Language Annals, 34, 325–333. Brantmeier, C. (2002) ‘The effects of passage content on second language reading comprehension by gender across instruction levels’, in Literacy and the Second Language Learner, Vol. 1 of Research in Second Language Learning. Hammadou Sullivan J. (ed.). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Brantmeier, C. (2003) ‘Does gender make a difference? Passage content and comprehension in second language reading’, Reading in a Foreign Language, 15, 1, 1–23. Bügel, K. and Buunk, B. P. (1996) ‘Sex differences in foreign language text comprehension: The role of interests and prior knowledge’, Modern Language Journal, 80, 15–31. Carrell, P. L. (1981) ‘Culture-specific schemata in L2 comprehension’, in Selected Papers from the Ninth Illinois TESOL/BE. Orem, R. and Haskell, J. F. (eds) Chicago, Illinois: Illinois TESOL/BE, 123–132. Carrell, P. L. (1983) ‘Three components of background knowledge in reading comprehension’, Language Learning, 33, 183–207. Chavez, M. (2001) Gender in the Language Classroom. New York: McGraw Hill. Coates, J. (1996) Women, Men and Language. New York: Longman. Doolittle, A. and Welch, C. (1989) Gender Differences in Performance on a CollegeLevel Achievement Test (ACT Research Rep. Series 89–9). Iowa City, IA: American College Testing Program. Graesser, A. C. and Kreuz, R. J. (1993) ‘A theory of inference generation during text comprehension’, Discourse Processes: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 16, 145–160. Gray, W. S. (1960) ‘The major aspects of reading’, in Sequential Development of Reading Abilities. Robinson, H. (ed.) Chicago: Chicago University Press, 90, 8–24. Hammadou Sullivan, J. (1991) ‘Interrelationships among prior knowledge, inference, and language proficiency in foreign language reading’, Modern Language Journal, 75, 27–38. Hammadou Sullivan, J. (2002) ‘Advanced second language reader’s inferencing’, in Literacy and the Second Language Learner, Vol. 1 of Research in Second Language Learning. Hammadou Sullivan, J. (ed.) Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Horiba, Y. (1996) ‘Comprehension processes in L2 reading: Language competence, textual coherence, and inferences’, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 403–432. Hudson, T. (1982) ‘The effect of induced schemata on the short circuit in L2 reading: Non-decoding factors in L2 reading and performance’, Language Learning, 3, 2, 3–31.


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Hyde, J. S. and Lynn, M. C. (1988) ‘Gender differences in verbal activity: A metaanalysis’, Psychological Bulletin, 104, 53–69. James, W. F. (1987) ‘Reading, the imagination, and writing’, ADE Bulletin, 86, 29–33. Johnson, P. (1981) ‘Effects on reading comprehension of language complexity and cultural background of a text’, TESOL Quarterly, 15, 169–181. Keenen, J. M., Potts, G. R., Golding, J. M. and Jennings, T. M. (1990) ‘Which elaborative inferences are drawn during reading? A question of methodologies’, in Comprehension Processes in Reading. Balota, D. A., Flores d‘Arcais, G. B., & Rayner, K. (eds). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Khaldieh, S. A. (2001) ‘The relationship between lexical knowledge and reading comprehension of nonnative readers of Arabic’, Modern Language Journal, 85, 416–431. Kintsch, W. (1974) The Representation of Meaning in Memory. NJ: Erlbaum. Lee, J. F. (1986a) ‘On the use of the recall task to measure L2 reading comprehension’, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 8, 201–212. Lee, J. F. (1986b) ‘Background knowledge and L2 reading’, Modern Language Journal, 71, 50–57. Lee, J. F. and Ballman, T. L. (1987) ‘ “Learners” ability to recall and rate important ideas of an expository text’, in Foreign Language Learning: A Research Perspective. Van Patten, B., Dvorack, T. R. and Lee, J. F. (eds) Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 108–117. Lee, J. F. and Van Patten, B. (1995) Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen. New York: McGraw-Hill. Maxim, H. H. (2002) ‘A study into the feasibility and effects of reading extended authentic discourse in the beginning German language classroom’, The Modern Language Journal, 86, 1, 20–35. Nassaji, H. (2002) ‘Schema theory and knowledge-based processes in second language reading comprehension: A need for alternative perspectives’, Language Learning, 52, 2, 439–481. Perkins, K. (1983) ‘Semantic constructivity in ESL reading comprehension’, TESOL Quarterly, 17, 1, 19–27. Pressley, M. and Afflerbach, P. (1995) Verbal Protocols of Reading: The Nature of Constructively Response Reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Riley, G. and Lee, J. (1996) ‘A comparison of recall and summary protocols as measures of second language reading comprehension’, Language Testing, 13, 2, 173–189. Roediger, H. L. and McDermott, K. B. (2000) ‘Tricks of memory: Current directions in psychological science’, American Psychological Society, 9, 4, 123–127. Schueller, J. (1999) The effect of two types of strategy training on foreign language reading comprehension: An analysis by gender and proficiency. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. The University of Wisconsin, Madison. Sellers, V. (2000) ‘Anxiety and reading comprehension in Spanish as a foreign language’, Foreign Language Annals, 33, 5, 512–521. Steffensen, M. S., Joag-dev, C. and Anderson, R. C. (1979) ‘A cross-cultural perspective on reading comprehension’, Reading Research Quarterly, 15, 10–29. Underwood, G. and Batt, V. (1996) Reading and Understanding. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.


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Van Dijk, T. A. and Kintsch, W. (1983) Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic. Wolf, D. (1993) ‘A comparison of assessment tasks used to measure FL reading comprehension’, Modern Language Journal, 77, 473–489. Young, D. J. and Oxford, R. (1997) ‘A gender-related analysis of strategies used to process input in the native language and a foreign language’, Applied Language Learning, 8, 43–73. Zwaan, R. A. and Brown, C. M. (1996) ‘The influence of language proficiency and comprehension skill on situation-model construction’, Discourse Processes, 21, 289–327.


Cindy Brantmeier


Gender and L1 Influence on EFL Learners’ Lexicon Mercedes Díez Prados

Introduction The words we use are a gate into our mind and as such uncover patterns of thought including ideological ways of thinking. They also become necessary tools for mental processes, such as forming relationships and analogies, ordering, classifying and distinguishing (Arribas, 2003:1), and reflect our educational background. For (Arribas, 2003:4), the learning of a second language is a cultural rather than a natural (that is, biological) process and, thus, it is only logical to think that different foreign language learning contexts may have an influence on the interlanguage of learners from diverse countries and mother tongues. This language learning process results in specific features in the performance of second language learners due to these idiosyncratic factors. On the other hand, a certain degree of similarity is expected among all learners of the same second language due to diverse sociolinguistic egalitarian processes such as globalization, a natural sequence of SL development (Ellis, 1985:71), genre conventions or social roles, just to mention a few. These opposing forces must be necessarily reflected on the learners’ lexical competence, which would display similarities and differences derived from the common characteristics they share (such as age, sex, educational background, or type of task required) and the distinctive features they possess (such as L1 background or L2 proficiency). Thus, the purpose of this study is to contrast the lexicon used in texts written by university students, focusing on the variables of gender and first language background, as contrasted with a reference group of English native speakers of equivalent sociolinguistic characteristics. Given the educational level and L2 proficiency taken for granted in university students majoring in English, some degree of complexity is


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expected in the lexicon used in their texts. In order to somehow quantify the degree of lexical complexity of their writings, the lexical richness of their compositions will be assessed as well as the use of certain specific lexical resources with a pragmatic function. Lexical richness will be calculated by two of the measures mentioned by Laufer and Nation (1995): by lexical density (type/token ratio) and by lexical variation (content to function words); pragmatic load of texts will be measured by examining the frequency of usage of some types of grammatical metaphors, and the amount of certainty and doubt adverbs. According to Halliday (1994), grammatical metaphor is used more by expert writers as a mark of prestige and power, and, therefore, it may be the case that more novice writers use them in an attempt to imitate authorial models. Thus, the substitution of congruent expressions by grammatical metaphors carries a prominent pragmatic load, since the writer’s intention is to taint his or her writings with a formal and prestigious register. Likewise, certainty and doubt adverbs are polypragmatic epistemic markers (Hyland and Milton, 1997), whose main function is to boost or hedge claims by modulating the degree of truthfulness, commitment or reliability of the information provided. According to Hyland and Milton (1997:184), ‘We have no real idea how novice writers from different language groups differ in the ways they express doubt and certainty in English.’ This study expects to shed some light on this issue by quantifying the frequency of use of such devices by female and male speakers of different L1 backgrounds. Another apparently disregarded aspect in the literature on gender studies can be found in corpus-based research. Gilquin et al. (2007:321–323) make a thorough review of research papers and articles which use learner corpora as their data to study a wide range of linguistic features and no single one of the works mentioned deals with gender differences in this type of corpora. Granger and Wynne (1999), for instance, have studied the lexical variation of some subpopulations in the ICLE corpus, like in the present study, but no gender differences are addressed. In previous publications (Neff et al., 2002; 2003a; 2003b; 2004a; 2004b), we studied different mechanisms for the expression of writer stance by learners of different L1 backgrounds from the ICLE corpus, but a gender contrast was never tackled. This disregard for gender issues is also present in Petch-Tyson’s (1988) study of formality in texts written by ICLE writers as opposed to comparable native writers. Thus, the present study aims to determine whether there are similarities and/or differences regarding the aforementioned lexical phenomena in the texts written by several subpopulations of university student


Mercedes Díez Prados


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1. Are there any quantitative and/or qualitative differences in the lexicon used in compositions written by different subpopulations of university students when writing in English, either as their first or second language? 2. Is there a relationship between the writer’s gender and the amount and/or types of words used? 3. Can the gender variable be related with the L1 variable, that is, do female and male writers from different L1 backgrounds show quantitative and/or qualitative differences in the lexicon used in their compositions? In the following sections, I first define and justify the measures adopted in an attempt to answer these questions, and then present the results obtained in a corpus-based study to ascertain the degree of lexical richness of the texts under scrutiny and the pragmatic functions of some lexical resources, such as the use of grammatical metaphors, and certainty and doubt adverbs. Finally, the conclusions drawn from the analyses are presented in order to answer the research questions this study sets out to address.

Lexical resources under study Lexical richness Laufer and Nation (1995) claim that the more popular measures to describe lexical richness are: lexical originality, lexical density, lexical sophistication and lexical variation. Lexical density and lexical variation have been the two measures selected in the present study. These authors define lexical density as the percentage of lexical words in the text and lexical variation as the type/token ratio. Likewise, Granger and Wynne (1999: 249) state that ‘one of the most commonly used measures of lexical richness in texts is the Type/Token ratio. More precisely, the Type/Token ratio measures lexical variation, which is the number of different words in a text’. As far as lexical density is concerned, Halliday (1994:351) explains that in order ‘to measure lexical density, simply divide the number of lexical items by the number of ranking clauses’; Nunan (1993) defines the concept as the ratio of content or lexical words to grammatical or


writers from different backgrounds. With such a focus in mind, this research is an attempt to answer the following questions:


47

function words, explaining that the former include nouns and verbs, whereas the latter include prepositions, pronouns and articles. In the present chapter, both definitions have been adopted and lexical density has been calculated by two measures: the ratio of content words to function words in the whole text and the number of content words per sentence.

Lexico-pragmatic resources Grammatical metaphor is, according to Thompson (2004:220), ‘a central resource for expanding the meaning potential of language’, since the relationships between the meanings and its different wordings can be reset. Halliday (1994) distinguishes between three different types of grammatical metaphor, each of which corresponds to his three metafunctions of language: ideational, interpersonal and textual. In the present chapter, we will focus, exclusively, on the first one, the ideational metaphor. Metaphors offer alternative wordings (lexicogrammar realizations in Halliday’s terms) to express meanings in a nonliteral (non-congruent) way, as opposed to a ‘literal’ (congruent) wording; ideational metaphors occur whenever meanings that are congruently worded as processes (realized as verbal groups) and properties (realized by adjectives) are presented as participants (nominal groups) in those processes: ‘Nominalizing is the single most powerful resource for creating grammatical metaphor’ (Halliday, 1994: 352). Halliday (1994: 351) states that nominalization is also the primary resource for high density in texts (the ratio of lexical words to function words in the compositions), since meaning is expressed by lexical words, rather than function words. Hence, lexical density and grammatical metaphor are two related phenomena indicating the lexical complexity, which is mainly a feature of the written language. The spoken mode generally displays fewer lexical items and a higher number of clauses. Sušinskiene (2004:77) claims that grammatical metaphor also contributes to language economy and often fulfills a cohesive function. As pointed out in a previous study (Neff et al., 2002:748), adverbs play a central role in ‘epistemic judgment, the establishment of relationships between the speaker/writer and the listener/reader, and the organization of discourse’. Within the broader category of adverbs, Biber et al. (1999) include stance adverbials, which are further subdivided into three categories depending on how they modulate the meaning of propositions: epistemic, attitude and style. Through epistemic markers, the speaker or writer expresses judgement about the certainty, reliability





and limitations of the propositions, or comments on the source of information. Attitude stance adverbials convey the speaker’s or writer’s attitude or value judgement about the proposition’s content, whereas style adverbials describe the manner of speaking. The focus of the present study is the first type, epistemic adverbials and, more concretely, how this stance is expressed by certainty and doubt adverbs. This choice has the goal of testing the use of female and male novice writers’ interpretation of them in order to check the degree of assertiveness in their propositions. In what follows, the details of the study are explained and the main results are presented and discussed.

Method Participants In order to answer the research questions posed above, the lexicon found in the compositions written by the following subpopulations of university student writers is contrasted: – Male writers versus female writers. – Native English-speaking female writers versus non-native Englishspeaking female writers. – Native English-speaking male writers versus non-native Englishspeaking male writers. – Non-native English-speaking female writers from different L1 backgrounds among themselves: those with a Romance L1 background (learners whose mother tongues are Spanish, French or Italian) versus those with a Germanic L1 background (learners whose mother tongues are German, Dutch or Swedish). – Non-native English-speaking male writers from different L1 backgrounds among themselves: those with a Romance L1 background (learners whose mother tongues are Spanish, French or Italian) versus those with a Germanic L1 background (learners whose mother tongues are German, Dutch or Swedish). The subpopulations studied are drawn from two corpora, one composed of texts written by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners and another one by English-speaking writers, all of whom are university students. The former corpus is known as ICLE (International Corpus of Learner English), which is a learner corpus compiled as a result of an international project launched by Sylviane Granger, from the University


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of Louvain in Belgium. The corpus is formed by subcorpora of texts written by university students of intermediate-advanced level of English with 11 different mother tongues. Within this corpus, the selected subcorpora of learner English to be studied are those of SPICLE (Spanish L1), FRICLE (French L1), ITICLE (Italian L1), GERICLE (German L1), DICLE (Dutch L1) and SWICLE (Swedish L1), so that learners with Romance L1 background could be contrasted with those of a Germanic mother tongue. The ICLE is formed by compositions written by university undergraduates in English in different EFL contexts: up to 11 teams from different countries contributed with compositions collected from students enrolled in various universities. Coordinated by JoAnne Neff, we collected the Spanish corpus at two public universities located in Madrid, the Complutense and Alcalá. All of the learners in the ICLE were in their twenties at the time the compositions were gathered; the mean age of the participants selected for this study (the Romance and Germanic subcorpora together) is 23.30. Regarding the gender of the writers in the whole corpus, there is a majority of females: a mean of 82 per cent of the ICLE data has been produced by female writers. This percentage varies in the different subcorpora, although it is quite high in all of them. As for the subcorpora which concern us here, this is the breakdown: Spanish, 86 per cent; Italian, 92 per cent; French, 88 per cent; Swedish, 77 per cent; German, 78 per cent; and Dutch, 73 per cent. According to Granger et al. (2002:15), the general coordinators of the ICLE, the reason for this high percentage is that studies in the humanities attract more female than male students (that English Philology in Spain is, in general, female-dominated is indeed a fact). Although the initial intention was to contrast this corpus of learner English with the LOCNESS (Lovain Corpus of Native English Essays) one, which is a corpus of comparable size formed by texts written by Englishspeaking university writers, also compiled at the University of Louvain, the idea had to be disregarded because the LOCNESS does not provide the sociolinguistic information needed regarding the writers’ gender. Therefore, a different corpus of equivalent characteristics, albeit not as large, had to be used: the part of the MAD Corpus composed of texts written by American native-English speakers. Directed by JoAnne Neff, from the University Complutense of Madrid, the SpainWrite Team – of which I am a member – collected a corpus of argumentative texts written from three different subpopulations of university students in 1992: 50 first-year English Philology students, 50 fourth-year English





Philology students and 45 American students who were spending a semester in Spain. My participation in the collection of this corpus gives me access to the sociolinguistic information needed in order to carry out the gender contrast established in the research questions for the present chapter, which is access to the gender of each writer. The collection of the compositions written by native speakers of English was carried out at the Miguel Angel Institute in Madrid, gathered from American students from two universities in the United States (Boston University and Kalamazoo College), who were spending a semester in Spain, living with Spanish families and studying diverse subjects related to the Spanish language and culture at the Institute. They were in the third year of university in their home country and, thus, were of equivalent age to the non-native participants (in their early twenties). Thirty of them were female and 15 were male, which reveals a clear predominance of female speakers in the native corpus as well. This subcorpus of 45 compositions was later donated to the University of Louvain coordinators to contribute to the data collection for the LOCNESS. In sum, Table 2.1 displays the total amount of texts and the number of words in the corpora that are going to be contrasted with the goal of finding out whether there are differences in the lexical competence between female and male, native and non-native university writers. As can be seen, the number of words in the female subcorpora is larger than in their male counterpart. This is due to the fact that both in the native and non-native populations there is a majority of females (66.66 per cent and 94.83 per cent, respectively). On the other hand, the native and non-native subcorpora are not equivalent in length either. Thus, in order to make them comparable, the results of the different measures studied will be normed by percentages, since using total amounts would draw inaccurate contrasts.

Data collection In order to collect the ICLE, the subjects were instructed to write a composition on a wide variety of topics, although some of them recur, because they were taken from a list of the 14 topics suggested by the coordinating team at Louvain. All of the compositions conform to an academic genre and most of them are argumentative essays, a type of text that ‘allows for discourse-oriented (cohesion, coherence, argumentative patterns, etc.) as well as lexical and grammatical exploration’ (Granger et al., 2002:16). A small proportion (25 per cent) of the corpus


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Table 2.1 Corpora Studied (number of words and compositions) NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS (NNS)

Spanish L1 female NNS Italian L1 female NNS French L1 female NNS TOTAL ROMANCE L1s Swedish L1 female NNS German L1 female NNS Dutch L1 female NNS TOTAL GERMANIC L1s TOTAL FEMALE NNS Spanish L1 male NNS Italian L1 male NNS French L1 male NNS TOTAL ROMANCE L1s Swedish L1 male NNS German L1 male NNS Dutch L1 male NNS TOTAL GERMANIC L1 TOTAL MALE NNS

No. of Words

No. of Texts

173, 819 206, 299 199, 923 580, 041 160, 788 185, 961 175, 794 522, 543

244 387 443 1, 074 351 432 254 1, 037

1,102,584

2,111

24, 967 18, 668 26, 565 70, 200 45, 041 45, 454 61, 155 132, 761

15 10 17 42 21 18 34 73

202,961

115

1,324,434

2,226

FEMALE NS MALE NS

11, 533 5, 852

30 15

TOTAL NATIVE SPEAKERS

17,385

45

TOTAL FEMALE (NS & NNS) TOTAL MALE (NS & NNS)

1, 114, 117 227, 702

2, 141 130

TOTAL

1,341,819

2,271

TOTAL NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS NATIVE SPEAKERS (NS)

ALL SUBPOPULATIONS BY GENDER

is formed by literary exams. It should be noted that the Spanish subcorpus has the highest proportion of texts coming from literary exams (21 per cent of the total), since all the texts collected at the University of Alcalá belonged to this text type; texts collected from examinations are time-constrained and the use of reference tools is not allowed. However, most of the texts in the corpus were developed under no time constraints and with the possibility of using reference tools. The essays were unabridged (errors were not removed from the texts) and had an average length of 705 words.


Mother tongue



The task assigned to the native speakers was equivalent to the one for collecting the ICLE corpus: the subjects had to write a composition following these instructions: ‘Write a composition of at least 300 words on a discovery or invention during the twentieth century which you think has significantly changed people’s lives’. The topic implied no difficulty, to avoid extraneous variables affecting the results, and it was, on the one hand, open enough to let the writers choose a particular invention or discovery they were more familiar with, and, on the other hand, close enough to avoid too much disparity in the data collected. The students were given an hour to write their compositions in one of the classrooms they normally used at the Institute and were not allowed to use reference tools. The atmosphere was relaxed since they were voluntarily contributing to the collection of data for a research project and knew the texts were not going to be evaluated as part of their academic performance. The type of text was, as well, argumentative, since they have to defend their opinion as to why they thought a given invention or discovery was the most important or revolutionary, presenting its advantages and disadvantages. Data analysis Once the native and non-native corpora were selected, the data were analysed with the aim of studying the following lexical phenomena: a. The number of different lexical items (type/token ratio) used by each subpopulation, with the aim of finding out whether there were any differences in the lexical variation of each subpopulation. b. Lexical density (that is, the ratio of lexical words to function words in the compositions) and the presence of grammatical metaphor (that is, the process of turning verbs into nouns), both of which were concepts developed by Halliday as measures of the text complexity and formality (see Nunan, 1993). c. Certainty and doubt adverbs, as boosting and hedging devices, respectively, which are lexical resources that fulfil an important pragmatic function in academic essays.


