GENDER IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Presented by:
Nur Indah Tika Haswuri (2223042025)
Ranti Pratiwi (2223042026)

MASTER OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF LAMPUNG
2023
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INTRODUCTION
Language is a kind of communication that allows community members to
engage and communicate with one another. Through using language, humans are
capable of conveying ideas, commands, and feelings. Besides, we use language as an
important tool to communicate with others. Humans learn the language as a means of
communication from birth; this process is known as language acquisition. Thus, we
are constantly learning and acquiring the language we hear and use when we
communicate using the language. Learning foreign languages has influenced our lives
in significant ways. On other hand, learning a foreign language is one of the most
important things, especially the English language. Particularly, in our country,
English can be taught here or utilized as a foreign language, even though it is not our
mother tongue. Therefore, the process by which speakers of a language can learn a
second language in addition to their native tongue is known as second language
acquisition (SLA) or second language learning. The term "second language" refers to
any additional language that is learned or acquired.
According to Oxford (1990) a learning second language represent conscious
knowledge of the language that they learn this knowledge through formal instruction.
The process of learning a second or foreign language is difficult. Meanwhile, Ranjan
and Philominraj (2020) said that the process of acquiring the English language is
affected by a variety of elements, such as biological and psychological elements.
Hence, the one very important component that directly affects and influences how
people learn languages is their gender. Gender and language acquisition are closely
related concepts that cannot be separated. In terms of level, males and females
acquire English differently. Consequently, the gender of the learners determines the
rate of language acquisition. It is also commonly acknowledged that gender
influences second language acquisition. There are apparent significant learning
differences between males and females. According to Second Language Acquisition
(SLA) theorists, female language learners may exhibit superiority in their second
language acquisition (Burstall, 1975; Boyle, 1987; Ehrlich, 2001). Therefore, this
paper aims to discuss the role of gender in second language acquisition.
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LITERATURE REVIEW

Definition of Gender
Sometimes, certain individuals misunderstand the term "gender" by assuming
it to be synonymous with sex. Shubhra (2006) said that sex is a designation based on
biology, whereas gender is socially and psychologically constructed by the process of
interactions in the family, social and education settings. In other words, gender is
something we do and perform rather than something we have. According to Sidiqi
(2003) with reference to gender in language, "In linguistics, the term referred to the
grammatical categories that indexed sex in the structure of human languages. In the
1960s and 1970s, feminist theorists used the term "gender" to describe how society
creates the categories "masculine" and "feminine." Though the female movement
didn't really get going until the late 1960s and early 1970s, the relationship between
gender and language was already well known at that time. Instead of being something
that humans socially and emotionally build according to their beliefs and rules when
they make interaction or speak with one another, gender can be considered as
something that is not brought with a person when they are born. Moreover, according
to certain theories, how males and females use language affects how they see
themselves in society and how other people see them. There are some theories on
how language and gender interact, those are:

1. The deficit Theory

Male language serves as the norm, whereas women's language falls short
since it deviates from the norm. Lakoff (1972) said that language both
reinforces and reflects social convention. Males and females speak different
languages, which reflects the diverse social roles they play. In the book
Language: Its Nature, Evolution, and Origin published in 1922, Otto Jespersen
found that females speak a lot and use simpler words as they have smaller
vocabularies, although males have larger vocabularies and use more
difficult words. Nevertheless,
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society has evolved, and there have been significant changes in the social
status and roles of females.

2. The Dominance Theory

Male language is superior and more dominant in society than women's
language, which is viewed as inferior. Males are more likely to interrupt and
control females when engaged in interactions. Thus, they are always
interrupted and limited to a certain topic and time. Even when the females are
interrupted by males, they prefer silence over fighting over who gets to speak
first. The language was controlled by males because they had greater
influence in politics, culture, and social life. However, females use language
in a way that reflects their subordinate position in society, and males in a way
that reflects their power. It indicates that if females have higher social status
than males, they would be able to express themselves verbally more
effectively. Therefore the language we use is more about power and status
than gender.