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In order to compare the lexical richness of the texts written by the different subgroups of subjects, two different measures were applied: lexical variation and lexical density. Lexical variation (that is, type/token ratio) was calculated with the WordSmith Tools 3.0 programme (Scott, 1998). The number of tokens corresponds to the number of words in


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each subcorpus and types refer to the number of different words in each of them; the Type/Token ratio is calculated by obtaining the percentage of types in relation to the number of total words in the corpus. As Scott (1998) explains, this ratio varies in accordance with the length of the text, in such a way that longer texts tend to have a lower percentage of types than shorter ones. To compensate for this skew in the results, the WordSmith programme uses another measure, the standardized type/token ratio, which computes the ratio every n words. Although the default n number in this programme is 1000 words, it has been calculated for every 500 in the present study due to the small size of the native subcorpora. This means that the ratio is calculated anew every 500 words, obtaining, thus, an average type/token ratio based on consecutive 500-word chunks of text. The ratio is computed counting as a word every different form of a lexeme (for example, say and says compute as two different types). In that way, type/token ratios across texts of different lengths can be compared. The second measure of lexical richness used was lexical density, which refers to the ratio of content words to lexical words in the text. Since Halliday does not specify what he considers lexical items, as opposed to grammatical ones, the guideline adopted in the present study to distinguish between the two was mainly based on Nunan’s. The 57,427 word types of the different subcorpora were classified into lexical and function words according to the following criterion: nouns, verbs (except for be, have and auxiliary verbs in general) and adjectives were considered content words, whereas adverbs, pronouns, articles, prepositions and conjunctions were counted as functions words. Admittedly, counting as function words some adverbs that certainly have a lexical load seemed somehow odd, such as manner adverbs ending in ly, but distinguishing between different types of adverbs could have resulted in having to make arbitrary decisions. Therefore, a more objective and efficient criterion was adopted and all adverbs were regarded as function words. When a given term belonged to more than one part of speech, it was included in the class that seemed more feasible without taking into account the co-text (that is, linguistic context) in which the word was embedded, since the corpus size made it impossible to consult the context of every single use in order to check the grammatical function played. Two calculations of the lexical density of texts were carried out in the present study. Firstly, the ratio of lexical words to content words was calculated and, secondly, the number of lexical words was divided by the number of sentences in the texts. The WordSmith Tools programme





automatically calculates the number of sentences in a given corpus, considering a sentence to be a stretch of words finished by a full-stop, a question-mark or an exclamation mark immediately followed by one or more word separators (roughly, spaces in between words) and then a capital letter, a number or a currency symbol. Although this way to parse sentences in the text may not fully coincide with that of a manual parser, it is a reliable method of analysis to avoid the tremendously arduous work that would be involved in manually parsing a 1,341,819word corpus. This same reason made it unfeasible to measure lexical density in relation to the number of clauses, as Halliday (1994:351) proposes, instead of sentences. Lexical density was calculated globally for female and male native and non-native populations, rather than by language subcorpora, since that would have complicated the already laborious task of classifying types of words into content and function words: instead of classifying 57,427 words, as was done, classifying the types of words separately would have involved analysing 105,455 types of words. The amount is almost double because word types are repeated throughout the subcorpora. Although both verbs and adjectives can often be transformed into nouns, the present research will only focus on the achievement of grammatical metaphor through the nominalization of verbs by several prefixes, or, as Nunan phrases it, the ‘process of turning verbs into nouns’ (Nunan, 1993:12). In order to study nominalization, a series of suffixes used for turning verbs into nouns has been selected: -ation, -ition, -tion, -sion (which provide nouns with the meaning of ‘state’ or ‘process’, for instance abbreviation, acquisition, decision, action, admission); -ment (meaning ‘process’ or ‘result’, for example, abolishment); -ure (‘action, state’, as in closure); -ance, -ence (‘action’, ‘process’, ‘state’ or ‘quality’, for instance, self-confidence); -ism (‘belief’, ‘behaviour’ or ‘process’, for example antagonism); and the suffix -th (when the noun means ‘action’, ‘process’, ‘state’, ‘quality’ or ‘condition’, as in revisionism). After clearing the concordances obtained with WordsSmith Tools, a total of 1278 different words were found that could be considered grammatical metaphors stemming from the nominalizations of verbs. These words were computer-searched thanks to a computer programme designed by Professor José Simón, a colleage from the English Department at the University of Alcalá. The last measure carried out was the use of certainty and doubt adverbs by the different groups of subjects. The study of these lexical devices aims at discovering patterns of use of these boosting and hedging devices in the male and female populations, since they are subjective


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indicators of evaluation and might shed some light on the degree of self-reliance, self-confidence and assertiveness in the writers according to their gender. The selection of adverbs to be studied was based on that compiled by Biber and Finegan (1989:119; 33), certainty adverbs (actually, admittedly, assuredly, avowedly, certainly, clearly, decidedly, definitely, evidently, in actuality, incontestably, incontrovertibly, indeed, indisputably, indubitably, in fact, in reality, in/with certainty, irrefutably, manifestly, obviously, of course, patently, plainly, surely, unambiguously, unarguably, undeniably, undoubtedly, unmistakably, unquestionably, no/without doubt and without question) and 26 doubt adverbs (allegedly, apparently, arguably, conceivably, doubtless, formally, hypothetically, ideally, improbably, likely, maybe, officially, ostensibly, outwardly, perchance, perhaps, possibly, presumably, purportedly, reportedly, reputedly, seemingly, superficially, supposedly, technically and theoretically). These 59 adverbs were searched with the aid of the aforementioned computer programme in the different subcorpora of male and female writers. The results from all measures were statistically treated with the SPSS programme to ascertain whether the differences found among the variables and populations were significant or whether the null hypothesis had to be admitted.

Results and discussion In this section the results for the aforementioned calculations will be presented in the following order: the lexical variation of the different subpopulations of writers, the lexical density and grammatical metaphors of their texts, and the frequency of use of certainty and doubt adverbs associated with each gender and subpopulation of native and non-native speakers. Table 2.2 shows the results obtained in the four measures of lexical competence by the 14 subpopulations of university student writers. It should be noted that when subpopulations are grouped the figure in the table represents the mean value. Lexical density was calculated globally for female and male native and non-native populations, rather than by language subcorpora; that explains why some cells are empty. If we focus on the results obtained in the standardized type/token ratios, it can be observed that the percentages for all groups of subjects are very similar. In fact, there are no significant differences between means in paired-samples tests, except for two cases: when female




Population

Lexical richness

Females

Spanish Italian French ROMANCE L1s (µ) Swedish German Dutch GERMANIC L1s (µ) FEMALE NNS (µ) FEMALE NS FEMALES (µ)

Lexico-pragmatic devices

Lexical variety

Lexical density

Stand. TT Ratio (%)

% CW/TOKENS

CW/SENT.

— — — — — — — — 43.462 41.325 42.394

— — — — — — — — 12.086 10.272 11.179

47.55 48.13 49.1 48.26 49.04 51.2 48.68 49.64 47.55 47.27 48.71

Gram. met.

Adverbs

% NOM/TW

%per cent Certainty Adv/TW

% per cent Doubt Adv/TW

0.133 2.282 3.136 1.850 0.254 0.320 0.198 0.257 1.054 0.147 0.924

0.084 0.105 0.110 0.100 0.139 0.091 0.088 0.106 0.103 0.087 0.101

2.512 2.282 3.136 2.643 1.914 1.771 1.955 1.880 2.261 2.350 2.274


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56

Table 2.2 Measures of Lexical Competence per Subpopulation

Stand. TT Ratio (%)

per cent CW/TOKENS

CW/SENT.

per cent NOM/TW

per cent Certainty Adv/TW

per cent Doubt Adv/TW

Spanish Italian French ROMANCE L1s (µ) Swedish German Dutch GERMANIC L1s (µ) MALE NNS (µ) MALE NS MALES (µ)

47.35 49.28 49.92 48.85 49.99 52.43 49.34 50.59 49.72 45 49.04

— — — — — — — — 43.392 43.165 43.279

— — — — — — — — 11.101 10.395 10.748

1.226 0.712 0.858 0.932 0.466 0.452 0.531 0.483 0.708 2.187 0.919

0.096 0.054 0.143 0.098 0.053 0.060 0.061 0.058 0.078 0.290 0.108

0.064 0.021 0.064 0.050 0.042 0.019 0.018 0.026 0.038 0.068 0.042

Fe & Ma NNS (µ) Fe & Ma Romance (µ) Fe & Ma Germanic (µ) Fe & Ma Ns (µ)

49.33 48.56 50.11 46.14

43.427 — — 42.245

11.596 — — 10.334

1.485 1.788 1.182 2.268

0.566 0.974 0.158 0.219

0.070 0.747 0.066 0.078

57



Males


non-native speakers are contrasted with their male counterparts, the latter showing a higher mean (49.72) than the former (48.95); and, specifically, when female Germanic speakers are contrasted with male Germanic speakers. Therefore, male non-native university writers display a higher lexical variation than females, particularly when the Germanic subpopulations are compared between themselves, but not in the case of the Romance ones. The fact that the native population does not surpass the non-native one, as would have been expected, may be due to different factors: it could be indicative of a similar lexical variation in both native writers and non-native writers – both novice writers – or it may well be that the type/token ratio for non-natives is somewhat altered by the mistakes they made: non-native writers misspell words and even coin new ones (either based on the L2 code or borrowed directly from their mother tongues) much more frequently than native speakers, and all those erroneous words increase in the number of types. Granger and Wynne (1999) detected this problem when contrasting the type/token ratio of different subpopulations within the ICLE with those of the LOCNESS. To solve it, they propose to expurgate the corpus, on the one hand, by lemmatizing the types of words, that is, by considering as just one type all inflected forms, and by eliminating erroneous words. In order to implement this correcting measure, they used a computer tool they had at their disposal; even with such an aid, Granger and Wynne (1999) point out that the methodology involves the analyst in a laborious process; therefore, the result is that it is rather impractical to carry out the expurgation completely by hand. Due to this, and thanks to the fact that Granger and Wynne (1999) provide the exact number of words they excluded from the word type list of three of the subcorpora that are used in their study, I decided to extrapolate their results to my data to see how that may affect the type/token ratio of those three subpopulations. Table 2.3 shows how the errors found by Granger and Wynne (1999) were distributed between the female and male populations in the ICLE subcorpora. The percentages of female and male subjects, obtained from the information compiled in the manual that accompanies the ICLE corpus (Granger et al., 2002), were used to divide the number of total errors into the female and male subpopulations in a proportional way. Table 2.4 displays how the results in the type/token ratios for these three populations would be affected by the reduction of word types, after applying the extrapolation of results from Granger and Wynne (1999).


58



59

Table 2.3 Types and Amounts of Errors in Three ICLE Subpopulations Spelling errors

Nonstandard word coinages

Total errors

Females

896 524 271

339 158 130

1235 682 401

86% 88% 73%

Spanish French Dutch

Males Female Male errors errors

14% 12% 27%

1062 600 293

173 82 108

As can be seen, the percentages decrease slightly, which provokes that what proved significantly different before (non-native females versus non-native males) no longer holds, and three new significant contrasts arise within the two subpopulations of Romance and Germanic speakers: Romance language females versus males, Germanic females versus males, with the males in each group being the ones that show higher lexical variation, and the whole Romance language population versus the whole Germanic one, with the latter outperforming the former (that Table 2.4 Type/Token Ratio Before and After Error Removal Text File

Tokens

Types

Type/Token Ratio

Standardized Type/Token n = 500

11,209 10,672 11,467

6.45 5.34 6.52

47.55 49.1 48.68

10,147 10,072 11,174

5.84 5.04 6.36

43.04 46.32 47.46

3,749 3,971 6,823

15.02 14.95 11.16

47.35 49.92 49.34

3,576 3,889 6,715

14.32 14.64 10.98

45.15 48.88 48.55

BEFORE ERROR REMOVAL Spanish female French female Dutch female

173,819 199,923 175,794

AFTER ERROR REMOVAL Spanish female French female Dutch female

173,819 199,923 175,794

BEFORE ERROR REMOVAL Spanish male French male Dutch male

24,967 26,565 61,155


Population

AFTER ERROR REMOVAL Spanish male French male Dutch male

24,967 26,565 61,155



is, Germanic speakers show a wider range of vocabulary). Studies like that of Scarcella and Zimmerman (1998) also found that male ESL university subjects outperformed females in their knowledge of academic vocabulary. Nonetheless, native and non-native speakers of English are still not differentiated. Lemmatization might be a solution for a more reliable measure for lexical variation or it could just simply be the case that native speakers do not possess a greater vocabulary, as was proved in Granger and Wynne’s study (1999) where the native speakers ranged exactly in the middle when contrasted to four groups of non-native speakers. These results led them to draw the following conclusion: If, as shown by our study, advanced learners have at their disposal a relatively large vocabulary stock and if, as proved by numerous EFL studies, they also produce a great many lexical errors, one is led to the conclusion that advance vocabulary teaching should not primarily be concerned with teaching more words but rather, as Lennon (1996: 23) puts it, with ‘fleshing out incomplete or “skeleton” entries’ of the existing stock. (Granger and Wynne, 1999:255) Thus, this first measure of lexical richness, both before and after error removal, does distinguish between the genders and non-native speakers with different mother tongues, but not between native and non-native speakers. This latter finding seems to contradict previous studies like the ones mentioned in Nation (2001), which ‘show, not surprisingly, that native speakers use a much wider range of vocabulary (Linnarud, 1986; Harley and King, 1989)’ (Nation, 2001:178). The proportion of error-free content word lemmas to total tokens may be a more reliable measure to assess lexical variation, but the large size of the corpus is truly an impediment to applying it. The inferential statistics run for the results for lexical density (refer to Table 2.2 for results) show that there are no significant differences among the populations of novice writers, independently from the variables of gender and English as L1 versus EFL. This similarity could be the result of errors and lack of lemmatization of the corpus, since the amount of content words may be increased by erroneous words in the non-natives (coined by the students or transferred from their L1). On the other hand, as pointed out above, the differences in the type/token ratio between natives and non-natives did not significantly changed when adjusting the word types after error removal. Regarding grammatical metaphor, four contrasts between paired means showed significant differences at the 95 per cent confidence


60


61

interval: the overall female population (µ = 2. 274), native and non-native speakers altogether, versus the overall male population (µ = 0. 919); the female non-native population (µ = 2. 261) versus the male non-native one (µ = 0. 708); the Romance (µ = 1. 788) versus the Germanic speakers (µ = 1. 182); and within this non-native population, specifically, when the Germanic subpopulations are contrasted (µ = 1. 880 in female Germanic speakers, versus µ = 0. 483 in their male counterparts). In all three cases of gender contrast, the females outperform the males, and in the case of language typological contrast, the Romance speakers use more nominalizations than the speakers of Germanic languages. If nominalization is a feature of formality and prestige in texts, we may conclude that texts written by female university writers use a much more formal register than those of male university writers, either native or non-native speakers of English. Thus, like in the case of lexical variation, the gender variable is more influential than the fact of being a native speaker of English, although it was the males who outperformed the females in that measure of lexical richness and, on this occasion, it is the females the ones with the higher ratios. Some randomly selected examples of grammatical metaphor extracted from the different corpora are presented in Figure 2.1. Nominalizations by the suffixes studied are highlighted, the most productive of all being -tion, as it becomes obvious by the abundance of occurrences in the examples shown. Example 1. Dutch male Five days later he announces the annexation of the emirate and he reveals his plans to convert one part of it into a nineteenth Iraki province and to unify the other with the already existing province of Basra. Example 2. Dutch female Take children for example: if there were no age-restrictions on movies, children would be exposed to violent and erotic scenes that are not meant for them but for adults to see. Example 3. French female When George Orwell wrote in his novel Animal Farm: , he not only denounced a punctual deficiency of the very society in which he was living, thinking and writing, but through this statement he also illustrated an unfortunately universal truth.



Example 4. French male In a world so dominated by modern technology, people tend to be more and more superficial. We are bound to keep up appearances in order to avoid social discriminations. Figure 2.1

Examples of Grammatical Metaphor


62


Example 6. German male So you see, hear and smell all the hectic of everyday’s traffic, which sounds like a mixture of a technological staccato and a motorized symphony. Example 7. Italian male The programme consists on a classification (just the first three positions) based on a certain argument, from a certain point of view. Example 8. Italian female In the second case there is the association of good life with that specific brand of brioches. Example 9. Spanish female In order to support this argument, we are going to review the following subjects: Labour discrimination, the right to vote, the fight against male chauvinist behaviours, the representation of women in important political charges and the recognition of sexuality in woman. Example 10. Spanish male Stockbrokers are men with no scruples and their obsession is to get whatever they want although it means that the lives of other people are destroyed. Example 11. Swedish female The politicians’ task is to make this integration as smooth as possible. Example 12. Swedish male Scientists speak about holes in the ozone layer and abnormal fluctuations in the weather, but it is not often that people encounter environmental destruction themselves. Example 13. Female native speaker The presence of television has brought about several crucial trends in our culture: the mass culturization of various groups, the commercialization of our lifestyles, and the rapidity and breath of the information that reaches us. Gathered around the tube, the American family learned the ‘ideal’ way of life. Example 14. Male native speaker Hopefully, with continued efforts, our use of nuclear fusion and fission will turn from mediums of strategy, destruction and waste to matters of energy production, medicine and other humanitarian goals. Figure 2.1

(Continued)

Our last concern is the frequency of use of certainty and doubt adverbs. Although the figures for certainty adverbs seem to indicate that Romance language speakers use more certainty adverbs than L1 Germanic ones (see Table 2.2), in fact, the differences are not significant. The same apparent difference can be observed when the male non-native English speakers are contrasted with their female


Example 5. German female They, however, are only superficial and temporarily limited corrections, such as beauty treatments and the wide range of products offered by the cosmetics’ industry.


63

counterparts: the difference between the females’ 1.054 per cent and the males’ 0.078 per cent is not statistically significant, nor is the difference between the overall females (µ = 0. 924) as opposed to the males (µ = 0. 108). Curiously enough, however, within the non-native English speakers, the ones with Germanic mother tongues show statistically significant differences: male Germanic speakers (0.58 per cent) use more certainty adverbs than Germanic females (0.257 per cent). This gender distinction between the Germanic speakers was also present in the use of nominalizations and lexical variation. Like in the previous cases, the use of certainty adverbs does not reveal differences between the native and non-native populations either. This result contradicts previous studies (Hyland and Milton, 1997; Neff et al., 2002), which found statistically significant differences between natives and non-natives, either underusing them (in the case of Spanish speakers in Neff et al., 2002) or overusing them (in the case of the Dutch, Italian and French L1 speakers in Neff et al., 2002; and of Chinese student subjects in Hyland and Milton, 1997). Unlike what happened with certainty adverbs, there are significant differences between the female (0.101 per cent) and the male (0.042 per cent) populations in the presence of doubt adverbs (refer to Table 2.2), because the females make greater use of this hedging device, conferring their statements with higher degrees of uncertainty and insecurity. This same tendency holds when the female and male non-native subjects are contrasted: µ = 0. 103 in the female subcorpus and µ = 0. 038 in the male one. This preference is, however, not found in other studies, where no ‘significant gender-related effect on the speakers’ hedging frequencies’ (for example, Poos and Simpson, 2002) was found. The types of corpus analysed (spoken in their study, written in mine) and the selection of hedging devices studied (the expressions kind of/sort of in the former, and doubt adverbs in the latter) may have a bearing on the disparity of the results. When frequency of use between certainty and doubt adverbs is contrasted, some interesting results are found: overall males and the group of non-native males significantly used more certainty than doubt adverbs. Among the female population, the only paired contrast that bears significant differences in the use of certainty and doubt adverbs is in the Germanic female group, where we find the same tendency of higher use in certainty adverbs. Female speakers of Romance languages and the overall female population do not show significant differences when using boosting (that is, certainty) or hedging (that is, doubt) devices.




64


Particular items can therefore only be understood as expressions of doubt and certainty by attending to the contexts in which they occur. Meanings do not reside in the items themselves, but are assigned to utterances which contain them. Determining how an item is used therefore requires a pragmatic interpretation of actual instances of use. (Ibid.:185) Paying attention to the context of these epistemic devices in such a large corpus is not feasible, but some examples can be examined with the aim of illustrating the particular use of the adverbs in specific utterances (see Figure 2.2). As can be seen, there is much more variety of certainty than doubt adverbs (it is extremely difficult to find examples of doubt adverbs of a different type in the compositions). Therefore, there are not only quantitative but also qualitative differences in the use of certainty and doubt adverbs in terms of the variety of adverbs used, both in the native and non-native populations. The most frequent doubt adverbs are, undoubtedly, perhaps and maybe, and they even alternate in the same text, for instance, in the following composition written by a Swedish student: After the nuclear reactor accidents in the 70s and 80s many people started to realize the gravity of the situation and perhaps they changed their ideas about Nature. But for others it soon fell into oblivion. Changing peoples attitudes would probably take more than a century and who could be responsible for that? Maybe it could be Nature itself. Sometimes Nature takes its ‘revenge’, by earth-quakes and typhons and who knows, one day the silence of Nature may be broken by something worse. (ICLE-SW-UG-0002.2) Another interesting case worth commenting on is Example 35 (see Figure 2.2), where there seem to be two contradictory degrees of assertiveness: on the one hand, the sentence starts with what Hyland and Milton (1997) call a ‘cluster’ of certainty adverbs (Of course, in reality . . .), followed by a must, which is also an epistemic marker of security. On the other hand, the proposition has two hedges, mitigating the degree of certainty and conferring doubt to the assertion: the verbal


Although these results in the use of certainty and doubt adverbs could be interpreted as a sign of higher degrees of assertiveness and selfreliance in the male population, rushed conclusions should be avoided since, as Hyland and Milton (1997) highlight:


CERTAINTY ADVERBS

DOUBT ADVERBS

Example 15. Dutch female The debate was of course almost as important as the actual change in the law, because the issue of abortion was brought into the open and was for the first time widely discussed. ( Female Dutch) Example 17. Dutch male However, these students will be less motivated than students who know what they chose, so that it is actually an advantage to exclude these students from the beginning. ()

Example 16. Dutch female The child may have to go through a series of abuses, mental, physical and perhaps even sexual. ( Female Dutch)

Example 19. French female In fact, the difference between university and higher schools is the following: university gives us a theoretical education whereas higher schools are more technical oriented. ()

Example 20. French female For sitting before the television from four o’clock in the afternoon till, maybe, one or two o’clock in the morning is, according to me, a sign that something goes wrong with the persons involved. ()

Example 21. French male . . . and if you live in Croatia with your wife, who has just been raped by Serbian soldiers, you will undoubtedly receive commiseration and moral support from people all over the world. ()

Example 22. French male It is surprising to see how many times documents disappeared in supposedly locked and guarded rooms. ()

Example 23. German female The creatures living during stone-age, for example, had certainly other delights as anybody living in our time. ()

Example 24. German female So perhaps someone, who cannot understand why music should open doors to an infinite and new reality, is more calm and ‘good’ than someone, who is sensitive for music that stirred him to the depths of his soul, and who then reacts in his life. )

Example 25. German male Well, if you still believe those advertising-fairytales you have obviously not yet experienced the

Example 26. German male I feel some sort of relief as we strode along the hallways, silently. I don’t know exactly, maybe it’s the prospect of

Figure 2.2

Example 18. Dutch male That people will protest is likely, but is this protest valid. ()


65

Examples of Certainty and Doubt Adverbs for all Populations


sound of old analogue recordings, digitally remastered for CD. ()

having someone to talk to. ()

Example 27. Italian female A car takes you from door to door, indeed it can reach even little villages in the mountain where no other means of transport are able to arrive. ()

Example 28. Italian female Perhaps, in the television era, a person who spends the most part of the day in reading and analysing a book could seem to be strange, too tied to the oast. ()

Example 29. Italian male In this cases somebody tries to publicize something without saying it clearly, without admitting it. ()

Example 30. Italian male Maybe it’s good to use these breaks to do something else, like order the room, washing dishes or similar, and then come back to our program; or maybe we should turn of the tv and read a good book, there’s no advertisement in it. (

Example 31. Spanish female Then the evidence is clear, there is no doubt that there was a rape, even from the point of view of the law. ()

Example 32. Spanish female Then, what should we expect from those apparatuses which, theoretically, are caring for our interests? ()

Example 33. Spanish male A fair distribution of goods and a higher level of civic education will undoubtedly make a much better world. ()

Example 34. Spanish male Meanwhile, the world is how the CNN describes it and the ‘real’ happiness of this world is sold by means of YOUTH, BEAUTY, SEX, SUCCESS and RICHNESS though the apparently innocent screen of the television set, the ‘silly box’, which made us silly too. ()

Example 35. Swedish female Of course, in reality, we must try to accept these differences (to a certain degree) and make the best of them. ()

Example 36. Swedish female Perhaps you expect me to come up with a cracking solution to this problem. ()

Example 37. Swedish male Children having been brought up under conditions where either or both of their parents have lost their jobs, might carry with them a feeling of animosity or ‘revenge’ but so many other things in their environment and experience will actually have a lasting influence on their worldviews and lifestyles. ()

Example 38. Swedish male Possibly the first few steps towards a better production system for the environment are taken. Although there are problems left, I am optimistic about the future. ()

Figure 2.2


66

(Continued)


67

Example 39. Native female The zip-lock bag was definitely a good invention. ()

Example 40. Native female As a result of the greatly decreased travel times, countries can work together much easier than previously possible. ()

Example 41. Native male Without question, the geo-centric satellite is the invention of the century. ()

Example 42. Native male When someone is concentrating more on their telephone conversation and less on their driving, they are more likely to get into an accident. ()

Figure 2.2

(Continued)

periphrasis try to accept (instead of simply we must accept) and the bracketed expression (to a certain degree). The apparent contradictory forces of boosting and hedging devices in this utterance could be interpreted as a the writer’s desire to convey confidence in the truth of the information but, at the same time, not to sound too imposing and leave room for feedback on the part of the reader (Hyland and Milton, 1997). All the measures applied to distinguish among the different subpopulations of subjects proved more fruitful in the case of the gender variable (female versus male) than in the language typology variable (Romance languages versus Germanic languages) or the fact of being a native speaker of English or an English learner. Table 2.5 summarizes all contrasts that showed significant differences (p < 0. 05) in the four measures of lexical competence applied in the study. In the following and last section, the conclusions derived from these results are presented.

Conclusions In order to present the conclusions derived from the present study, the research questions initially posed will be answered. For ease of reference, the questions will be recalled one at a time: 1. Are there any quantitative and/or qualitative differences in the lexis used in compositions written by different subpopulations of university students when writing in English, either as their first or second language? The two measures of lexical richness, lexical variation (that is, type/token ratio) and lexical density, did not distinguish between




Paired Samples Test Paired Differences

t

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

−3.630 −5.753 −4.666 −13.485 5.744 10.326 35.268 5.612 5.027 2.427 4.377 −3.142 4.433

5 2 2 2 6 5 2 2 6 6 5 5 5

.015 .029 .043 .005 .001 .000 .001 .030 .002 .051 .007 .026 .007

95% Confidence Interval of the Difference

Pair 1 Pair 2 Pair 3 Pair 4 Pair 5 Pair 6 Pair 7 Pair 8 Pair 9 Pair 10 Pair 11 Pair 12 Pair 13

TTnnsFe – TTnnsMa TTgerFe – TTgerMa EFTTromFe – EFTTromMa EFTTgerFe – EFTTgerMa Nomfe – Nomma NomNNSFe – NomNNSMa NomgerFe – NomgerMa CerAdgerFe – CerAdgerMa DouAdfe – DouAdma CerAdma – DouAdma CerAdNNSMa – DouAdNNSMa EFTTRom – EFTTGer NomRom – NomGer

Mean

Std. Deviation

Std. Error Mean

Lower

Upper

−.76833 −.94667 −1.94000 −1.09000 1.35543 1.55417 1.39700 .19933 .05829 .06586 .03983 −2.97833 .60617

.51844 .28501 .72021 .14000 .62430 .36868 .06861 .06152 .03067 .07180 .02229 2.32201 .33496

.21165 .16455 .41581 .08083 .23596 .15051 .03961 .03552 .01159 .02714 .00910 .94796 .13675

−1.31240 −1.65468 −3.72910 −1.43778 .77805 1.16726 1.22657 .04652 .02992 −1.00054 .01644 −5.41513 .25465

−.22427 −.23865 −.15090 −.74222 1.93281 1.94107 1.56743 .35215 .08665 .13226 .06323 −.54153 .95768



68

Table 2.5 Significant Differences in the Four Measures of Lexical Competence

69

native and non-native novice writers. As was pointed out, a deviation in the figures caused by the errors committed by non-native speakers and a lack of lemmatization of the content words could be the cause for this unexpected result. However, it could also be the case that non-native speakers do possess an extended vocabulary, although they need to work on the occurrences of errors (Granger and Wynne, 1999). Mackenzie and Hannay’s (2001) computer-assisted, text-based approach could be a step in the right direction. They have developed a computer tool for students to explore lexical issues in several corpora from a variety of sources, making the task of learning vocabulary a much more motivating and effective activity. The two measures for lexico-pragmatic resources (grammatical metaphor and epistemic devices) do not discriminate between native and non-native speakers either. The academic genre in which the texts are written could justify the homogeneous use of nominalizations by all groups of subjects and the lack of differences in epistemic markers could be due to the intrinsic difficulty to use those devices even for native speakers (Hyland and Milton, 1997). 2. Is there a relationship between the writer’s gender and the amount and/or types of words used? As pointed out above, the gender variable has proved the most fruitful. All but two of the significant differences involve different behavioural trends between males and females. The first contrast was observed in lexical variation, before error-removal: non-native males outperformed non-native females. Within the non-native population, the Germanic males also showed a wider range of vocabulary than their female counterparts, but the Romance ones did not differ statistically. After errors were removed from the Spanish, French and Dutch populations, both the Romance and the Germanic equally showed significant gender differences, in favour of the males, and the female versus male non-native population stopped being significant. As far as lexical density is concerned, this measure was homogenous for all subjects. Grammatical metaphor (that is, nominalization) also discriminated between the overall female and male populations, as well as between male and female non-natives, particularly in the case of Germanic speakers: in all cases, females outperformed males. Last but not least, females generally used more doubt adverbs than overall males, who used significantly more boosting (that is, certainty adverbs) than hedging (that is, doubt adverbs) devices. Only Germanic females used more certainty adverbs than their male counterparts. Finally,





while non-native females did not significantly use one type of adverbs more than the other, non-native males preferred certainty over doubt adverbs. If, as Halliday (1994) proposes, nominalization is a feature of complexity and formality in texts, then the present study seems to prove that women writers, either native or non-native, use more formal and complex language, a characteristic that is aligned with the claim that female speech tends to be more conservative (Smith, 1979) and uses more prestigious forms of language (Labov, 1990). The fact that female writers excel in the use of doubt adverbs, a hedging device in texts, could be interpreted as a reflex of what is traditionally considered as stereotypical of women’s speech (Haas, 1979): being non-assertive, tentative and supportive. Thus, the use of hedging devices could be considered as a lack of self-security or self-reliance on the part of the female writers. On the other hand, the use of more boosters than hedges in the male population could be interpreted as offering stronger commitments. However, rushed interpretations of results must be avoided, since an overuse of certainty devices can also be interpreted as counterproductive, since excessively strong commitments are imposing; no significant differences in the use of certainty and doubt adverbs, like females show, may thus be preferable. A more qualitative study of the devices in the corpus would probably shed some light on the accuracy of use by each subpopulation. Nonetheless, both native and non-native novice writers in general would most probably benefit from instruction on the balanced use of epistemic devices of certainty and doubt (Hyland and Milton, 1997). 3. Can the gender variable be related to the L1 variable, that is do women and men writers from different L1 backgrounds show quantitative and/or qualitative differences in the lexicon used in their compositions? Finally, the third question calls for language typology relations combined with the gender variable. No significant differences were found when female Romance speakers were contrasted with female Germanic speakers or when Romance and Germanic male speakers were compared. Therefore, when the gender variable is maintained, the mother tongue does not seem to be a relevant factor for change. However, Romance speakers, when no gender distinction is made, use more nominalizations than the Germanic ones and show greater lexical variation, in the type/token measure after error removal.


70


71

The results obtained in the present study would probably benefit from further treatment of the data, such as lemmatization of words, complete error removal and a more qualitative analysis of the contextual use of the different lexical resources analysed. Lemmatization could even be controlled for the levels of difficulty in word families proposed by Bauer and Nation (1993). Other measures of lexical richness could also be applied, such as the Lexical Frequency Profile by Laufer and Nation (1995), but all of those improvements fall beyond the limits of the present research and will be the objective of further studies.

Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Instituto de la Mujer (Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales), which funded this research within the framework of the project entitled ‘Efectos de las políticas lingüísticas anti-sexistas y feminización del lenguaje de los medios’ (Ref. 37/06-01). I am greatly indebted to my colleague Professor José Simón, from the English Department at the University of Alcalá, for his generous help in the design of a computer programme that tremendously eased the search of nominalizations and certainty and doubt adverbs in the corpus. Last but not least, I would like to thank my friend and colleague, Sandra Stroo, professor at the University of North Texas, who proof read this chapter.

References Arribas Esteras, N. (2003) ‘Propuesta de Aprendizaje del Léxico en ELE desde la Perspectiva de la Semántica Histórica y Cognitiva’, Quaderni del CIRSIL, 2, www.lingue.unibo.it/cirsil, date accessed 15 July 2008. Bauer, L. and Nation, P. (1993) ‘Word families’, International Journal of Lexicography, 6, 4, 253–279. Biber, D. and Finegan, E. (1989) ‘Styles of stance in English: Lexical and grammatical marking of evidentiality and affect’, Text, 9, 94–124. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. and Finegan, E. (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Ellis, R. (1985) Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilquin, G., Granger, S. and Paquot, M. (2007) ‘Learner corpora: The missing link in EAP pedagogy’, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6, 319–335. Granger, S. and Wynne, M. (1999) ‘Optimizing measures of lexical variation in EFL learner corpora’, in Corpora Galore. Kirk, J. (ed.) Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 249–257.





Granger, S., Dagneaux, E. and Paquot, M. (eds) (2002) International Corpus of Learner English [Handbook and CD-ROM]. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Presses Universitaires de Louvain. Haas, A. (1979) ‘Male and female spoken language differences: Stereotypes and evidence’, Psychological Bulletin, 86, 3, 616–626. Halliday, M. A. K. (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd edn. London: Edward Arnold. Hyland, K. and Milton, J. (1997) ‘Qualification and certainty in L1 and L2 students’ writing’, Journal of Second Language Writing, 6, 2, 183–205. Labov, W. (1990) ‘The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change’, Language Variation and Change, 2, 205–254. Laufer, B. and Nation, P. (1995) ‘Vocabulary size and use: lexical richness in L2 written production’, Applied Linguistics, 16, 307–322. Mackenzie, L. and Hannay, M. (2001) ‘Developing lexical competente: A computer-assisted, text-based approach’, Cauce, 24, 541–563. Neff, J., Ballesteros, F., Dafouz, E., Díez, M., Martínez, F., Prieto, R., Rica, J. P. and Sancho, C. (2004a) ‘The expression of writer stance in native and nonnative argumentative texts’, in English Modality in Perspective: Genre Analysis and Contrastive Studies. Facchinetty, R. and Palmer, F. (eds). Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 141–161. Neff, J., Ballesteros, F., Dafouz, E., Díez, M., Martínez, F., Prieto, R. and Rica, J. P. (2004b) ‘Formulating writer stance: A contrastive study of EFL learner corpora’, in Applied Corpus Linguistics: A Multidimensional Perspective. Connor, U. and Thomas, U. U. (eds). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 73–89. Neff, J., Ballesteros, F., Dafouz, E., Herrera, H., Díez, M., Martínez, F., Prieto, R. and Rica, J. P. (2003b) ‘Contrasting learner corpora: The use of modal and reporting verbs in the expression of writer stance’, in Extending the Scope of Learner-based Research. Granger, S. and Petch-Tyson, S. (eds). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 211–230. Neff, J., Dafouz, E., Díez, M., Martínez, F., Prieto, R. and Rica, J. P (2003a) ‘Evidentiality and the construction of writer stance in native and non-native texts’, in Language and Function. Hladký, J. (ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 223–235. Neff, J., Dafouz, E., Herrera, H., Martínez, F., Rica, J. P., Díez, M. and Sancho, C. (2002) ‘A contrastive study of certainty and doubt adverb in native and non-native argumentative texts’, in Studies in Contrastive Linguistics. Iglesias Rábade, L. and Doval Suárez, S. M. (eds). Santiago de Compostela: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 747–753. Nunan, D. (1993) Introducing Discourse Analysis. London: Penguin. Petch-Tyson, S. (1988) ‘Writer/reader visibility in EFL written discourse’, in Learner English on Computer. Granger, S. (ed.). London and New York: Longman. Poos, D. and Simpson, R. (2002) ‘Cross-disciplinary comparisons of hedging: Some findings from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English’, in Using Corpora to Explore Linguistic Variation. Reppen, R. Fitzmaurice, S. M. and Biber, D. (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 3–23. Scarcella, R. and Zimmerman, C. (1998) ‘Academic words and gender: ESL student performance on a Test of Academic Lexicon’, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20, 1, 27–49. Scott, M. (1998) WordSmith Tools Version 3.0. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


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Smith, P. M. (1979) ‘Sex markers in speech’, in Scherer, K. R. and Giles, H. (eds.) Social Markers in Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Presss, 109–146. Sušinskiene, S. (2004) ‘Grammatical metaphor in scientific discourse’, Kalbotyra, 54, 3, 76–83. Thompson, G. (2004) Introducing Functional Grammar, 2nd edn, London: Hodder Arnold.




Exploring the Role of Gender in Lexical Creations María Pilar Agustín Llach

Introduction The present study aims at identifying gender differences, in the use of lexical inventions in Foreign Language (FL) writing within a school context. Gender is one of the most basic criteria of classifying people into groups. Myriad studies have concentrated on examining gender differences in different areas of cognition and learning. The main areas in which gender differences have been researched are verbal skills, mathematical skills and visual-spatial abilities. Gender differences in language acquisition have been repeatedly demonstrated with results pointing to girls as more able language acquirers than boys. The appearance of lexical creations in language learners’ productions can be considered as a manifestation of a productive use of vocabulary. These lexical inventions provide insights into the mental processes that underlie productive vocabulary use. Studies devoted to the exploration of gender differences in productive vocabulary use as regards the particular aspect of the creation of new, innovative lexical items are scarce. The present research intends to fill this gap in the literature. Then, the study conducted to explore gender differences in the production of lexical creations is accounted for and the main results are detailed and discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn, the shortcomings of the study are stated and some future lines of research within this field are suggested.


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Lexical Creations Lexical creation is the term used to refer to those new lexical items coined by language users in either their mother tongue or foreign 74 10.1057/9780230274938 - Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages, Edited by Rosa Mª Jiménez Catalán

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language and which do not exist as such in the target language (Clark, 1980; Liederman et al., 1983; Dewaele, 1998; González Álvarez, 2004).1 Those non-target lexemes have an L1 or L2 basis and are adapted to the morphology of the target language, so lexical innovations are indicative of learners’ ability to analyse the target language input to apply this knowledge to communication in the FL (González Álvarez, 2004:35). Innovative language use tends to be the result of lack of lexical knowledge, so it is typical of children learning their mother tongue and of foreign language learners. When there is limited proficiency in the target language, then learners make a creative use of language. Most authors (Clark, 1980; Liederman et al., 1983; Kocoglu, 1997; Dewaele, 1998) interpret lexical creations as the result of the application of a communication strategy arisen to fill lexical gaps. Lexical inventions have, therefore, a communicative function. The better a new coined lexical item serves its function, the more frequently will it be used in subsequent instances, but lexical inventions that are not understood, that is, that do not comply with their communicative function are forgotten and not used any longer (Clark, 1980:10). Research has also placed the study of lexical innovations within the context of Error Analysis (cf. González Álvarez, 2004). Different types of lexical inventions have been mentioned in the literature depending on the mechanisms that underlie the processes of lexical creation and on the sources from which learners draw (cf. González Álvarez, 2004:36–56; Poulisse, 1993 for a more thorough account of the application of the term ‘lexical innovation’). Dewaele (1998), for example, distinguishes among several categories and subcategories of lexical inventions in the oral production of his French FL learners which are originated from intralingual and interlingual sources, as well as from a mixed source. Intralingual subcategories of lexical inventions include slips of the tongue and overgeneralizations (cf. also Blum and Levenston, 1977). Interlingual categories of lexical inventions refer to calques generated from transfer from their L1 and other known foreign languages (478–484, see also Rababah, 2002; Liaw, 1996). He also (cf. Dewaele, 1998:484) considers a final category which includes untraceable or ambiguous examples which cannot possibly be ascribed to any of the categories distinguished. Other categories considered are foreignizing (Ringbom, 1986; Singleton, 1987; Liaw, 1996), word coinage (Clark, 1980; Liaw, 1996; Kocoglu, 1997; Rababah, 2002) and transfer or code-switching (Blum and Levenston, 1977; Rababah, 2002).


María Pilar Agustín Llach



Singleton and Little (1991) believe that apart from crosslinguistic influence, creative lexical innovation can be traced back to incomplete mastery of orthographic conventions, or to deficient coding in memory of lexical items encountered in the input. Moreover, Poulisse and Bongaerts (1994) and de Houwer (1995) found out that some lexical inventions are the consequence of the mixing of first and target language forms. These authors believe that when producing utterances in the foreign language, not only FL lexical items are activated, but also the conceptual equivalent L1 lexemes or formally similar morphemes are retrieved, and as a result lexical inventions arise. In this sense, the mechanisms that lie behind the appearance of lexical creations can be those of language activation or selection (cf. Dewaele, 1998). Moreover, lexical inventions can also be the consequence of incorrect or incomplete information labels tagged to foreign language lexical items (Dewaele, 1998: 476). Most studies that have focused on the exploration of lexical creations are of the descriptive type. Findings pertain to the types of lexical inventions (Ringbom, 1986; Singleton, 1987; Dewaele, 1998; Singleton and Little, 1991) and to the differences observed in their production depending on the following: (1) whether the target language is the first or the second foreign language with both groups producing lexical inventions to a similar extent (Dewaele, 1998; González Álvarez, 2004), (2) on the age of the learner with adults and children producing similarly communicative L1 lexical inventions (Liederman et al., 1983), (3) on the proficiency of the learner with lexical inventions increasing with proficiency (González Álvarez, 2004; Naves, Miralpeix and Celaya, 2005; Celaya and Ruiz de Zarobe, 2008). Research has investigated lexical creations in the mother tongue (Clark, 1980; Liederman et al., 1983), from the point of view of their role as communication strategies (Blum and Levenston, 1977; Poulisse, 1993; Liaw, 1996; Kocoglu, 1997; Rababah, 2002), or as manifestations of erroneous target language use (Celaya and Torras, 2001; Naves et al., 2005). Regarding the issue of the production of lexical creations, we are not aware of any study concerned with the examination of gender differences, and only Kocoglu (1997) found as the by-product of a study with another focus that there are no gender differences in the production of word coinages. Neither is the literature on lexical creations very abundant and the focus of research changes from study to study. With these previous considerations in mind, the present chapter intends to search for male and female differences in lexical innovation.