3. The difference Theory

Males and females belong to different sub-cultures since they are socialized
differently from childhood and have different ways of communicating with
each other. It means that males and females really do converse differently.
Moreover, Tannen (1990) believes the difference starts in childhood when
parents use more words describing feelings to females and use more verbs for
males. It indicates with some researchers that males prefer to speak in a
competitive and hard-edged manner, whereas women speak in a more
implicitly indirect manner. Besides, historically males are seen as protectors
and powerful people, while women are seen as vulnerable and shielded. As a
result, the speaking personalities of males and females are formed in
accordance with societal expectations and acquisitions. It is evident from the
speaker's inclination, subject matter, and mode of expression.
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DISCUSSION

Gender in Second Language Acquisition

Gender and language acquisition are closely related concepts that cannot be
separated. The rate of language learning depends on the learners' gender since there
are distinctions between how it goes for each gender. Moreover, the majority of
studies on the relationship between learner gender and SLA have focused on input
and interaction possibilities, learning strategies, and learning styles, as well as
questions related to the type of L2 being learned. When it came to language
proficiency, Farhady (1982) found that female subjects significantly outperformed
male subjects in listening comprehension. In addition, females typically begin
speaking before males do, and they utilize longer sentences since they speak more
clearly and use correct grammar, thus females have a richer vocabulary. They also
perform better in examinations where they must produce words in accordance with a
given rule, spelling, reading, and comprehension.
In second language acquisition, females have an advantage over males while
learning a second language, several studies find that they are more successful. Ellis
(1994) found that females benefit from more and better input because of their better
listening comprehension abilities. Furthermore, females have more of the Influence of
Gender in SLA have positive attitudes to reading and higher reading achievement
than boys. Ellis (1994) also stated that females' greater success in L2 learning in
classroom settings is that they generally have more positive attitudes". Thus, it
appeared that females who had more positive reading attitudes and whose self-
concepts were higher were more successful on reading tasks. Besides, in a research
conducted by Aslan (2009), it was reported that gender influences learning strategies
adopted by either gender. This means that females and males are observed to employ
various strategies in language acquisition. Females, in contrast, tend to rely more
heavily upon questions, justifiers, intensive adverbs, personal pronouns, and word-
initial adverbs (Gascoigne, 2002). In other related studies that examined the
conversational behaviour of males and females second language learners, Gass
and Varonis (1986) found that males
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dominated the conversation. Therefore, they found that males received more speaking
practice than females in such interactions. However, they concluded that males use
the opportunities to interact to produce more output, whereas women use it to obtain
more input. It is not easy to find a clear-cut explanation for these results.
Perhaps this is attributed to the fact that girls perceive the learning a foreign
language as an added advantage for them, whereas boys do not. This is due to the
difference between males and females in their perceptions of the benefits of learning
a foreign language for themselves. However, there has been research conducted on
gender differences in a number of second language acquisition areas, including
reading comprehension (Young and Oxford, 1997) and learning strategies (Jiménez,
2003 and Young & Oxford, 1997). The results of these studies have multiple
interconnected, with some emphasizing the superiority of males over females, others
studies found that females are better language learners than males, and still others
pointing out the fact that gender has no influence on learning a second or foreign
language. In related studies, both males and females who were learning a second
language engaged in discussion. Therefore, It means that success in learning a second
language does not necessarily depend on gender, it could be some other factors may
also come into play.
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CONCLUSION

Based on the explanation above, gender and language acquisition are closely related
concepts that cannot be separated. In terms of level, males and females acquire
English differently. There are some different theories about gender difference in
language which are the deficit theory, the dominance theory, and the difference
theory. The languages of males and females are quite different. The main areas of
distinction include word usage, voice and tone, syntactic structure, and language
usage style. Thus, gender has an influence on learning a second language. Moreover,
in second language acquisition from the case of gender, mixed results have been
obtained, but female learners generally outperform male learners in language
classroom settings. However, both genders have diverse tendency toward
participation in public, and the amount of this inclination in different features varies.
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