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We want to find out whether male and female learners of EFL create lexical items to a similar extent and whether the innovation processes they resort to are similar. Examination of the nature of the lexical creative or innovative behaviour of male and female learners while writing in the foreign language can throw interesting results concerning the cognitive processes activated. Specifically, our research questions are as follows: 1. What are the most frequent lexical creations produced by male learners? 2. What are the most frequent lexical creations produced by female learners? 3. Is there any significant difference in the number of lexical creations produced by male compared to female learners? 4. Is there any significant difference in the types of lexical creations produced by male compared to female learners?

Method Participants A total of 298 learners of English as a foreign language participated in this study. Of these, 168 were male and 130 were female learners, so 56.37 per cent of the informant population were males and 43.62 per cent were females. They were attending the second grade of secondary education and averaged 13.32 years old. Spanish was their mother tongue and by the time of data collection they had received a total of 839 hours of instruction in the foreign language. English is a compulsory school subject for all learners. Data were collected in four secondary schools in Spain and intact classes were selected for the study. Instruments A written composition was used as the instrument to collect data from informants. Learners were required to write a letter to a prospective English host family. In this letter they had to introduce themselves and talk about their family, home town, school, hobbies and any other thing they thought the host family would find interesting. This composition topic was selected because it imposed little or no constraints on the linguistic content of the writings. Moreover, with this topic it was reasonable to assume that learners would have enough world knowledge to




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Imagina que vas a vivir con una familia inglesa en Oxford durante un mes. La familia se llama Mr. y Mrs. Edwards y tienen dos hijos: Peter y Helen. Escríbeles una carta en inglés, preséntate, háblales de tu cuidad, tu colegio, tus hobbies y cualquier otra cosa interesante que desees añadir. Procedures and analysis We can distinguish two phases in the analysis of our data. In the first phase, compositions were typed and scrutinized for lexical inventions. Following previous research (Dewaele, 1998), we identified two main sources of lexical innovations: the intralingual and interlingual source. Intralingual lexical inventions arise from the application of FL resources, which manifest, for example, in the combination of foreign language words or the creation of new words from the basis of already existing FL words (overgeneralization). Henceforth, this category of lexical invention will be termed ‘word coinage’. Interlingual lexical creations derive from the influence of the mother tongue of the learners, Spanish in this case. We distinguish between two subcategories: ‘foreignizing’ and ‘literal translation’. Foreignizing consist in adapting L1 words to the orthography and morphology of the foreign language, so that they look English (Poulisse, 1993:180 refers to these cases as morphological creativity). Literal translation refers to the word-for-word translation process which is based on the assumption of literal lexical equivalence between the L1 and the FL. In this sense, learners attribute to a FL lexical item ‘all the functions – referential and conceptual meaning, connotation, collocability, register-restriction – of its assumed first language translation equivalent’ (Blum and Levenston, 1977:16). Still, we created a further category containing those lexical inventions that were ambiguous and could not be traced back to either interlingual or intralingual sources. We termed this category: ‘ambiguous lexical inventions’. Figure 3.1 offers examples of each of these categories. In the second phase, the total number of words in each composition was counted and the different types of lexical inventions were tallied according to composition length (total number of words). This new ratio measure was obtained to allow for facility of comparison between male and female learners. First, we examined the two cohorts, male and female learners. We separately focused on the description of the lexical inventions created by


write something. Instructions were given in Spanish, the mother tongue of the learners and they read as follows:



Figure 3.1

I like all canes of music (for kinds) I wan the concurse (for competition or contest) In Saint Week I was in Paris (for Easter) The teachers steet our five minutes (for tell off)

Examples of Categories of Lexical Inventions

each group, and then we compared results looking for differences. Quantitative analyses of the lexical creations regarding both general results and those pertaining to particular categories are offered. We used the SPSS 15.0 to carry out descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results This section offers the results of descriptive and inferential statistics concerning lexical inventions of Spanish EFL learners in second grade of secondary education. First of all, we wanted to find out whether there were any differences between male and female learners concerning the creation of new lexical items while writing in the FL. Table 3.1 presents descriptive results for lexical inventions in absolute terms for both learner groups. As can be observed in Table 3.1, boys’ compositions display slightly more lexical inventions than those of their female counterparts, who create less than one lexical item on average. Maximum values are also higher for male learners, while minimum values coincide for both learner groups, with zero realizations. Nevertheless, one could argue that these results could be biased since differences in composition length may play a relevant role. So, we decided to tally the results in order to offer more reliable values of the invention of lexical items for comparison purposes. Tables 3.2 and 3.3 show these results.

Table 3.1 Descriptive Statistics for Lexical Inventions

Mean lexical inventions S.D. Maximum Minimum

Girls

Boys

0.87 1.17 5 0

1.02 1.37 7 0


Word coinage Foreignizing Literal translation Ambiguous

79


80


Mean composition length∗ S.D. Maximum Minimum

Girls

Boys

165 70.4 419 24

137.29 65.03 349 19

Note: ∗ Composition length is measured in total number of words.

Table 3.3 Descriptive Statistics for the Ratio Lexical Inventions/Composition Length

Mean ratio lexical inventions S.D. Maximum Minimum

∗

Girls

Boys

0.54 0.72 3.23 0

0.70 0.93 4.96 0

Note: ∗ This measure is obtained by dividing the number of lexical inventions per composition by the total number of words per composition. If percentages are to be expressed this value has to be multiplied by 100.

The information presented in Tables 3.2 and 3.3 clearly shows that girls write longer compositions than boys, that is, girls write on average more words than boys. Maximum and minimum values are also higher for girls. Regarding the ratio between lexical inventions and composition length, we can appreciate higher values for male learners, so that girls tend to create 0.54 new lexical items every 100 words they write, while boys invent on average up to 0.70 new FL words every 100 words. Maximum values are higher for male learners, while both learners display similar minimum values. Standard deviations are very high which indicates a great heterogeneity among learners with some learners producing notably fewer lexical inventions than some of their peers. In order to ascertain whether differences in the innovation behaviour of male and female learners were significant, we performed several tests for means comparison. First, we made sure that our samples did not meet a normal distribution, and then we opted for the non-parametric test for mean comparison, the Mann-Whitney test. The results of these tests show that there are no significant differences in lexical inventions


Table 3.2 Descriptive Statistics for Composition Length


María Pilar Agustín Llach Results for Inferential Statistics

Lexical inventions Composition length Ratio lexical inventions

Mann-Whitney U

p

10322 8231 10082

0.524 0.000 0.326

either from an absolute perspective or from a relative one, that is, when the ratio between lexical inventions and composition length is considered. Nevertheless, the test for means comparison reveals that girls write significantly longer compositions than boys. To put it differently, girls write significantly more words in their compositions than their male peers. Table 3.4 offers the results of the inferential statistics with the values obtained for the Mann-Whitney U with their significance values. So far, we have ascertained that there were no significant differences between male and female EFL learners concerning the lexical innovations they created while writing in the foreign language. Next, we set out to investigate whether there were any differences in the categories of lexical creations. In other words, we wanted to know whether the mechanisms that led to the creation of new lexical items in the FL were the same for boys and girls. To do this, we classified the different lexical inventions into several categories (see section on procedures and analysis). According to this classification, we obtained the following distributions of the different categories of lexical creations across genders (see Figures 3.2 and 3.3): From Figures 3.2 and 3.3, we can conclude that the frequency percentages in which the different categories appear are very similar for both learner groups. Yet, girls show a more uniform distribution and display more instances of both literal translations and word coinages, with fewer examples of foreignizing. In absolute terms, both groups of learners display similar frequency of categories, and the same order of frequency of these categories. More specifically, the most frequent category of lexical creations for both male and female learners is foreignizing, followed by literal translations and word coinages with ambiguous instances being the least frequent category. Table 3.5 presents the absolute values of the different categories for boys and girls. As can be observed from Table 3.5, the order of frequency of the categories is the same. Notwithstanding this apparent similarity, we still


Table 3.4

81


82


11%

14%

Figure 3.2

63%

Foreignizing

Literal translation

Word coinage

Ambiguous

Distribution of Categories of Lexical Inventions for Boys

11%

16%

53%

20%

Figure 3.3

Foreignizing

Literal translation

Word coinage

Ambiguous

Distribution of Categories of Lexical Inventions for Girls


12%

wanted to conduct tests of inferential statistics to check and verify whether there are any significant differences in the categories of lexical inventions created by male and female learners. The data did not follow a normal distribution so Mann-Whitney non-parametric tests of means comparison were selected for the analysis. Table 3.6 presents the



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Total lexical inventions Foreignizing Literal translation Word coinage Ambiguous

Girls

Boys

112 61 23 18 12

172 108 24 21 19

Table 3.6 Results for Inferential Statistics for the Categories of Lexical Inventions Mann-Whitney U Foreignizing Literal translation Word coinage Ambiguous

10167 10695 10532 10690

p 0.279 0.743 0.591 0.680

results (U and p values) which threw non-significant differences for all categories submitted to analysis.2 Summing up the results section, we can state that no qualitative or quantitative statistically significant differences were found concerning lexical inventions present in EFL written compositions of Spanish male and female learners. In other words, girls and boys create new lexical items to a similar extent and the types of lexical items invented are very much the same.

Discussion The first research question asked about the types of lexical creations most frequent in male compositions. Our results show that foreignizing is the most frequent category of lexical inventions for male learners. Following in frequency, we identified literal translation, word coinage and lastly ambiguous lexical innovations. A similar order was found to answer research question number 2, which concerned the types of lexical creations found in female writings. An in-depth analysis of the types of lexical creations identified shows that the order of frequency corresponds to the degree of L1 influence in each category. Thus,


Table 3.5 Absolute Values of the Categories of Lexical Inventions



foreigninzing is the mechanism by which an L1 word is adapted to the morphological conventions of the L2, so that it sounds English (cf. Celaya and Torras, 2001), in these cases the L1 and the L2 are simultaneously activated; in literal translation the learner simply translated the Spanish lexical items into English, so English words are used but with underlying Spanish constraints (for example, syntactical or usecontextual). Finally, word coinages are the result of applying target language rules to target language lexical items, so it is a completely L2-based strategy of lexical creation. From this observation, we can conclude that L1-influence is determinant in lexical innovation at our learners’ level. The limited English proficiency of the participants may account for this fact (cf. Poulisse, 1993:164, 177). In this sense we agree with Blum and Levenston (1977:16) when they say that basically at the beginning stages of language learning the assumption is prevalent that for every word in the mother tongue there is a single translation equivalent in the target language (word-for-word translation-equivalence). As the learner progresses in his or her mastery of the L2, there is a gradual abandonment of this equivalence hypothesis and the learner starts to ‘think in the second language’ (p. 16). Along the same line argues González Álvarez (2004), who contends that word coinages with an L2 basis start appearing at advanced levels of acquisition, where, by contrast, L1-influence is marginal in word formation processes. If these results are analysed in terms of Dewaele’s (1998) language activation interpretation, we can observe that the L1 is in a higher level of activation, since learners resort to it to compensate for lexical deficiencies in the L2 (González Álvarez, 2004). Our results show an intermediate stage of our participants in the aforementioned process. Our third and fourth research questions explicitly asked for gender differences in the quantity and types of lexical creations produced by our participants. Results revealed that there are no significant differences in the amount of lexical creations present in male and female writings. Male and female learners produce lexical creations to a similar extent. Moreover, further analysis brought out that the order of frequency and the percentages of the different types of lexical innovations were similar with no significant differences, for both male and female EFL learners. This result concurs with the findings of Kocoglu (1997). Basing on these findings we can safely argue that at this intermediate stage of foreign language acquisition, boys and girls do show the same mechanisms when creating new lexical items. When facing a lexical gap while communicating, male and female learners, either consciously or


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unconsciously, follow the same mental or cognitive processes to compensate for that lack of lexical knowledge. The different types of lexical innovations reveal different processes of word access or word retrieval,3 and, as we have pointed out above, FL proficiency level explains the preference of our informants for L1-based lexical creations. In the same line, we believe that lexical inventions should be seen as a way of learning the language and progressing in language knowledge, in other words as a way to cope with the acquisition process, and we agree with González Álvarez (2004:2) when she defends that ‘the study of lexical innovation can provide valuable insights into L2 acquisition in general’. In light of our results, it seems reasonable to conclude that as far as the intermediate stage of acquisition is concerned male and female learners go through the same processes of acquisition and use similar mechanisms to cope with the task of lexical learning and communicating. We can brandish several reasons to explain this lack of gender differences. First, it may simply be that there are no gender differences in general language acquisition.4 According to this explanation, boys and girls will show similar to equal behaviours all through their language learning process irrespective of the language areas tested, or the moment of testing. Nevertheless, this explanation conflicts with the findings of previous research, which established gender differences in several aspects of language acquisition. Second, the limited proficiency level of our informants may serve to explain this lack of differences. We can think that as learners become more proficient, differences can start to appear (cf. Casey, 1996 for the opposite view). To support this view, we can contend that males and females learn at different rates with girls showing faster rates of language development (Halpern, 1996; San Mateo Valdehíta, 2003/2004; Agustín Llach, 2009). In this sense, as their proficiency increases, differences from their male peers will also appear, especially concerning more the types of lexical creations rather than their amount.5 Further research in this respect is warranted. Finally, we can argue that the homogenous learning context in which participants are learning the foreign language serves to further explain this lack of gender differences. Male and female learners are subject to the same formal approach of language teaching and in this constrained learning context, they have hardly any exposure to the foreign language apart from that of the formal class. All that together with their young age and limited proficiency may hinder a more independent strategic development of male and female learners.





Moreover, Halpern and Wright (1996) believe in the existence of gender differences which manifest in the different processes underlying different cognitive tasks. In this sense, we can think that insofar as the writing task is the same for all learners, they face it in the same way resorting to the same mechanisms of lexical innovation. Only when learners have to face tasks in which different cognitive processes prevail do gender differences seem to appear. This is in line with other studies in lexical inventions which showed that recourse to different innovation mechanisms depend on previous available linguistic knowledge (L1/Ln) (Ringbom, 1986; Singleton and Little, 1991; Dewaele, 1998) and on L2 proficiency level (González Álvarez, 2004). This conclusion seems to concur with research that found lexicon organization to vary depending on L2 proficiency and previous linguistic knowledge (Meara, 1984; Singleton, 1999), but no studies to date have found differences in lexicon organization across genders. Nevertheless, this issue has been scarcely addressed in research, so future research can tackle this in greater detail. From the results of this and other studies with the same subjects in grade eight and earlier (Agustín Llach and Terrazas Gallego, 2008; Agustín Llach, 2009), there seems to be enough evidence to conclude that from a cognitive point of view (mental behaviour, cognitive and intellectual capacity, processes activated, mechanisms employed and strategies used) there are no gender differences, at least as far as vocabulary use in writing is concerned. As we have just stated, male and female learners share cognitive processes of language learning. Notwithstanding this cognitive similarity, some previous studies conducted on the same subjects in earlier grades have suggested gender differences in vocabulary use. Jiménez Catalán and Ojeda Alba (2007; 2008) and Ojeda Alba and Jiménez Catalán (2007) found that male and female learners produced words belonging to different semantic fields. Thus, boys used words of the semantic fields of sports, mainly, whereas girls preferred to talk about family and colours. Male and female learners have been observed to use language, especially vocabulary, in a different way (cf. also Sunderland, 1995; Cheshire, 2005). We can argue, then, that gender differences seem rather to have a social or psychosocial basis rather than a cognitive one. So gender differences ascertained in other research studies concerning strategy use (for example, Young and Oxford, 1997; Jiménez Catalán, 2003) or vocabulary use (for example, Ojeda Alba and Jiménez Catalán, 2007; Jiménez Catalán and Ojeda Alba, 2007; 2008) may be due to social factors such as education, upbringing


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or motivation,6 but they do not seem to derive from cognitive processes of vocabulary learning and use, word storage or word retrieval (cf. also Phakiti, 2003). A deeper look into the descriptive results of our particular sample of lexical creations and the categories of lexical creations found in male and female writings reveals that girls show fewer lexical inventions, although this difference is not significant, and they write significantly longer compositions. We can contend that girls display higher levels of fluency in the productive written skill than boys and they encounter fewer lexical difficulties in their communicative process and thus they have to cover fewer lexical gaps. Another explanation for this slight difference can be that girls use words that they are confident with and write about topics they are familiar with. On the contrary, attending to the slightly and non-significant higher production of lexical creations on the part of boys, we can argue for male learners being more creative and taking more risks using words they are not familiar with. We can also believe that they want to express more complex ideas so that they need to make use of more difficult and unknown words to encode those ideas. This behaviour is in line with previous findings which showed that females are more interested in school subjects, use more rote-learning and memorization strategies, are more anxious, have lower levels of self-confidence and prefer to avoid answering if not sure, whereas males prefer to guess and deduce from context, and are more prone to risk without fear of failure (Prieto and Delgado, 1999; Rozendaal et al., 2003; Andreou et al., 2004; Furnham, 2004). Nevertheless, at this stage of these learners’ language development these differences are only very faintly appreciable. Further research should be conducted to find out whether at more advanced stages of language learning gender differences get bigger and become significant. By contrast, we can also argue that gender differences are not found any longer at this age and stage of language development, and we can speculate that they existed at younger ages and levels of proficiency (Agustín Llach et al., 2006; Ojeda Alba and Jiménez Catalán, 2007; Jiménez Catalán and Ojeda Alba, 2007; 2008). This explanation would concur with Casey’s (1996) and Brantmeier’s (2004) belief that gender differences is a critical factor during the first years of schooling, but not at upper levels. In this sense, we believe that further research should concentrate on examining the production of lexical inventions in learners with different proficiency levels, both at lower levels and at higher levels.





This could throw important findings concerning gender differences and their evolution through time and proficiency level. Another line of study should address the communicative effectiveness of the different types of lexical creations. A hierarchy of communicability can derive in the development of teaching approaches that focus on the instruction of the strategies that lead to the most effective lexical creations. We believe that lexical creations generated on the basis of the L1 are least effective in communicative terms than those that come from L2-based processes, because if learner and addressee do not share the same L1, these L1-based lexical creations will be difficult to impossible to understand. Nevertheless, Kocoglu (1997) contends that not only L2-based processes or strategies should be taught, but also that learners should be made aware of L1-based processes leading to lexical inventions, that is, codeswitching, foreignizing or literal translation, so that they can use them when they face problems in communication or gaps in their lexical knowledge. We coincide with Dewaele (1998:488) in pinpointing a main limitation for this study concerning the fact that the present study has analysed lexical inventions as products, so we can only make conjectures about the underlying pyscholinguistic processes that led to those productions and we must be careful and prudent in interpreting these results. What really goes on in the learner’s mind can only be anticipated from the available evidence. Notwithstanding this caveat, we believe in the value of this research as offering preliminary data regarding gender differences in lexical innovation.

Conclusion The present chapter has tackled the issue of gender differences in lexical creations. First, we identified the different types of lexical creations produced by male and female learners as two independent cohorts, then we established no significant gender differences either in the number of lexical innovations, nor in the order of frequency in which these types appear in male and female writings. The order of frequency found has been accounted for in terms of L1 reliance. Several other reasons have been given to explain the general lack of gender differences in the production of lexical creations, among them the homogenous learning context, the proficiency level of learners or the fact that there simply may be no gender differences in the process of language acquisition and use. Social or psychosocial factors may account for gender differences revealed by other research studies, since cognitively male and female


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learners tended to follow the same processes, at least as regards the creation of novel target language lexical items during their writings in the foreign language. We believe, along with González Álvarez (2004:38), that the study of lexical creations can be of special relevance in understanding the whole process of language acquisition, since they can reveal important insights into how language is acquired, stored and used. We may wonder whether conclusions concerning lack of gender differences in lexical creation could be examined in light of their consequences for general language acquisition processes.

Acknowledgements This study has been carried out under the auspices of a research project funded by the Spanish ‘Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología’ and FEDER, Grant no HUM2006-09775-C02-02/FILO. I am also grateful to the native speaker who corrected and proof read this chapter. Any remaining errors are my own.

Notes 1. In the present chapter we will use interchangeably as synonyms the terms lexical creations, lexical innovations and lexical inventions to refer to the same phenomenon of non-target lexemes. 2. Again we used the relative measure concerning number of lexical inventions and total number of words for each composition. 3. However, despite the fact that they reflect different mechanisms of coping with lexical difficulties, all types of lexical creations seem to be equally effective in communicative terms (Liederman et al., 1983). 4. For this commentary I have to thank M. L. Celaya (personal communication), who pointed out to me in the course of another discussion that it may be that male and female learners simply do not show different behaviours in their vocabulary learning acquisition processes. 5. We can also think that as learners get more proficient the amount of lexical creations reduces, since the number of lexical difficulties they have to face reduces as well. In this sense, if girls progress at a faster rate than their male peers, they will start to produce fewer lexical creations earlier than boys, and again differences can appear. 6. Traditionally, it is generally accepted that language learning is a ‘female subject’ and this may lead to lack of motivation on the part of male learners, who prefer not to get involved in language learning, since it is a ‘female activity’. Girls have been proved to be more motivated than their male peers in language acquisition tasks (Kaylani, 1996; MacIntyre et al., 2002; Fernández Fontecha, this volume).




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Agustín Llach, M. P. (2009) Gender Differences in Vocabulary Acquisition in the Foreign Language in Primary Education: Evidence from Lexical Errors, Biblioteca de Investigación no 54, Logroño: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de La Rioja. Agustín Llach, M. P., Fernández Fontecha, A. and Moreno Espinosa, S. (2006) ‘Lexical errors in the written production of young ESL beginner learners: sex difference’, in Adquisicion y enseñanza de lenguas en contextos plurilingües. Ensayos y propuestas aplicadas. Amengual, M., Juan, M. and Salazar, J. (eds) Palma de Mallorca: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Las Islas Baleares, 35–42. Agustín Llach, M. P. and Terrazas Gallego, M. (2008) ‘Gender differences in receptive vocabulary size in EFL primary school learners: A longitudinal study’, Paper presented at the XXXII AEDEAN Conference, Palma de Mallorca, 13–15 November. Andreou, E., Andreou, G. and Vlachos, F. (2004) ‘Studying orientations and performance on verbal fluency tasks in a second language’, Learning and Individual Differences, 15, 23–33. Blum, S. and Levenston, E. A. (1977) ‘Strategies of Communication though Lexical Avoidance in the Speech and Writing of Second Language Teachers and Learners and in Translation’, Available online http://eric.ed.gov/ ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/37/9f/7b.pdf, date accessed 19 April 2009. Brantmeier, C. (2004) ‘Gender, violence-oriented passage content and second language reading comprehension’, The Reading Matrix, 4, 2, 1–19. Casey, M. B. (1996) ‘Gender, sex, and cognition: Considering the interrelationship between biological and environmental factors’, Learning and Individual Differences, 8, 1, 39–53. Celaya, M. L. and Ruiz de Zarobe, Y. (2008) ‘CLIL, Age, and L1 influence’, Paper presented at the XXXII AEDEAN Conference, Palma de Mallorca, 13–15 November. Celaya, M. L. and Torras, M. R. (2001) ‘L1 influence and EFL vocabulary: do children rely more on L1 than adult learners?’, Proceedings of the 25th AEDEAN Meeting. December 13–15, University of Granada. 1–14. Cheshire, J. (2005) ‘Syntactic variation and beyond: gender and social class variation in the use of discourse-new markers’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 9, 4, 479–508. Clark, E. (1980) ‘Lexical innovations: How children learn to create new words’, Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 18. Available online http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/ 80/34/58/44.pdf, date accessed 4 March 2009. Dewaele, J. M. (1998) ‘Lexical inventions: French interlanguage as L2 versus L3’, Applied Linguistics, 19, 4, 471–490. de Houwer, A. (1995) ‘L’alternance codique intr-phrastique dans les discurs de jeunes bilingues’, AILE, Acquisition et Interaction en langue etrangere, 6, 39–64. Furnham, A. (2004) ‘Are lay people lumpers or splitters? The factor structure of, and sex differences relate to, self-rated and other rated abilities’, Learning and Individual Differences, 14, 153–168.


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Phakiti, A. (2003) ‘A closer look at gender and strategy use in L2 reading’, Language Learning, 53, 4, 649–702. Poulisse, N. (1993) ‘A theoretical account of lexical communication strategies’, in The Bilingual Lexicon. Schreuder, R. and Weltens, B. (eds) Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 157–189. Poulisse, N. and Bongaerts, T. (1994) ‘First language use in second language production’, Applied Linguistics, 15, 36–57. Prieto, G. and Delgado, A. (1999) ‘The role of instruction in the variability of sex-related differences in multiple choice tests’, Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 1067–1077. Rababah, G. (2002) ‘Second Language Communication Strategies: Definitions, Taxonomies, Data Elicitation Methodology and Teachability Issues’, Available online http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_ storage_01/0000019b/80/1a/bc/3a.pdf, date accessed 6 December 2008. Ringbom, H. (1986) ‘Cross-linguistic influence and the foreign language learning process’, in Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition. Kellerman, E. and Sharwood-Smith, M. (eds) New York: Pergamon Press, 150–162. Rozendaal, J. S., Minnaett, A. and Boekaerts, M. (2003) ‘Motivation and selfregulated learning in secondary vocational education: information-processing type and gender differences’, Learning and Individual Differences, 13, 273–289. San Mateo Valdehíta, A. (2003/2004) Aprendizaje de léxico en español como segunda lengua. Investigación sobre tres métodos. Unpublished M.phil. Thesis, UNED, Available online http://www.mec.es/redele/biblioteca2005/san_mateo.shtml, date accessed 19 April 2009. Singleton, D. (1987) ‘Mother and other tongue influence on learner French’, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 9, 327–346. Singleton, D. (1999) Exploring the Second Language Mental Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singleton, D. and Little, D. (1991) ‘The second language lexicon some evidence from university-level learners of French and German’, Second Language Research, 2, 61–81. Sunderland, J. (1995) ‘We’re boys, miss!’: finding gendered identities and looking for gendering of identities in the foreign language classroom’, in Language and Gender: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Mills, S. (ed.) London: Longman, 160–178. Young, D. J. and Oxford, R. (1997) ‘A gender-related analysis of strategies used to process written input in the native language and a foreign language’, Applied Language Learning, 8,1, 43–73.


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Gender and Motivation in EFL Vocabulary Production Almudena Fernández Fontecha

Introduction The aim of this study is to explore the possible connections between learners’ gender,1 motivation – and motivation types – and attainment in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) lexical availability test. Among the variables affecting foreign language (FL) learning, gender and motivation have received extensive attention within this field. Gender in language learning The relationship between gender and language acquisition is a recurrent one in the literature. In the past decades, it has been approached from multiple angles, as illustrated in Sunderland’s (2000) review of issues in language and gender in second and foreign language education. Considerable research has suggested that while males are better than females in mathematics and visual-spatial abilities (Linn and Petersen, 1985; Hyde and Linn, 1988; Stumpf, 1995), females generally surpass males at verbal skills (Gordon and Lee, 1986; Boyle, 1987; Stumpf, 1995; Andreou et al., 2005; Kiss and Nikolov, 2005). Moreover, females remember words better than males (Kimura, 1999; Halpern, 2000; Maitland et al., 2004); they exhibit superiority in producing more words of a certain type in a limited period of time (Herlitz et al., 1999; Larsson et al., 2003); and they are also superior in reading tasks (Chavez, 2001). This female verbal advantage appears quite early in first language acquisition, but in many cases it disappears with age (see Ullman et al., 2008; Wallentin, 2009). Despite many results pointing to a general trend of female advantage in language-related tasks, counterevidence is also found. For example, Hyde and Linn (1988) conducted a meta-analysis of 165 studies on L1 verbal skills which showed significant gender differences only in one


4



third of the studies. For a critical review of the results of the investigation of sex differences in language performance and in brain structure and processing as well as in language-related disorders, see Wallentin (2009) and Ullman et al. (2008). Concerning the relationship between gender and FL vocabulary acquisition, studies are scanty and diverse (see Jiménez and Ojeda, 2010). Most research based on different selections of the group of Spanish EFL learners to which the sample of our study belongs reports a female advantage in FL vocabulary, specifically in types of words and semantic fields (Ojeda and Jiménez, 2007; Jiménez and Ojeda, 2008; Jiménez and Ojeda (2010) in the quantity of words understood and produced (Ojeda and Jiménez, 2007; Jiménez and Ojeda, 2008; Jiménez and Terrazas, 2005–2006); or in the lesser number of lexical errors produced by girls (Agustín, 2007; 2009). Gender-based differences are also reported in word association (Jiménez and Moreno, 2004). However, contradictory results are also obtained: focused on this group of Spanish EFL learners, Agustín and Terrazas (2008a; 2008b) did not observe significant gender-based differences in FL receptive vocabulary; and Agustin (in this volume) perceived no gender effect in the amount of lexical creations or in the order of frequency in which these types appear in writing tasks. In other studies on FL vocabulary tasks or vocabulary-dependent skills, Phakiti (2003) obtained no gender-based differences in FL reading comprehension performance; and Scarcella and Zimmerman (1998) reported a male advantage in a vocabulary task. Then, despite the identification of some general pattern favouring females both in linguistic skills and FL learning, the existence of counterevidence should at least serve to question the value of gender as a differentiating variable (Schmenk, 2004:517–518). In relation to this idea, the words below by Norton and Pavlenko (2004:504) can contribute to explaining the role of gender in language learning: nor do we assume that gender is always relevant to understanding language learning outcomes. Instead, we recognize that gender, as one of many important facets of social identity, interacts with race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, age, and social status in framing students’ language learning experiences, trajectories, and outcomes.


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Motivation in language learning Since the emergence of Gardner and Lambert’s (1972) sociopsychological model, language learning motivation has been an everpresent topic in second and foreign language research. In Gardner’s


(1985:11) view, language learning motivation is the desire of achieving language learning, the learner’s most immediate goal, through three components: Effort, want or desire, and affect or attitude. This process is accompanied by orientation, that is to say, the learner’s ultimate reason for learning this language. This model is based on a well-known established dichotomy of integrative and instrumental orientations. Integrative orientation refers to learners’ willingness to learn the language so as to become part of the target language community. Instrumental orientation is associated with learners’ desire to gain FL proficiency for practical purposes. While, for these authors, instrumental orientations are fundamental in language learning, integrative orientations have a secondary role in this task (Gardner et al., 1997). However, research has provided sufficient counterevidence to this argument (Clément and Kruidenier, 1983; Crookes and Schmidt, 1991). As a consequence, other motivational theories have arisen to complement this dual classification, even though Gardner and Lambert already argued that the integrative-instrumental dichotomy was exclusively initiated for purposes of measurement (Gardner, 1985:12) and other types of orientations were also necessary to explain motivation. One of these new theories is the self-determination theory, originally developed by Deci and Ryan (1985) and later applied to the field of FL learning by Noels (Noels et al., 2000; Noels, 2001). According to this model, two further types of motivation, closely related to the educational field, are identified along a self-determination continuum: Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. While the former type is based on external factors, the latter points to the interest generated by the activity itself. Within each of these two types, a further classification of types is included (Deci and Ryan, 1985; 2000). Thus, for example, four types of extrinsic motivation are distinguished: (i) external regulation as a non self-determined type of behaviour driven by rewards or punishments external to the individual – it is quite similar to instrumental motivation; (ii) introjected regulation as a behaviour more internalized than external regulation but not self-determined because it occurs as the result of some pressure as, for instance, avoiding a feeling of guilt – the focus is placed on approval from self or others; (iii) identified regulation as a type of motivation in which personal internal reasons of valuing an activity guide the individuals in carrying it out; and (iv) integrated regulation, the most autonomous type of extrinsic motivation that takes place when regulations or values are fully assimilated to the self. This latter type bears a resemblance to intrinsic motivation but it is still extrinsic since external reasons guide the individual’s behaviour.


Almudena Fernández Fontecha 95



The authors also include the term amotivation to refer to the lack of perceived connection by the individual between behaviour and consequences. The possible connection between instrumental and external extrinsic motivation and between intrinsic motivation, identified or integrated external motivation and also some forms of integrative motivation should be established with utmost caution due to differences of conceptualization of these terms (see Gardner, 1985:11–12, for a further discussion on this issue). Numerous studies about motivational processes in FL learning have focused on examining the relationship between motivation and language achievement. Most of them coincide in pointing out the positive relationship between both (Clément et al., 1994; Wen, 1997; Masgoret and Gardner, 2003; Csizér and Dörnyei, 2005; Bernaus and Gardner, 2008; Yu and Watkins, 2008). Different studies have evinced connection between FL learning achievement and some types of motivation. In many cases, integrative motivation, against other types, is found to have the most positive effect in language learning (Oller et al., 1977; Gardner et al., 1985; Tremblay and Gardner, 1995; Masgoret and Gardner, 2003; Hernández, 2006). On the other hand, research which concentrates on more specific aspects of FL communicative competence – for example, the relationship between intrinsic motivation and pragmatic competence (Takahashi, 2005), or between motivation and oral competence (Vandergrift, 2005; Hernández, 2006) – largely coincides with the positive effect of motivation on FL processes. As regards the connection between motivation and FL vocabulary acquisition, it has not received much direct attention in research so far. As an example, several studies report a positive effect of motivation on different aspects of FL vocabulary learning (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1980; Gardner et al., 1985; Elley, 1989; Gardner and MacIntyre, 1991); a different line of studies examine the effect of Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) involvement load hypothesis or task’s cognitive and motivational load on the learner’s lexical competence (Kim, 2008); and another type of studies focus on the way the dynamic nature of motivation affects the process of FL vocabulary learning (Tseng and Schmitt, 2008). A considerable amount of research has examined the relationship between motivation and other individual factors such as learners’ age or gender. Regarding the relation between motivation and gender, a large number of studies have demonstrated that more favourable attitudes and motivation towards FL learning are found among girls than among boys (Spolsky, 1989; Wikeley and Stables, 1999; Norton, 2000; Kissau,


96


2006; Mori and Gobel, 2006; Mills et al., 2007; Henry and Apelgren, 2008). However, in some cases no gender-based motivational differences are identified (Ludwig, 1983; Lasagabaster, 2003). The scarcity of research that brings together motivation and FL vocabulary learning prevents us from finding results derived from the combination of FL vocabulary learning and the two variables included in the present study: motivation and gender. Yet, we should mention here the study on motivational factors and EFL vocabulary conducted by Ágreda (2006), whose sample of learners partially coincides with ours and where females were found to be, although not significantly, more motivated than boys. In the light of this review, this study attempts to provide an answer to the following research questions: 1. Are there any gender differences in learners’ achievement in a lexical availability test? 2. Are there any gender differences in learners’ motivation (or lack of it) towards EFL learning? 3. What kinds of motivation (intrinsic or extrinsic) are mostly associated to each gender? 4. Is there any relation between the degree of motivation towards EFL learning and the scores obtained by male and female learners in the lexical availability test?

Method Participants The sample of the present study included 250 EFL Spanish learners (139 boys and 111 girls) in the second grade of secondary education, and aged around 13–14 years old. They were randomly selected from four mixedgender schools located in Logroño (La Rioja, Spain) which have a very similar socio-cultural and economic background. At the moment of data collection (March–April, 2008), they had received 839 hours of instruction of English, which is a foreign language in Spain and a compulsory subject in the Spanish education system.



Instruments and procedures The data for this study were collected via a lexical availability test and a questionnaire on motivation. The lexical availability test draws upon



research on lexical availability in Spanish as a first language (see Jiménez and Ojeda, 2010). It contained six cuewords in English, accompanied by their Spanish equivalents, representing six different semantic categories, namely, ‘parts of the body’, ‘environment’, ‘food and drink’, ‘earth’, ‘sports and hobbies’ and ‘health and disease’. Learners had to generate as many related content words or expressions as possible within each semantic category in 12 minutes (two minutes per cueword). We intended to adopt a flexible approach in editing the data from this test. Thus, spelling and grammar errors were disregarded unless the word or expression was unintelligible; only some very popular brand names existing in the target culture were considered, for example ‘Coke’ (or ‘Coca-Cola’), ‘Pepsi’ or ‘McDonald’s’; within one semantic category, either the singular or the plural form of a noun was accepted; similarly, either the verb infinitive or its regular past was allowed; and in modifier-plus-noun patterns when the same modifier was applied to different nouns, for example ‘broken leg’ and ‘broken arm’, or ‘orange juice’ and ‘apple juice’, and these nouns had already appeared in the same semantic category, only one instance was counted. On the other hand, learners’ motivation towards EFL is measured through a semantic differential technique of seven-point bipolar rating scale using seven pairs of bipolar adjectives presented as follows: ‘necessary’ and ‘unnecessary’, ‘ugly’ and ‘nice’, ‘attractive’ and ‘not attractive’, ‘pleasant’ and ‘unpleasant’, ‘not important’ and ‘important’, ‘useless’ and ‘useful’ and ‘interesting’ and ‘boring’. This scale is part of a questionnaire adapted from Gardner’s (1985) Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (A/MTB). In this study, the lexical availability test is chosen as a means to measure learners’ FL vocabulary knowledge. We were only interested in counting the number of words produced by the learners not in exploring further semantic distinctions in the results. Based on Ágreda’s (2006) previous use of the same semantic differential scaling tool, the group of seven pairs of adjectives was used to measure learners’ general degree of motivation. Also inspired by Ágreda’s work, we established two further groups of adjectives with the aim of assessing learners’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Thus, the former is measured through the pairs ugly and nice, attractive and not attractive, pleasant and unpleasant, and interesting and boring; the latter is measured through the pairs necessary and unnecessary, important and not important, and useful and useless. Both the data from the lexical availability test and the questionnaire were analysed by way of the statistical computer package SPSS v.15.


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Concerning the first research question of our study, that is, whether there were any gender-based differences in learners’ achievement in the lexical availability test, we find that the 139 females outperform the 111 males of our sample. Once we confirmed we could not assume the normal distribution of the variable score, we applied the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U (MWW) and Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) tests. At a 0.05 significance level, statistically significant differences occur (MWW test: p-value = 0. 019; K-S test: p-value = 0. 016). As Table 4.1 illustrates, there is a difference between the mean scores obtained by males and females in favour of the latter. Males obtained the minimum score (24) and females obtained the maximum (171). Leaving aside the comparison of medians and quartiles, through a boxplot graph (Figure 4.1), we detect the occurrence of some outliers, that is, those subjects whose scores on the vocabulary test are most distant from the rest of subjects’. These subjects will be identified in Figure 4.3, which depicts the relation existent between learners’ cueword scores and motivation. Regarding our second research question, that is, whether there were any gender-based differences in learners’ degree of motivation (or lack of it) towards EFL, we decided to find out the mean degree of motivation exhibited by males and females as well as the male–female attainment at three different levels of motivation. As in the first research question, motivation could not be assumed to be normally distributed. Then, we decided to use the Mann-Whitney U and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. As Table 4.2 shows, at a significance level of p < 0. 05 (K-S) and of p < 0. 01 (MWW), we first discover that most learners are motivated and, second, we note that the mean motivation differs significantly by sex. Again, females obtain the highest mean scores. We can also observe that eight learners do not provide a valid answer to the selected questions in the questionnaire on motivation. Table 4.1 Cueword Scores per Sex (MWW test: p-value = 0.019; K-S test: p-value = 0.016) Sex

Mean

N

SD

Minimum

Maximum

Males Females

74.01 83.00

139 111

24.822 27.246

24 40

150 171

Total

78.00

250

26.257

24

171


Results


100


200

Cueword score

150

21

6 5

75

Male s

Female s

100

50

0

Gender Figure 4.1

Cueword Scores per Sex

The boxplot in Figure 4.2 shows the data obtained. It also reveals the occurrence of some outliers, which will be identified in Figure 4.3. To gain a deeper insight into sex differences in motivation towards EFL learning, we structured the scores obtained in the motivation questions according to three different levels, ranging from level 1 (marks: 1.0–3.0), level 2 (marks: 3.1–5.0), and level 3 (marks: 5.1–7.0). Based on this three-level classification, we observe that most learners score at level 3 (63.2 per cent), while only 3.7 per cent score at level 1 (Table 4.3). Table 4.2 Mean Motivation per Sex (MWW test: p = 0. 006; K-S test: p = 0. 010) Sex

Mean

N

SD

Minimum

Maximum

Males Females

5.1460 5.5512

136 106

1.19263 .96618

1.00 1.86

7.00 7.00

Total

5.3235

242

1.11537

1.00

7.00


24



7,00

Motivation

5,00

4,00 336

3,00

41

289

2,00 80 25

1,00

Males

Females Gender

Figure 4.2

Mean Motivation Score per Sex

By performing a Pearson Chi-Square test, we observe that the difference between males and females with regard to motivation levels is significant (p = 0. 006) in favour of females. 74.5 per cent of females’ outcomes versus 54.4 per cent of males’ are detected at level 3 (Tables 4.4 and 4.5). The third of our research questions addresses which types of motivation (intrinsic or extrinsic) are mostly associated to each sex. As Table 4.3 Motivation Levels: Frequency and Percentage Motivation levels Valid

Frequency

Valid Percent

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

9 80 153

3.7 33.1 63.2

Total

242

100

8

–

250

–

Missing system Total


6,00


102


Table 4.4 Motivation Levels per Sex: Chi-Square Test. (a 1 cells (16.7 per cent) have Expected Count Less than 5. The Minimum Expected Count is 3.94) df

10.404a 10.619 8.857 242

2 2 1 –

Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) .006 .005 .003 –

Table 4.5 Sex and Motivation Levels: Percentage Motivation levels

Sex

Male Female

Total

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

4.4% 2.8%

41.2% 22.6%

54.4% 74.5%

3.7%

33.1%

63.2%

Table 4.6 evinces, extrinsic motivation is higher than intrinsic motivation in both male and female groups. Scores obtained are near the maximum score (7). If we compare both groups, both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are slightly higher in females than in males. These sex-based differences are partially significant: Both Mann-Whitney U and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests indicate that only differences related to intrinsic motivation and sex are significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed) (p = 0. 007, MWW) and at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) (p = 0. 020, K-S). Table 4.6 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation per Sex (MWW test: p = 0. 007; K-S test: p = 0. 020) Sex

–

Males

Mean N SD Mean N SD Mean N SD

Females

Total

Intrinsic motivation

Extrinsic motivation

4.3125 136 1.60172 4.8467 106 1.27175 4.5465 242 1.48738

6.2574 136 1.21849 6.4906 106 .88036 6.3595 242 1.08757


Pearson Chi-Square Likelihood Ratio Linear-by-Linear Association N

Value



–

–

Cueword score – –

Pearson Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) N

Motivation



.268(∗∗ )

.268(∗∗ )

.151(∗ )

.000 242

.000 242

.019 242

Notes: ∗ Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). ∗∗ Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

As displayed in Table 4.7, a significant positive relation exists between learners’ motivation towards EFL learning and the scores obtained by the learners in the lexical availability test, and between the two types of motivation and the learners’ outcomes in the lexical availability test (fourth research question). As it could be expected, the correlation in all cases is positive, meaning that the more motivated learners are towards the FL, the better their outcomes in FL vocabulary productive test are. The correlation between the mean degree of motivation and outcomes in the lexical availability test is similar to the correlation coefficient between intrinsic motivation and these lexical outcomes (Pearson correlation: r = 0. 268; p < 0. 01). The results indicate that intrinsic motivation has a bigger effect than extrinsic motivation

Table 4.8 Correlation between Cueword Scores and Motivation and between Cueword Scores and Types of Motivation per Sex –

–

–

Cueword score – –

Male

Pearson Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) N Pearson Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) N

– –

– – Female – –



Motivation

.205(∗ )

.101

.201(∗ )

.017 136 .307(∗∗ )

.242 136 .196(∗ )

.019 136 .307(∗∗ )

.001 106

.044 106

.001 106


Table 4.7 Correlation between Cueword Scores and Motivation, and Cueword Scores and Types of Motivation

Notes: ∗ Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). ∗∗ Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).



(Pearson correlation: r = 0. 151; p < 0. 05) on achievement in FL productive vocabulary. On the other hand, the fact that, although significant, the effect of motivation on FL scores is relatively low implies that many other factors are influencing the FL results. To complete these data, Table 4.8 presents the results of this correlation per sex. While the relation between cueword scores and extrinsic motivation in males is not significant (r = 0. 101), the rest of relations both in males and females are. It is interesting to note that the relation between FL outcomes and mean motivation is slightly more significant in the case of females. In other words, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have a stronger effect on FL vocabulary production in the case of females than in the case of males. However, both for females and males, intrinsic motivation is the best predictor of FL vocabulary achievement (females: r = 0. 307; males: r = 0. 205).

200 21 24 75 65

Cueword scores

150

80

100 289 41

50

336

R2 Linear = 0,072

0 1,00

2,00

3,00

Males Figure 4.3

5,00 4,00 Motivation

Females

6,00


104

7,00

Fit line for total

Cueword Scores and Motivation’s Positive Relation


The scatter graph in Figure 4.3 shows the positive connection existing between learners’ scores on the vocabulary test and their motivation towards the foreign language. Those outlier subjects detected in Figure 4.1 ‘Cueword scores per sex’ and Figure 4.2 ‘Mean motivation score per sex’ are identified here. For example, on the one hand, females 21, 24 and 75, and male 65, who performed best in the cueword test in the male group and in the female group, respectively, are some of the most motivated subjects in the sample. On the other hand, females 41, 289 and 336, who had the lowest degree of motivation in the female group, obtained no better scores in the lexical availability test. It is important to note that, although these learners had the lowest degrees of motivation, they did not have the lowest marks in the vocabulary test. In fact, the male subject 80, who had the lowest degree in motivation of the whole sample, shows a superior performance (116.00) over the mean score of the sample (78.00), that is to say, he performs better than other more motivated counterparts.

Discussion The results above are consistent with a large body of research conducted on the effects of gender and motivation on FL learning. Statistically significant results have shown that females excel over males both in FL vocabulary achievement and in FL motivation. As for the relation between learners’ motivation and their achievement in EFL productive vocabulary, a significant positive correlation is found between both, which is in line with general research that has investigated the relation between motivation and foreign language achievement (see above). Yet, we also infer from the low coefficients of motivation obtained that many other factors are also influencing the results in FL. This discussion attempts to interpret this overall female advantage by addressing the main factors involved in this study, namely, EFL as a subject, FL vocabulary as a component of language and the lexical availability test as a type of task. Whether supported by evidence or merely driven by uninformed stereotypical opinion, languages have been traditionally labelled as a female subject. In this line, Wallentin (2009) notes that, in evolutionary terms, the ‘hunter-gathered’ hypothesis (Kolb and Whishaw, 2001; Mildner, 2008) could serve to support the idea of women’s superiority in language since prehistory. According to this theory, while prehistoric men were predominantly hunters and explored large territories, women were predominantly gatherers who could ‘have benefited more





from developing fine-tuned tools for social interaction, one of which is language’ (Wallentin, 2009:176). In explaining females’ higher degree of motivation towards foreign language learning, factors such as gender preference in subject choice and gender stereotyping could be particularly considered. Their possible interactions may turn them into potential causes or effects of motivational behaviour. A trend based on males and females’ preferences in the choice of studies is clearly identified. As an example, on the occasion of the International Women’s Day on 8 March 2009, the Eurostat published a News Release (2009:2) which presents results from 2006 on some gender-related issues. Although nowadays gender-based preferences are less marked than in the past, the investigation reveals that women represented the 17.4 per cent of students in engineering in the EU27, 55.2 per cent of students in business and administration, and 75.3 per cent of students in education. Likewise, the most recent survey by the Spanish Statistical Institute on the 2008 (INE, 2008) University Entrance Exam reveals that 36.1 per cent of the girls versus 20.4 per cent of the boys opted for the branch of Social Sciences, and 15 per cent of the girls versus 7.3 per cent of the boys opted for Humanities. By contrast, 36.8 per cent of the boys versus 11.5 per cent of the girls preferred the field of Sciences and Engineering. These figures could have influenced and, at the same time, been influenced by gender stereotyping, that is, social beliefs often learned from others which result from social classification of people into groups because of their presumed common attributes (Franzoi, 2000; Schmenk, 2004:515–516). In other words, males choose the so-called ‘male subjects’ and females opt for ‘female subjects’ as they are guided by extant gender-based stereotypes that somehow dictate these patterns of behaviour. In our opinion, it can be precisely this interaction between gender preference in subject choice and stereotyping which most probably affects males and females’ degree of motivation towards a particular field of knowledge. In our study, however, motivation cannot be actually attributed to gender preference in subject choice since EFL is a compulsory subject for our learners. We may postulate that, at the educational level focused on here – second grade of secondary education – some gender preferences might be starting to be shaped by the socio-cultural and stereotyping agents already present in the learners’ lives. Another possible reason refers to the extra-linguistic side of foreign language learning, which could be especially aligned with girls’ preferences rather than with boys’ interests. On the other hand, it could also be the case that our females’ degree of motivation is superior in all academic areas. In


106


this case, gender could not be a differentiating variable in the linguistic domain. Be that as it may, only evidence offered by further studies on the evolution of motivation of these male and female learners from earlier educational levels and in different curricular subjects would help understand the findings. To complete the picture, concerning the two types of motivation addressed here, for both genders, extrinsic motivation towards EFL is found to be higher than intrinsic motivation, but females are more intrinsically and extrinsically motivated than males. Only gender-based differences concerning intrinsic motivation are found to be significant. Both in the case of females and males, intrinsic motivation is the best predictor of FL vocabulary achievement. The effect of this type of motivation on achievement is higher for females. These findings reveal, inter alia, that (i) with a slight difference favouring girls, both genders agree that English in this particular community of learners is considered necessary, important or useful; (ii) but this opinion does not necessarily imply a better EFL vocabulary attainment; (iii) on the other hand, it is learners’ belief that English is nice, attractive, pleasant or interesting which is more closely linked to their outcomes in the EFL vocabulary task.2 As noted above, what most literature has proved is that integrative motivation is a better predictor of FL attainment than instrumental motivation. Then, given the similarities between intrinsic and integrative motivation, and leaving aside the learners’ desire of learning a language to belong to the target language community – an idea inherent to integrative motivation that cannot apply here –, the results of our study are somehow in agreement with this previous research on FL achievement (Bernaus and Gardner, 2008; Yu and Watkins, 2008). Likewise, the findings also coincide with research which correlates motivation with educational behaviour, where the best educational outcomes come from learners’ most autonomous and selfdetermined motivations (that is, intrinsic and identified or integrated extrinsic motivation) (Guay et al., 2008). As for this last aspect, in our study, female motivation is more autonomous and self-determined than boys’ motivation in FL learning. That is to say, females are particularly motivated to study EFL as it has an appeal of interest or aesthetic value for them. As implied earlier in this chapter, research has pointed to a marked gender gap greater in foreign language achievement than in other subjects (Clark and Trafford, 1995; Lightbody et al., 1996; Davies, 2004). As exposed in the review of the literature, with regard to female superiority in FL vocabulary achievement, results are still inconclusive, although





some tendencies can be identified. In the present study, the group of Spanish adolescent girls outperform the group of Spanish adolescent boys in an EFL lexical availability test. This finding is similar to previous research conducted with the same type of subjects at the same age – or younger – in the same context, which report a female advantage in several FL vocabulary related issues (Ojeda and Jiménez, 2007; Jiménez and Ojeda, 2008; Agustín, 2009; Jiménez and Terrazas, 2009; Ojeda and Jiménez, under review). Again, as in the case of the results obtained in motivation, females’ superiority in this FL task might be paralleled by a similar tendency in other areas which are not likely to involve language skills, something that is untested in this study. Most recent research on neurological and cognitive factors can contribute to shedding a light on these issues. Grounded in Psycholinguistics and Neurology, and based on the most recent neuroimaging methods like positron emission tomography or functional magnetic resonance imaging, research conducted by Professor Ullman and his team offers some possible explanation for this female lexical advantage other than the controversial evidence that females exhibit greater bilateral brain activity than men (Bowden et al., 2005). Ullman has examined the way adult males and females process mainly L1, but also FL. Having tested English and Spanish morphology and syntax, both in expressive and receptive language, Ullman posits that, while grammar is processed in the procedural memory system, lexical information is processed in the declarative memory, which is partly modulated by estrogen – the primary female gender hormone (Ullman et al., 2002; Ullman, 2001; 2004; 2005; Hartshorne and Ullman, 2006; Ullman et al., 2008). This declarative system is in charge of learning and use of knowledge about facts and events, whereas the procedural system addresses motor and cognitive skills involving sequencing. Ullman and his colleagues have found out that the female advantage at remembering words depends on male and female differences in declarative memory as well as the level of estrogen.3 Following this model, in L1, while males tend to compute complex forms by combining their parts, for example paint + ed, based on the procedural memory, females tend to store these complex forms (painted) by using the declarative memory. However, according to Ullman (2005), in FL learning a shift occurs: very likely due to an age-based attenuation of the procedural system, some of those operations carried out by the grammatical-procedural system in L1 depend mostly on the declarative system in the FL, where females show their advantage. This shift lasts at least during initial stages of learning, that is, when users do not have sufficient FL practice and proficiency.


108


These results seem to support female superiority at lexical ability both in L1 and L2 or FL due to female advantage at declarative memory. Nevertheless, further investigation is required on these issues. Another aspect worth noting in this discussion is how the type of task used to measure FL proficiency may have affected the results. The body of research on FL vocabulary based on our sample of subjects is again used for comparison here. As we explained in the introduction, previous studies, which ascertained learners’ FL productive vocabulary, reported a female advantage (Ojeda and Jiménez, 2007; Jiménez and Ojeda, 2008; Jiménez and Ojeda, 2010). Our findings clearly support the results obtained in studies of productive vocabulary size. Other studies which examined learners’ FL receptive vocabulary in the same context reported no significant gender differences (Agustín and Terrazas, 2008a; 2008b). Leaving aside the age variable, it is interesting to note that the two different tendencies in the results could be influenced by the nature of the task or test used, that is, productive or receptive (Jiménez and Ojeda, 2010). Further research is needed on this aspect. In this vein, Sunderland (2000:212–213) comments that research has provided evidence on males’ superiority in multiple-choice tasks, and females’ superiority in extended writing tasks, although research in this regard is not conclusive. Moreover, our results are consistent with the findings of studies on sex differences in L1 verbal fluency, such as Kimura (1983); Gordon and Lee (1986); or the most recent ones by Hausmann et al. (2009) and Weiss et al. (2003), who demonstrate a significant female advantage in an L1 lexical verbal fluency task, and a similar tendency in a semantic or category verbal fluency task. This latter task bears a close resemblance to the lexical availability test used in our study, where a sample of 97 college students of psychology and medicine had to generate words belonging to a specific category.4 Yet, the type of language and the age of the subjects differ from the type of language and the age of the subjects in our study.

Conclusion The study described here had primarily a twofold objective: first, to identify gender-based differences of a group of 250 EFL second grade secondary school Spanish learners (139 boys and 111 girls) in an EFL productive test; and second, to find out gender-based differences in these learners’ degree and types of motivation towards EFL. The relation between the former and the latter was also addressed. The study has revealed a statistically significant female advantage both in EFL





vocabulary production and motivation towards EFL. Moreover, extrinsic motivation has been found to be higher than intrinsic motivation both for males and females. Only gender-based variation regarding intrinsic motivation is significant, being females more intrinsically motivated than males. In both cases, intrinsic motivation serves to predict best FL vocabulary achievement. In the interpretation of these and other results of research concerning gender and language learning, a miscellany of factors needs to be considered. As posited in the discussion, biological, cognitive and socio-cultural reasons can interact to have an effect in the results (López Rúa, 2006). This interaction can occur at all levels, as the above-mentioned psychobiosocial study by Hausmann et al. (2009) shows when proving that differences in specific cognitive abilities are influenced by sex hormones’ interaction with gender stereotype threat. Apart from biological and cognitive explanations, specifically in our study, variables such as the FL vocabulary as a component of language, the type of test used to measure the linguistic knowledge, the status of a language within a particular community of learners (for example, but not exclusively, in the foreign or second language distinction) or the learners’ perceptions of this language, among others, may have influenced the results in foreign language achievement. The difficulty lies in finding out the degree to which these factors affect the linguistic outcomes. The weight of one or other in foreign language learning, and in education in general, is crucial to determine whether they are immutable or not (Dalla and Shors, 2009:3). Moreover, while this study contributes to providing insights into gender-based perceptions of EFL in Spain and as a compulsory subject in Spanish education, future contrastive studies should inquire explicitly about the way the status of a language influences motivation per sex. Additionally, although age has been out of the scope of this investigation, longitudinal studies should be devised to investigate the effect of this variable in males’ and females’ development of motivation towards foreign language learning and particularly in relation to FL vocabulary acquisition, which entails a series of dynamic processes (Tseng and Schmitt, 2008). In all this language and gender research, individual similarities and differences should also be addressed both in future cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. In this line, we should underscore the relevance of the evidence provided by biological research focused on the effect of sex hormones in language processing, since not only can the level of estrogen imply gender variation in linguistic performance (L1 and L2 or


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FL), but also variation across and within individuals over relatively short periods of time (Ullman, 2005; Hartshorne and Ullman, 2006).

We would like to acknowledge the financial support of FEDER and the ‘Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología’ through grant no HUM2006-09775C02-02/FILO.

Notes 1. Aware of the differences between sex and gender, for the purpose of simplicity, gender will be henceforth used as the generic category comprising both biological (sex) and cultural factors (gender). 2. In explaining these findings, we should not forget about the possible existence of some mutual influence between motivation and L2 achievement, where motivation can correlate achievement in the same way as achievement can influence motivation. 3. Ullman (2005:151) adds that enhancement in declarative memory during childhood, with a possible plateau in adolescence, as proved by different studies, is supported by the increasing levels of estrogen during childhood and adolescence in both boys and girls, although estrogen levels are higher in the latter. The implications of this research for cross-sectional and longitudinal gender and language studies are many. 4. The authors used a lexical and a category word generation test. In the former, the subject is required to produce words that begin with a specific letter. In the latter, the subjects are asked to write down words belonging to three categories, namely, ‘supermarket’, ‘animals’ and ‘vegetables’. Both tests are timed at one minute per trial (Weiss et al., 2003:866). Different versions of this type of test are frequently used in research that measures verbal skills (see Ullman et al., 2008).

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Gender Tendencies in EFL across Vocabulary Tests Rosa María Jiménez Catalán

Introduction Foreign language learning in primary and secondary schools shares common characteristics worldwide. It takes place in the formal context of a classroom, it follows a syllabus, learners accomplish tasks in order to achieve learning objectives and receive marks on the basis of their scores on language tests. Foreign language learners’ performance on language tests has important educational implications since test results are often used to discriminate between good and bad language learners. Moreover, in most countries, among them Spain, there are final examinations at the end of secondary education, in which scores on tests are used to promote students to higher education. In this regard, Shohamy (1997) draws attention to the need to be aware of the power and consequences of language tests as they have an impact on students’ lives and can create biases against individuals and groups. The variable sex, that is, gender, in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) has received little attention compared with other factors of individual variation such as for instance age or language learning strategies (Ehrlich, 1997; Pavlenko, 2001; Jiménez Catalán, 2002). Furthermore, the scarcity of research goes hand in hand with dispersion in the issues investigated, which may explain the contradictory results found concerning boys’ and girls’ outcomes in second or foreign languages. In spite of the fact that there are not many studies, results show three trends: a) females outperform males; b) males outperform females; and c) there are no significantly differences. In my view, this is an unfortunate way of looking at gender in foreign language learning, as it takes for granted the existence of differences between male and female


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students. As a result, the possibility that male or female advantage in foreign languages may depend on the learning context is overlooked. Thus, the idea that male or female supremacy in foreign languages may vary according to factors such as the type of tests or the task given to students in language assessment is very often avoided in the discussions of gender differences in foreign language research. Regarding tests, Sunderland (2000) notes that, ‘girls tend to do better on essays and course book, requiring constant application; boys on multiple choice questions and exams’. In my view, this observation has important implications for teachers and researchers, since if it is true, it would provide evidence of variability in gender language performance due to assessing instruments rather than the supremacy of one sex over the other in foreign language education. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the sex or gender variable and test performance, by looking at the vocabulary profiles that are drawn from different tests. In this study I use the term gender to embrace males and females. In line with recent currents in gender and language education research (see Norton and Pavlenko, 2004) I understand gender in a broad sense. That is to say, I do not subscribe to the claim that there are fixed differences between sexes, but rather differential patterns that may or may not appear in some language learning contexts due to the interrelation of individual and instructional variables. Thus, I accept that the modification of a given variable such as age, language level, amount of language instruction or test may modify females’ and males’ outcomes in a second or foreign language. My main concern here is to determine whether variation is observed in the performance of Spanish EFL learners (males and females) across different tests used in vocabulary research in SLA as well as in English language teaching (ELT). Several scholars have pointed to the need to assess foreign language learners by means of different instruments, among them Read (2000:8), who in his discussion of approaches to assessing vocabulary claims that ‘There is a whole range of reasons for assessing vocabulary knowledge and use, with a corresponding variety of testing procedures’. Since tests are critical in this chapter, and tests are usually understood in the sense of tasks, in what follows I first clarify the terms and provide the background to the tests used in this study. Then I summarize research on test effects on the language performance of males and females. Finally, I present the results obtained by a sample of female and male EFL learners in a range of different tests.


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Rosa María Jiménez Catalán

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Tests are common instruments in the EFL classroom as well as in SLA research. In the former context they are used to diagnose weaknesses and assess the fulfilment of language learning objectives, whereas in the latter, tests are used to investigate learners’ language learning processes as well as language growth and development. Language tests are closely related to language tasks. Both have in common their orientation towards language learning and the fact that they can also be used as tools for assessment, to the point that we may find the terms used as if they were synonyms (see Bygate et al., 2001). Due to their double nature, it may be difficult, in practice, to differentiate tests from tasks. An example of this is the composition, a task frequently used in language classrooms for improving writing skills, but also employed as a test in vocabulary research to investigate learners’ knowledge and use of vocabulary. In the present study, I adopt the term test to refer to any instrument that serves to measure learners’ vocabulary size, vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary use either in oral or in written mode. Thus, in the definition of test, following Read (2000), I include multiple-choice tests as well as compositions; the former as examples of the discrete, selective, context-independent dimension in vocabulary testing, the latter as an example of embedded, comprehensive, context-dependent tests. In the following paragraphs I will attempt a brief description of the characteristics of main vocabulary tests, as set out in Jiménez Catalán and Moreno Espinosa’s 2005 review of tests used in vocabulary research. As they note, the most usual way of classifying vocabulary tests is on the basis of dichotomies such as ‘receptive versus productive, breadth versus depth, discrete versus embedded, context dependent versus independent, oral versus written vocabulary tests, or pen-and-paper versus computerised vocabulary tests’ (ibid.:172). However, the authors also observe that these dichotomies are not pure but blended, as they usually contain a great number of typologies and formats. Among the latter, we find multiple-choice tests, cue word tests and composition tests. Next I summarize the main features of each in turn.


Terms and definitions

Multiple-choice tests One of the assessing instruments most commonly used in ELT and SLA research is the multiple-choice test. As the name suggests, test takers are presented with multiple options from which they have to make the



correct choice. There are several versions of the multiple-choice test format but it always contains two parts: a part called the stem, usually realized as a question or an incomplete statement, and a part with the alternatives or answers from which testees have to select the correct one. Multiple-choice tests are widely used to measure text comprehension and overall language proficiency. They are also employed to measure discrete vocabulary knowledge; that is, knowledge of isolated words. The multiple-choice format is present in well-known vocabulary tests such as Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT). Designed by Nation (1983; 1990) as a practical tool to measure vocabulary size on the grounds of word frequency bands, it has been used by a good number of vocabulary researchers (Nation, 1983; 1990; Laufer and Nation, 1995; Waring, 1997; Laufer, 1998; Laufer and Paribakht, 1998; Fan, 2000; Schmitt and Schmitt, 2001; Schmitt et al., 2001; Cameron, 2002; Jiménez Catalán and Terrazas, 2009) to measure vocabulary size of EFL learners of different ages all over the world. Cue word tests Cue word tests are frequently employed in lexical availability studies. In this particular area of research, cue word tests provide language learners with a number of word stimuli – usually between ten and 16 – each standing for a particular topic or situation representative of daily life (for example, at school, transport, food and so on). Learners are presented with cue words one by one and asked to respond to each cue word with the first related words that come to their minds. Lexical availability studies have great potential not only to identify learners’ lexical availability but also their word knowledge. They are also useful to identify the words most available to foreign language learners in relation to particular situations. As Faerch et al. (1984:87) note: Availability studies are concerned with identifying which words are used in particular situations. One way to pinpoint availability is to give native speakers a topic or situation and ask them to write down the words which first come to mind. Possible topics might be ‘visiting a pub’ or ‘parts of the body’. Words mentioned by a high proportion of the informants are then considered the most available words, and these are assumed to be useful for a learner of that language.


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Cue words tests have been used in psycholinguistics research to investigate how words are organized in the mental lexicon of L1 speakers.


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Likewise, they have been widely used in sociolinguistics to investigate variation in the lexical availability of speakers. An important body of research is found in Spanish sociolinguistics, where the vocabularies of speakers from different Spanish regions and Spanish speaking countries worldwide are examined in order to identify similarities and differences. In comparison, research on lexical availability of foreign language learners is only in its infancy. The studies by Carcedo (1998) and Germany and Cartes (2000) are pioneering in this field. Our previous work on gender and lexical availability in EFL learners (Jiménez Catalán and Ojeda, 2010) followed the line of study undertaken by these researchers. There, we provided evidence in favour of females as they produced a significant higher number of words as responses to cue words in a lexical availability test. The analysis of gender variation according to a cue word test addressed in the present study draws on findings reported in our previous study.

Composition tests Although they may be oral or written, composition tests are most frequently found in the written mode. They are usually short pieces of writing, commonly found in language assessment as, for instance, in official examinations run by universities or academic institutions (for example, Cambridge or TOEFL). Composition tests are varied in topic and genre. Among the former, the possibilities are many as they range from family life, sports or environment to cooking habits, health or education. As to the latter, some of the most cited genre types are descriptive, narrative, argumentative and expository texts. Compositions are also used in SLA research to investigate a large number of aspects such as learners’ use of discourse, grammar, pragmatics or vocabulary. Regarding L2 vocabulary research, written compositions have traditionally been the instruments to investigate learners’ vocabulary use. (See for instance, Linnarud, 1986; Laufer, 1998; Arnaud, 1992; Laufer and Nation, 1995.) Nation (2001) identifies three ways of measuring vocabulary in writing: (i) by applying measures of lexical richness, among them lexical variation, lexical density or lexical sophistication; (ii) by means of calculating the percentages of word families contained in the text and arranging the words according to frequency bands as is done by means of the Lexical Frequency Profile (Laufer and Nation, 1995), and by using rating scales that focus on the assessment of vocabulary contained in compositions (see for instance, Jacobs et al., 1981).




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Research has yielded evidence of the effect of tests on the assessment of foreign language learners’ reading comprehension and learners’ writing production. As far as reading comprehension is concerned, Shohamy (1984) and Wolf (1993) showed how foreign language learners achieve higher scores in multiple-choice tests than in open-ended tests; particularly, as Shohamy demonstrated, these differences are greater in low proficiency language learners than in high proficiency learners. As for writing production, vocabulary research has revealed that the type of composition has an effect on different aspects of learners’ vocabulary. The study carried out by Koda (1993) with American Japanese FL learners, as well as the studies conducted by Jiménez Catalán (1992) and by Agustín et al. (2005) with Spanish EFL learners showed that descriptive and narrative compositions generate different numbers of words as well as different word choices. Learners were given a descriptive and a narrative task to ascertain whether the type of composition would have an effect on learners’ written performance. Although the above studies differ in their purpose, methodology and sampling, they achieve similar results. Firstly, learners write more words in descriptive compositions than in narrative composition tests. Secondly, different linguistic devices and discourse strategies are identified in the descriptive and narrative tasks produced by Japanese learners (Koda, 1993). Thirdly, it was found that errors were more frequent in narrative compositions than in descriptive compositions although they were of a different type (Jiménez Catalán, 1992; Agustín et al., 2005). Thus, descriptive compositions elicited more spelling mistakes than narrative compositions, but learners made more word choice errors in narrative compositions than in descriptive compositions. Likewise, in a study conducted with Hungarian secondary school EFL learners, Bygate (1999) proved the existence of significant differences in the grammatical patterns they used in oral argumentative tasks compared to narrative tasks. Hungarian EFL learners produced a greater number of words and more complex patterns of subordination in narrative tasks than in argumentative tasks. Since, as shown by research, variation occurs in learners’ performance as a result of the language test used, a key question is to determine whether this variation has an equal effect on male and female EFL learners. Nevertheless, this is not an easy issue to address since previous studies differ in the skills investigated, the language component, the techniques and methods used and the type of test format employed


Review of the literature


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in the elicitation process. Next I give a brief account of research on the effect of test on gender in second or foreign language performance. As far as receptive skills are concerned, there are different outcomes depending on whether what is measured is reading or listening skill. In favour of females we find the research reported by Brantmeier (2003) in a series of studies undertaken with American university students, learners of Spanish as a second and as a foreign language. In contrast, the study by Boyle (1987) on listening comprehension reports that it was the male group who achieved the highest scores in a listening comprehension test. A similar tendency emerges when reviewing speaking studies compared with those on writing. Lumley and O’Sullivan (2005) found hardly any gender differences in speaking tasks, but other researchers (Jiménez Catalán, 1992; Jiménez Catalán and Ojeda, 2008) found significant differences in favour of female students concerning the number of words and the number of errors made in compositions written by female and male EFL learners. However, in writing studies we also have to take into account Morris’s (1998) study, in which neither grammatical nor lexical differences between males’ and females’ performance in written compositions were identified. Regarding test format, in a study conducted in Swedish secondary education schools, Hellekant (1994) found that boys performed significantly better in an English multiple-choice test than girls, whereas the girls scored higher than boys on a free-response test. These results partially coincide with the ones reported by Brantmeier (2003). In a series of different studies, she obtained inconsistent findings by gender in multiple-choice tests, but stable findings in written recall tests, where she observed females systematically outperforming males. In an attempt to explain test effect on gender language performance, Chavez (2000:8) notes that some tests ‘may be equally amenable to both genders, whereas others may accommodate the preferences of only one gender’. Chavez also observes that tests seldom measure only one skill but rather a number of different subskills that interact with characteristics of the test format. We agree with her, as a clear example of the multi-faceted nature of tests is found in compositions, where a wide range of features is assessed, among them discourse, structure and vocabulary to name but a few. Since the effect of the type of test on gender performance is still in question, the main objective of this study is to examine whether there are similarities or differences (or both) on the results obtained by the




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1. Does the type of test have an effect on EFL learners’ performance? If so, which test has the highest effect on learners’ performance? 2. Do male and female EFL learners differ in the scores achieved in two vocabulary receptive tests? 3. Do male and female EFL learners differ in the number of types and the number of tokens produced in a cue word test? 4. Do male and female EFL learners differ in the number of types produced in a composition test? 5. Is there a positive correlation among the results obtained by male and female EFL learners across different tests?

Method Participants The sample in the present study comprises 210 Spanish EFL learners from the sixth grade of primary education. Their average age is 12 and the distribution according to sex is equal: 105 girls and 105 boys. They come from four schools located in the centre of Logroño, the capital city of La Rioja, a northern Spanish region. In Spain, primary education starts when pupils are six and comprises six years (first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth grades). English is compulsory throughout the whole educational stage and, according to official guidelines, learners are taught by means of communicative approaches with an emphasis on meaningful input and language for communication. At the time of data collection (Spring, 2006), the sample of EFL learners participating in this study had received 619 hours of English instruction on the basis of three to four hours a week per school year. Instruments and procedures Participants were given four tests in the following order: (i) the 1000 Word Test (WT) (Nation, 1983), (ii) the 2000 word frequency band from Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) (Version 2) (Schmitt et al., 2001), (iii) a writing composition test and (iv) a cue word test. Learners took the tests in three different sessions: 1000 WT and 2000 VLT in one session, composition test in other session and cue word in another session. In order to ensure learners’ full understanding of the task they had to


same sample of female and male EFL learners across four tests. The specific questions addressed in the present study are as follows:


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accomplish, instructions were given to them in Spanish in oral and written form. The tests mentioned are part of the battery of tests used by the members of the applied linguistics research group based at University of La Rioja (GLAUR) to collect data from EFL learners in primary and secondary schools. These tests were used in several studies conducted by this group under the auspices of three consecutive research projects. Drawing on fuller descriptions provided in previous studies, in the following paragraphs a brief account of each test is provided. The 1000 WT combines multiple-choice, matching and translation. It provides test takers with ten groups of six target words and three translations. For each group, they are asked to match one target word with a translation. The 2000 VLT follows the same format as in 1000 WT but differs in the fact that test takers are presented with three definitions instead of three translations for the six target words. Participants were given ten minutes to complete each receptive vocabulary test (1000 WT and VLT Test) and 30 minutes to accomplish each productive vocabulary test (composition and cue word). Following Nation (1983) and Schmitt et al. (2001), both the 1000 WT and 2000 VLT were scored one point for each correct answer: maximum 30 points. Regarding the composition test, students were asked to write a letter to an English family living in Oxford, Mr and Mrs Edwards, who had a son and a daughter, Peter and Helen, of the same age as the students taking the test. They were asked to write a letter to the Edwards family in which the students had to introduce themselves and say something about their town, school, hobbies and other things of interest. Our informants received oral and written instructions in Spanish before performing the task. The time assigned was 30 minutes. Students were not allowed to use dictionaries or other kinds of help. Once the compositions were collected, they were edited and typed into the computer and analysed by means of the textual analysis program WordSmith Tools (Scott, 1996). As in the case of the cue word test, word types in the composition were arranged according to alphabetical and frequency orders. Likewise, the means were calculated individually by editing learners’ compositions one by one.



Results Research Question 1: Does the type of test have an effect on EFL learners’ performance?



Table 5.1 Tests

Means and Standard Deviations Obtained by Sixth EFL Learners across

6th EFL learners (girls + boys) mean std. dev.

1000 WT

2000 VLT

Comp. tokens

Comp. types

Cue word

21.20 3.39

9.14 4.73

125.35 65.18

57.91 24.51

109.01 38.61

Table 5.1 presents the means and standard deviations for the 1000 WT, 2000 VLT, composition test and cue word test. As can been observed, the type of test has an effect on EFL learners’ performance since there are differences in the means obtained by the same learners across the four tests. Regarding the receptive vocabulary tests, learners achieve higher scores on the 1000 WT than in the 2000 VLT. As for the productive tests, the figures reveal that the cue word test has the greatest effect on learners’ performance since the mean number of types (different words) produced by students is considerably higher in the cue word test than in the composition test. In order to ascertain if the differences between types were significant, two t-tests for paired samples were used: one to compare the differences in the means obtained by learners in the 1000 WT and the 2000 VLT, and another to compare the means of types produced by learners in the composition test and in the cue word test. The results are summarized in Table 5.2. As can be observed, the statistical analysis applied to the data shows that the differences between the means for 1000 WT and 2000 VLT, and also those between the means for types obtained in the composition and in the cue word test, are significant at the p < 0. 01 level.

Table 5.2 t-Test for Differences between Means Obtained by Girls and Boys, Taken all Together, in the Receptive Tests and in the Productive Tests Comparison between tests 1000 WT vs 2000 VLT Comp types vs cue word types

t value and degrees of freedom

Probability (directional/1-tailed)

41.18 (df = 209) 22.48 (df = 209)

0.000∗∗ 0.000∗∗


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Girls Boys

1000 WT

2000 VLT

Mean: 21.07 Std. dev.: 3.31 Mean: 21.33 Std. dev.: 3.48

Mean: 9.49 Std. dev.: 4.91 Mean: 8.79 Std. dev.: 4.53

The results reported in Table 5.3 show that there is hardly any difference in the means obtained by male and female students in the two receptive tests. The means are very similar, and although we see that boys score slightly higher than girls in the 1000 WT, in the 2000 VLT the situation is the reverse: girls achieve a slightly higher score than boys. The percentages of girls and boys who achieve the means or above is also very similar: 49.52 of the girls compared to 47.62 of the boys in the 1000 WT and 47.62 of the girls compared to 50.48 of the boys in the 2000 VLT. In the comparison of girls’ and boys’ performance as measured by the 1000 WT and the 2000 VLT, the results of independent samples t-tests proved to be non-significant (p > 0. 05) as shown in Table 5.4. Research Question 2: Do male and female EFL learners differ in the number of types and the number of tokens produced composition test, and the number of types produced in the composition test? As the figures in Table 5.5 indicate, there are differences between girls’ and boys’ performance in these tests. Girls clearly outperform boys both in the composition and in the cue word test. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated in order to ascertain whether there was a correlation among the results obtained by male and

Table 5.4 t-Test for Differences between Means Obtained by Girls and by Boys in the Receptive Tests Comparison between tests 1000 WT 2000 VLT

t value and degrees of freedom

Probability (directional/1-tailed)

0.57 (df = 208) 1.07 (df = 208)

0.285 0.144


Table 5.3 Mean and Standard Deviation in 1000 WT and 2000VLT Distributed by Gender


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Girls Boys

Composition tokens

Composition types

Cue word types

141.77 69.82 108.92 55.83

62.61 23.82 53.21 24.39

118.95 40.87 99.07 33.57

Mean Std. dev. Mean Std. dev.

Table 5.6 Correlation between Girls’ Results in the Four Tests: p < 0. 01 Level. Girls N = 105

1000 WT 2000 VLT Comp tokens Comp types

2000 VLT

Comp. tokens

Comp. types

Cue word

0.575∗∗ – – –

0.439∗∗ 0.398∗∗ – –

0.512∗∗ 0.514∗∗ 0.900∗∗ –

0.501∗∗ 0.691∗∗ 0.453∗∗ 0.534∗∗

Table 5.7 Correlation between Boys’ Results in the Four Tests (∗∗ p < 0. 01 level) (∗ p < 0. 05 level). Boys (N = 105)

1000 WT 2000 VLT Comp tokens Comp types

2000 VLT

Comp. tokens

Comp. types

Cue word

0.421∗∗ – – –

0.292∗∗ 0.235∗ – –

0.340∗ 0.216∗ 0.872∗∗ –

0.288∗∗ 0.339∗∗ 0.548∗∗ 0.485∗∗

female EFL learners across the four tests. The values in Tables 5.6 and 5.7 show that there is significant correlation among the results obtained across the different tests.

Discussion


Table 5.5 Means and Standard Deviations for Composition and Cue Word Tests by Gender

The results in the present study indicate that EFL learners’ performance varies across tests. However, results need to be interpreted with caution since the means obtained for each test cannot be compared on equal terms. On the one hand, two tests are receptive while two


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are productive. On the other, the means reflect different measures in the receptive and productive tests: whereas in the 1000 WT and the 2000 VLT the means refer to scores, in the composition and in the cue word test the means refer to the average number of word types and word tokens produced by students. In order to establish comparisons we should address receptive and productive tests separately. Regarding the former, we have seen that learners score higher on the 1000 WT than in the 2000 VLT. However, if we bear in mind that each test stands for a different level, as measured by different frequency bands, learners’ variation on these tests is hardly surprising. Taking girls and boys together, learners’ results show that there is a decrease in their scorings as their level increases, which in turn, indicates that their receptive vocabulary falls within the 1000 most frequent words in English rather than in the 2000 most frequent ones. As regards the performance of boys and girls taken together, on the two productive tests, results suggest that the cue word test is much more robust than the composition. Word productivity is measured on the grounds of number of word types and, from this perspective, it is evident that the cue word test has shown itself to be a higher generator of words than the composition test. The number of word types produced by students was almost twice as high in the former as in the latter, with equal times available for the tests (30 minutes each). These results indicate that two tests can draw quite a different profile of productive vocabulary from the same learners. However, again, we should treat the interpretation of data with caution, since the composition is embedded and context depended, but the cue word is discrete and noncontext depended. This suggests that it may be easier for EFL learners to produce isolated words in responses to prompts than to use these words embedded in written discourse. Concerning test effects on males’ and females’ vocabulary performance, the outcomes of the present study reveal tendencies of similarity and difference. In the multiple-choice tests, girls and boys show common patterns of behaviour as proved by their similar scores and by the equal percentage of girls and boys that achieve similar means in the 1000 WT and 2000 VLT. It is important to note that this pattern does not alter as level increases; in other words, gender differences do not appear when male and female students increase receptive vocabulary level. Although it is true that in the 1000 WT boys score slightly higher than girls, in the 2000 VLT the reverse is observed: it is the girls who score slightly higher than the boys, but these slight differences proved to be non-significant. Therefore, regarding receptive vocabulary





knowledge, as measured by girls’ and boys’ scores on multiple-choice tests, the present study corroborates the results reported on a similar sample of students throughout different times of data collection. Neither at the fourth year of primary education (Jiménez Catalán and Terrazas, 2009), nor from a longitudinal perspective, when learners were at fourth, fifth and sixth years of primary education (Agustín and Terrazas 2008), were significant differences found. The present study, like our previous studies, disconfirms the results of Hellekant (1994), where boys were found to perform significantly better in an English multiple-choice test than girls. The common patterns observed in girls’ and boys’ performance in the multiple-choice tests for receptive vocabulary turn into patterns of difference when we analyse their results in the composition and in the cue word test. Girls outperform boys in the composition and in the cue word test: in each they produce a significantly higher number of word types than their male counterparts. This indicates higher lexical richness in the productive vocabulary of females compared to males. With regard to compositions, females also produce a higher number of tokens, which means that their compositions are longer than those of males. It is important to point out here that differences in the composition and cue word tests are statistically significant. These results are in line with the ones reported by Chavez (1996) and Brantmeier (2003), who showed females systematically outperforming males in writing tasks and written recall tests. The results of the present study also coincide with our previous studies (Ojeda and Jiménez Catalán, 2007; Jiménez Catalán and Ojeda Alba, 2008), carried out with the same EFL students and the same composition as gathering instrument. At different testing times, we found similar tendencies to the ones observed in the present study: girls produce a higher number of tokens and types than boys. However, only in the former study were tests for significance applied to the data, giving significant results in favour of females. It is important to highlight that the results obtained in compositions mirror the ones achieved by learners in the cue word test at the sixth year of primary education, and also at the second year of secondary education (see Fernández, in this volume): girls systematically produce a significantly higher number of types than boys. Without doubt, the results point to females’ greater lexical richness in a discrete test as well as in an embedded test. As shown in Tables 5.6 and 5.7, the scores on all possible pairs of tests show significant positive correlation, for both females and males (p < 0. 01 in most cases, p < 0. 05 in three cases for males). In other words,


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the higher a pupil’s score is on one test, the higher it tends to be on all the other tests. The present study has provided evidence of common tendencies but also patterns of difference in the EFL performance of males and females across different tests. These findings lead to several interpretations that I now address in turn. The similar means obtained by girls and boys in the two multiplechoice tests indicate that both groups may have reached a similar level concerning receptive vocabulary knowledge. On the contrary, the higher number of word types produced by girls in the composition and in the cue word test, together with the positive correlation found among these tests may indicate either that boys are at a lower level than girls as far as vocabulary knowledge is concerned, or that girls and boys behave in different ways regarding written productive vocabulary tests. Evidence in favour of the first assumption is found in the few studies that have looked at the relation between receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge level (Waring, 1997; Laufer, 1998; Laufer and Paribakht, 1998). Within these studies, vocabulary knowledge is conceived in terms of a continuum that ranges from partial knowledge to full knowledge. At one extreme of this continuum we are concerned with recognizing a word, in the middle, recalling the word when needed and, at the other extreme pole, using the word in appropriate contexts. The analyses performed in the present study do not allow us to conclude that female students have a larger productive vocabulary than male students. But taking into account that males and females were given the same amount of time for accomplishing the tests, and that females produced a significant higher number of word types than males, I am inclined to think that girls may be at higher levels in the scale of vocabulary knowledge than boys. Be that as it may, the question is why do girls produce a considerably higher number of word types than boys? Or rather, why do boys produce a considerably lower number of word types both in the composition and in the cue word test? My interpretation is that girls’ higher vocabulary production may be related to their higher motivation towards the English language. The present study has not looked at the relation between gender, motivation and vocabulary production. However, two studies conducted by the GLAUR group have provided evidence in this regard. First, chronologically, is the study conducted by Agreda (2006) which aimed to ascertain whether there was a relation between gender and motivation in EFL learning in the sixth year of primary education. She found that girls showed a higher degree of motivation towards the English language





than boys. Second, the study reported by Fernández Fontecha (in this volume) with the same EFL learners two years later (second year of Spanish secondary education), gives evidence of significant gender differences regarding the word types produced in an abridged version of the cue word test. She also proves that girls are intrinsically more motivated towards English language as a school subject than boys, and that the degree of motivation correlates with vocabulary production: the higher the degree of motivation, the higher the number of word types produced in the cue word test. Hence, although in the present study I did not correlate gender, motivation and word type production, the data obtained by the GLAUR group with the same EFL learners as in the present study support the interpretation that girls’ word production in the cue word test and in the composition may be due to their higher level of motivation towards English language learning. Another possible explanation, which does not exclude but complements that postulated above, may be as follows: females’ greater vocabulary production in the composition and in the cue word test may be due to their greater use of vocabulary strategies to consolidate word learning. Support for this claim is found in the literature on language learning strategies. The research conducted by Ehrman and Oxford (1989), Oxford and Niykos (1989), Bacon (1992) and Graham (1997) showed that females made use of a significantly greater number of language learning strategies than their male counterparts. These studies also pointed to females’ greater use of formal rule strategies, study strategies and consolidation strategies in comparison to males. Very similar results were obtained in a large-scale study of the vocabulary learning strategies used by Spanish and Basque EFL learners of different ages and educational levels (Jiménez Catalán, 2003). The main results related to the present study were: (i) females employed a slightly (but significantly) higher number of vocabulary learning strategies than males; (ii) females used more consolidation strategies than males. Among these were: ‘Use word lists’, ‘Use the vocabulary section in textbooks’, ‘Keep a vocabulary notebook’ and ‘Test oneself with word tests’.

Conclusions


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This study has provided evidence in three respects: (i) the existence of variation in EFL learners’ vocabulary performance across four tests; (ii) the almost identical scores of females and males on two receptive vocabulary tests in multiple-choice format; (iii) the existence of significant differential patterns in the vocabulary performance of girls and


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boys in a composition and in a cue word test; and (iv) the existence of a positive correlation among the four tests under examination. These results have implications for foreign language education. Firstly because of the role played by tests in different communities of practice: the multiple-choice, the cue word test and the composition are widely used in EFL classrooms for teachers and researchers, not only in Spain but all over the world. Concerning the receptive vocabulary tests, the different scores obtained by EFL learners in the 1000 WT and in the 2000 VLT indicate that the two tests measure different word levels and are capable of discriminating learners’ vocabulary level according to word frequency bands. The similar results obtained by females and males in the present study indicate that the two tests are not biased towards either of the sexes. As for the productive vocabulary tests examined here, it is important to bear in mind that if we take girls and boys together, and also if we take them as separate groups, a different vocabulary profile emerges in the composition and in the cue word test. The latter has proved to be much more productive in eliciting word types from EFL learners than the composition. However, care should be taken in drawing definitive conclusions as the comparison has been done only in terms of number of word types produced by learners. Other important aspects of learners’ productive vocabulary knowledge were left aside in the comparison of these tests. In compositions, words come embedded in sentences, sentences come embedded in paragraphs and these come introduced by cohesive links; furthermore, compositions need to be coherent. The cue word test is more productive that the composition only if our aim is to count number of words produced by EFL learners in the same amount of time. However, it is not only the number of words learners are capable of producing in a given composition that is important, but also how they use the words in context, how they communicate meanings by means of words and how they relate words in discourse. The cue word test may be more productive but the composition may disclose more aspects of EFL learners’ vocabulary. Secondly, the results of this study are relevant for teachers and researchers in gender and foreign language education: the study reveals similarities and differences between female and male EFL learners in vocabulary performance across different tests. Results indicate that females’ and males’ vocabulary performance can be affected by the type of test used. Girls outperform boys in a composition as well as in a cue word test. As these results were significant, and there was a significant correlation between the two tests, attention should be paid to boys’ relationships to EFL learning. It is necessary to complete the information





uncovered by this quantitative study by means of qualitative analyses. Particularly, it would be useful to interview boys and girls at different levels (high and low proficiency language learners) in order to find out what successful learners do with vocabulary and what difficulties less successful learners experience in the process of learning new words. This study has identified differential patterns that point to boys’ underachievement regarding productive vocabulary in the composition and the cue word test. Why do boys write fewer words than girls in two tests accomplished in the EFL? Why do girls outperform boys in these tests? What might these tendencies be pointing to? I have attempted an explanation of these differences on the grounds of girls’ greater motivation towards English and language learning as well as in terms of girls’ greater usage of consolidation vocabulary strategies, which in turn may be pointing to different styles of learning in girls and boys. I have based my interpretation on previous studies, mainly on the research carried out either by other members of the GLAUR research group or by myself with the same EFL learners and same tests but at different testing times. I have had the opportunity to contrast the results obtained in this study with the ones obtained by the same learners in previous studies. The picture that emerges from the comparison allows us to perceive aspects of the same reality. It highlights the fact that the female and male EFL learners under examination do achieve similar results throughout different years: girls and boys score equally in receptive vocabulary tests but differ significantly in their word production in a cue word test and a composition. But differences in favour of girls only appear regarding the number of word types since in the composition the results by the same learners, as reported by Agustín Llach in this volume, point to common patterns of lexical inventions in the same composition. Likewise, in the light of the longitudinal study carried out with the same learners by Moreno (also in this volume), common word association patterns were found throughout the fourth, fifth and sixth years of primary education. Hence, a bird’s eye view of the results obtained by the same learners confirms the same tendencies disclosed in the present study. Since the 1990s research on gender and foreign language education has shifted away from differences towards the study of the construction of gender identities in educational contexts. In this movement, it has been suggested that quantitative approaches should give way to qualitative ones. I agree with the need to study emerging identities in foreign language classrooms, particularly when foreign language classrooms are a meeting point for EFL learners of different nationalities. However, I do not agree with the idea that adopting the constructivist approach should


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be at the cost of abandoning the quantitative approach. In my view, both are necessary in the study of gender in foreign language classrooms, particularly in countries like Spain where English is a compulsory subject throughout primary and secondary education (from age 6 to 18) but has neither a function in the daily life of ordinary people nor in its institutions. Although in the last decades ELT has improved greatly in Spanish primary and secondary schools, English is still a compulsory subject, as are Maths and History. In this learning context, it is doubtful whether EFL classrooms will have a greater influence on the construction of females’ and males’ identities than the Maths or History classroom. In primary and secondary education English language learning is measured by means of learners’ outcomes and these are of greatest importance for students, teachers and parents. Spanish EFL classrooms usually comprise between 25 and 35 students. ELT Teachers at secondary education usually have four groups of 25–35 students each. Among their duties are getting to know learners well, helping them to learn as much as possible, identifying their learning difficulties, watching over underachievement and gender inequalities. This quantitative study has revealed patterns of similarity and patterns of difference in 210 EFL learners; these tendencies would be difficult to uncover by means of case studies, for the simple reason of ELT teachers’ lack of time for conducting one to one case studies. Thanks to the quantification and descriptive and inferential analyses applied to the data, differential patterns have emerged that point to boys’ underachievement in EFL productive vocabulary in the community in which I work as a teacher and researcher. A first step in the diagnostic description of these foreign language classrooms has been taken. But it is necessary to complete this descriptive analysis by means of other approaches if we wish to get insights into the relation of girls’ and boys’ performances and their emerging identities as language learners in a context where English is a foreign language. However, adopting this new approach should not be at the cost of either denying patterns of similarities or differences when they really appear in foreign language classrooms, or denying the potential of the quantitative approach to identify tendencies when this approach proves to be useful. As Holmes and Meyerhoff (2003:16) remark:



All research is an attempt to get a best fit between intuitive conceptions and insights about the specific details of an interaction, and a satisfactory and illuminating theoretical account of interaction. Yet we are all aware of the fact that research is unavoidably


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Acknowledgements This study has been carried out under the auspices of two consecutive research projects funded by MEC and MYCT and FEDER. We acknowledge Grants BFF2003-04009-C02-02, and HUM2006-09775C02-02/FILO.

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Boys’ and Girls’ L2 Word Associations Soraya Moreno Espinosa

Introduction Word association is regarded as an important dimension in second and foreign language learners’ lexical competence. Since Richards’s (1976) article on word knowledge, it has been claimed that second and foreign language (L2) learners need to know the different associations established by words, as it is one dimension of word knowledge. Word association tests have been used in the field of applied linguistics for a wide range of purposes. Following Moreno’s (2009) review of word association studies in L2, we can trace at least four tendencies that are summarized as follows: (i) studies that look at the relationship between L2 word association patterns and the nature of the mental lexicon (Meara, 1983; Söderman, 1993; Fitzpatrick, 2006; 2007a); (ii) studies that focus on the measurement of L2 productive vocabulary (Fitzpatrick, 2000; Meara and Fitzpatrick, 2000; Clenton, 2005; Jiménez and Moreno, 2005; Moreno, 2009); (iii) computer simulations to identify L2 lexical networks (see Wilks and Meara, 2002; Wilks et al., 2005); and (iv) comparative studies to identify tendencies in the word associations elicited by: (a) male and female learners (Sökmen, 1993; Jiménez and Moreno, 2004); (b) native and non-native speakers (see Kruse et al., 1987; Sökmen, 1993; Schmitt, 1998; Namei, 2004; Wilks et al., 2005; Fitzpatrick, 2006; 2007a); and (c) L2 young learners in two different learning contexts, that is, learning English as an L3 through Content Integrated Language Learning (CLIL) versus learning English as a subject in the Spanish primary school curriculum (Moreno, 2009). With regard to the variable gender in foreign language learning, research is still inconclusive as we come across studies that point to significant differences depending on the gender of testees, and research


6



that shows a lack of significant difference between male and female L2 learners. Specifically as regards this variable and L2 word associations we find a scarcity of studies (Sökmen, 1993; Jiménez and Moreno, 2004). Sökmen found that there were significant gender differences on the basis of primary responses in a word association test. Jiménez and Moreno’s preliminary results were also in line with Sökmen’s; however, they did not undertake inferential statistics to check whether the differences were deemed significant or not. In the light of previous studies on L2 word associations, the following findings can be outlined: (i) L2 word associations are rather heterogeneous (Meara, 1983; Read, 1993; Fitzpatrick, 2006) and many of them are culture-specific (Fitzpatrick, 2006); (ii) In the learning process, there is a shift from syntagmatic to paradigmatic associations which reflects an increase in lexical knowledge (Sökmen, 1993); (iii) L2 clang responses are not very frequent (Maréchal, 1995; Moreno, 2009) and tend to be elicited when presented with unfamiliar cues (Meara, 1983; Söderman, 1993; Namei, 2004); (iv) There does not seem to be any relationship between L2 word associations and language proficiency (Kruse et al., 1987; Wolter, 2002; Fitzpatrick, 2006; Moreno, 2009); and (v) There are significant differences in L2 word associations according to the gender of test takers (Sökmen, 1993). Bearing all this in mind, in our study, we aim at describing and analysing the characteristics of the productive lexical profile of 225 young Spanish learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) at the end of primary education in three different grades on the basis of boys’ and girls’ L2 word association responses in order to get information on our L2 learners’ lexicon and its development. The present study builds on our previous study (Moreno, 2009) in which we analysed the L2 word associations elicited by two groups of informants in two learning contexts (CLIL versus non-CLIL), but introduces important changes with regard to our previous investigation: (i) it is a longitudinal study lasting through three grades; and (ii) it compares boys’ and girls’ L2 word associations. Four research questions are posed in this investigation: 1. Do male learners produce a similar or different productive lexical profile from females and vice versa throughout the three-year period on the basis of: (i) types and tokens, (ii) Lex30 scores and (iii) word class of L2 association responses? 2. Do boys elicit a changing or similar L2 word association pattern to girls and vice versa while passing through the three grades?


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Method Participants Two hundred and twenty-five Spanish learners of EFL enrolled in fourth, fifth and sixth grade of primary education participated in this longitudinal study. All informants have studied EFL in four different co-educational schools in La Rioja’s capital city. Their ages ranged from nine and ten to 11 and 12 years old. Our informants have been divided into two intact sub-groups of learners: (i) Group A comprises a group of one 124 male students; and (ii) Group B subsumes 101 female students. Our two subgroups of informants are a rather homogeneous sample of urban middle class population regarding age, hours of exposure to formal English instruction and method of instruction. Both subgroups started learning English when they were three, and they are learners of English as a curricular subject at the rate of three hours per week. In the time of eliciting the data in fourth grade they had received about 419 hours of English instruction; in fifth grade, 524 hours of English instruction; and in sixth grade, 629 hours of English instruction. Instrument and data collection An experimental test of productive vocabulary, that is, Lex30 (Meara and Fitzpatrick, 2000), was the tool used to elicit learners’ L2 word association responses. Learners were asked to do the test in class with no access to any reference material. Lex30 measures discrete, selective and context independent vocabulary based on a free word association task format, which contains 30 highly frequent stimulus words. It was not originally designed as a word association test but as an instrument to identify productive vocabulary size on the basis of word frequency bands. However, we decided to use it because of different reasons: (i) its potential to explore the following dimensions of word knowledge: word association, word form, word morphology, word form and meaning and collocation (Fitzpatrick, 2007b); (ii) the suitability of the prompts for the age and level of our students – as they are highly frequent; and (iii) their potential to elicit information into EFL learners’ lexicon in a short time span, as learners


3. Do gender similarities and/or differences change as learners’ proficiency level increases? 4. Do the L2 word association tendencies and responses convey information about the gender of the learners?



are asked to recall a maximum of four responses to each prompt in 15 minutes. Thus, thanks to its task format and to the characteristics of its stimulus words, we thought that its promise as a test of productive vocabulary could be enhanced by exploring its potential in a quantitative and qualitative analysis of informants’ responses aimed to trace L2 vocabulary development throughout a three-year period. L2 word associations’ framework of analysis L2 word association responses were analysed by taking into account: (a) word frequency; and (b) word association categories. With regard to word frequency, we used the electronic instrument Lex30 scorer to sort L2 associations into four categories: (a) Level zero words, which embrace highly frequent structural words, proper names, numbers and any blank which was left by learners so as to conform to a text which comprised an average of four responses per 30 stimulus words; (b) Level one words, which subsume the 1000 most frequent content words in English; (c) Level two words that include the 2000 most frequent content words in English; and (d) Beyond two band, which contains words which are not found in the previous bands. In order to calculate the final Lex30 index, it should be noted that each word sorted into Level two words and Beyond two scores one point, up to a maximum of 120; any word outside those two bands scores zero. Regarding the analysis of L2 word association responses, we have used Moreno’s (2009) adaption of Fitzpatrick’s (2006) model for analysing word associations. Thus, L2 word association responses have been classified into five different categories: syntagmatic, paradigmatic, clang, misunderstandings and uninterpretable associations (see Figure 6.1 for a definition of categories and subcategories). Note that ‘stimulus word’ is represented by x, and ‘word association’ by y.

Results and discussion General characteristics of vocabulary in the word association task With regard to our first research question, and specifically for each subgroup of subjects, we intend to ascertain: (a) the number of types and tokens recalled in the word association task on an individual basis; (b) the characteristics of word association responses indicated by the lexical frequency profile reported by Lex30; and (c) the part of speech of associations.


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MAIN FEATURES

SYNTAGMATIC

Position-based associations that include: consecutive yx, collocation; phrasal xy collocation; and different word class collocation. E.g. teacher – school, dog – bark, sun – hot. Meaning-based associations that include: synonymy (e.g. quick – fast), antonymy (e.g. silly – intelligent), hyponymy (e.g. cat – animal), co-hyponomy (e.g. table – chair), hypernymy (e.g. fruit – apple), meronymy (e.g. bedroom – house). Form-based associations including orthographic (e.g. there – three) as well as phonological associations (e.g. dog – bog, think – thank). This category also includes responses that are simply a repetition of the stimulus word. Responses based on: false cognates, mistaken cues for another English word. No clear relationship has been identified between the prompt and the word association response.

PARADIGMATIC

CLANG

MISUNDERSTANDINGS UNINTERPRETABLE RESULTS

Figure 6.1

Definition of Word Association Categories (Moreno, 2009:101)

Table 6.1 contains the total number of occurrences of words (that is, tokens) and the lemmatized types produced by each group of informants in the word association test on an individual basis throughout the threeyear period, as well as the data they have provided regardless of their Table 6.1 Mean Number of Tokens and Types Reported on an Individual Basis 4th Grade

5th Grade

6th Grade

Tokens

Types

Tokens

Types

Tokens

Types

Group A and Group B (N = 225)

18.79 (S.D. 10.82)

17.12 (S.D. 9.01)

23.51 (S.D. 12.12)

22.42 (S.D. 11.40)

28.37 (S.D. 12.98)

26.72 (S.D. 11.80)

Group A: Boys (N = 124)

17.24 (S.D. 9.90)

15.89 (S.D. 8.98)

20.74 (S.D. 11.06)

19.81 (S.D. 10.67)

27.96 (S.D. 14.38)

26.25 (S.D. 12.89)

Group B: Girls (N = 101)

20.68 (S.D. 11.62)

18.63 (S.D. 8.85)

26.90 (S.D. 12.55)

25.62 (S.D. 11.52)

28.88 (S.D. 11.07)

27.30 (S.D. 10.35)





gender. It can be seen that the number of tokens recalled by Group A range from 17.24 to 27.96 and the number of types, from 15.89 to 26.25. With regard to the tokens and types recalled by Group B, the former ranges from 20.68 to 28.88; and the latter from 18.63 to 27.30. Thus, on the one hand, both sub-groups of informants seem to evince an increase of vocabulary acquisition on the basis of the mean number of tokens and types recalled in the task throughout the three-year period. However, their rate of vocabulary acquisition does not seem to be the same throughout the different grades. Thus, in fifth grade whereas girls’ mean number of types grew by almost seven words with regard to the ones recalled in the previous grade, boys’ mean number of types only increased by almost four words. This fact may be due to biological reasons, as it is widely acknowledged that boys take longer to mature than girls. Therefore girls’ maturity may have had a bearing on their L2 vocabulary growth in fifth grade, whereas boys were still growing towards it. However, in sixth grade, boys’ rate of vocabulary acquisition seemed to increase at a faster pace than that of girls. Boys’ mean number of types showed a spurt, growing by almost six and a half words; whereas girls’ mean number of types only increased by almost two words in the same period of time. Our assumption is that in sixth grade, boys’ journey to maturity brought them up almost equal to girls on the basis of L2 vocabulary acquisition. In Table 6.1 we can observe some further variance between the groups as there is a difference in the mean number of types and tokens in favour of girls. Hence, Group B recalled a higher number of tokens and types than those produced by Group A throughout the three school grades. However, no significant difference has been found to exist between boys and girls insofar as types and tokens in our free-association task are con2 cerned, except in the number of tokens in sixth grade (Chi = 81. 7; df = 54; p < 0. 05). These data are not in line with Jiménez’s results (this volume), which did find a significant difference between the genders in the number of types and tokens produced in a lexical availability task. Following Jiménez’s assumption that there is a task effect on girls’ and boys’ vocabulary performance, it is not surprising that our results differ from hers, as the tasks are completely different; although both studies make students recall words on the basis of different cues. On the one hand, our informants had 30 seconds to produce associations which were constrained to a maximum of four responses per prompt. On the other hand, subjects sitting the lexical availability task had two minutes to recall words per prompt and they had no constraint


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on the number of responses that could be produced. Hence, the constraints imposed on Lex30 with regard to the number of responses and the time to elicit the data may have put forward a rather homogeneous lexical pattern, which does not reflect any significant difference between both sub-groups. However, in the lexical availability task, as they had more time and no response restrictions, the differences between the genders were more evident, as girls produced more types and tokens than boys, and a significant difference was found between them. Therefore, we do agree with researchers (for example, Jiménez, this volume; Sunderland, 2000; Fitzpatrick, 2007) that have pointed out that a task effect may influence test results, as can be observed in our two different experiments. Word association responses were further analysed by means of Lex30. In Table 6.2, we can see its mean profile. Level zero words represent the great majority of words recalled throughout the three grades. In both subgroups we can observe a declining trend, with Level zero words decreasing steadily over the three-year period. Thus, Group A’s Level zero words tailed off from 86.57 per cent in fourth grade to 76.06 per cent in sixth grade; whereas Group B’s Level zero associations decreased from 83.5 per cent to 76.61 per cent. It can be argued that the great number

Table 6.2 Mean Lex30 Lexical Frequency Profile Following the Three-year Period Group A and Group B

Group A: Boys

Group B: Girls

(N = 225)(%)

(N = 124)(%)

(N = 101)(%)

4th Grade LEVEL 0 LEVEL 1 LEVEL 2 BEYOND 2 LEX30 INDEX

85.19 4.90 1.97 7.54 9.51

86.57 4.52 1.84 7.08 8.92

83.50 5.38 2.12 8.12 10.24


80.80 7.01 2.73 9.40 12.12

82.98 6.15 2.52 8.28 10.81

78.12 8.07 2.97 10.76 13.73


76.31 8.54 3.36 11.21 14.5

76.06 8.30 3.11 11.26 14.37

76.61 8.84 3.67 11.15 14.81





of Level zero words – as they also include blanks – may indicate that the prompts were not suitable for our sample of testees. However, it should be noted that when taking into account our 225 subjects regardless of gender, every single stimulus word was able to elicit L2 word associations. This issue puts forward that all the cues were suitable for their level, as their L2 word association development could be plotted and compared throughout the three school years. As Kruse et al. (1987) state, Riegel et al. (1967) demonstrated that the number of blanks in a word association test could be correlated to learners’ proficiency levels. Similar findings were put forward by Jiménez and Moreno (2007), who showed that the higher the proficiency of testees, the lower the number of Level zero words elicited in the test. Thus, our present results seem to broadly follow the same tendency. We correlated the Level zero words provided by Group A and Group B (n = 225) with a different and independent measure of proficiency – the Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt et al., 2001) – and we found a positive correlation in all the grades (see Table 6.3). Hence, results seem to evince an increase in productive vocabulary size, which can be observed in the relationship between Level zero words and proficiency throughout the three school grades. With regard to the analysis of results according to the variable gender, we found a positive correlation in all the grades in both subgroups of informants, except in Group B in sixth grade (see Table 6.3). The fact that there is no correlation in sixth grade between the number of Level zero words and an independent measure of proficiency may be due to the fact that Group B’s vocabulary growth does not seem to follow the same pace as in fifth grade, as there is a slight increase of vocabulary, as has already been mentioned. Taking a closer look at the data (see Table 6.2) we can observe that both subgroups follow a similar pattern throughout the period. Thus, Table 6.3

Correlations between Level zero words and the Vocabulary Levels Test 4th Grade

5th Grade

6th Grade

Group A and Group B (N = 225)

r = −. 370 (p

Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages

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