華中師范大學(xué)外國(guó)語(yǔ)學(xué)院 熊慶玲

In China,female students always have better performance than male students in English learning.What caused the differences between male and female students in English learning?And what can we do to deal with the differences?

Ⅰ.Differences between male and female students

1.1 Biological differences between male and female students

First,scientific research has found that the left brain dominates language and logical analysis,right brain dominates imaginable thinking and intuition.Females’left brain function better than males’,it specializes earlier and develops in a higher level.These make the female students’language ability is superior to male students,and it makes female students be likely to pay attention to details.Males’right brain is superior to females’,so male students are good at dealing with spatial relationships of information and analyzing.

1.2 Psychological differences between male and female students

1.2.1 Intelligence Difference

The male and the female are different in such areas as perception,memory and thinking.The female is good at listening and speech perception,while the male is good at vision and spatial perception.In addition,according to the characteristics of people in the process of perception,consciousness can be divided into three types：analytical,integrated and analytical-integrated analysis.It’s observed that female students lean to the analytical analysis,and male students lean to the integrated analysis.On the proportion of analytical-integrated analysis,female students’proportion is higher than male students’.Generally speaking,female students are good at image memory,emotion and motor memory,male students are relatively good at logic memory.On the memory method,in General,girls are slightly dominant in unconscious memorizing and mechanical memorizing.In conscious and meaning memorizing,the male students are better than female students.On thinking,studies at home and abroad have the same views,that is female students have imaginable thinking,they are inclined to resolve the problem with images;male students think more logically,they are accustomed to solving problems withAbstractthinking.On the quality of thinking,male students are slightly superior to female students.Thinking quality includes depth,flexibility,ingenuity and agility.But from the view of English learning,female students’thinking is better than male students’because female students prefer imaginable thinking which is used to fine processing,and it is cautious and slow,but more accurate.And male students are more impulsive.

1.2.2 Differences of learning motivation

Studies have shown that female students are more interested in English learning,and they have obvious tendency to intrinsic motivation.Male students are not very interested in English learning in general,they always urged by parents and teachers.They are more passive in English learning and have stronger external motivation.

1.2.3 Differences of personality

Males,in general,are confident,brave,independent,open-minded,careless,impatient,progressive,they have more emotional fluctuations.Females generally are calm,patient,meticulous,serious,timid,shy,vulnerable and so on.On the personality types,males are mostly extroversive,independent,and strong;most females are introversive,submissive.

Male students are more willing to show them in the learning process,especially in spoken English,but sometimes they tend to be too impulsive.They think too hurriedly,and the answers are not accurate enough.While female students are not confident enough,they think carefully and their answers are more accurate.

1.2.4 Differences of cognitive style

Field-Independent learners often perceive things with internal references rather than external references.They judg things in their own standard,and they are not very good at getting social information and feel free from the influence of external information.Their emotional expressions are confident,self-reliant,brave and combative.They are not good at communicating with others.Field-dependent learners are more dependent on external references when perceive things.They like associate with others and pay more attention to social information.They are good at imitating and easy to be influenced by others,and they cannot differentiate things from the complex situation including a number of elements and components.

1.2.5 Differences of learning strategies

Learning strategies can be divided into：cognitive strategies,metacognitive strategies,emotional strategies.The survey showed that：female students outperform male students in applying cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies.About the emotional strategy,male students are slightly superior to female students.But sometimes,when facing difficulties that appear in the English learning,female students performance better at relieving their negative emotions,such as using words and so on.Male students are typically not good at giving vent to their feelings.The long-term depression and anxiety will deepen their boredom feeling of English learning and even make them fear to English.On the whole,female students are more active than boys on the use of English learning strategies,in order to achieve better learning outcomes,female students use more learning strategies frequently.

Ⅱ.Solutions

Due to physiological factors cannot be changed,here are some solutions that correspond to the psychological aspects.

2.1 Intelligence difference

Females are good at listening and speech perception,while males are good at vision and spatial perception.Female students can listen to English songs,news and other listening materials to improve their English skills.Females have a good sense of imitation,so female students should imitate more,and pay attention to the accuracy of and fluency of speech.Male students can enhance English learning effects by using pictures,charts,videos,and actions,they need to listen and read more to enhance their English language sense.Both male and female students should make more use of analytical-integrated analysis to solve problems in learning English.

Female students can use more conscious memory while using their mechanical memory to improve efficiency.Male students need to make good use of the conscious memory and review frequently.In terms of thinking,male students should think comprehensively and carefully in English learning process.They should start from details to the whole when they are thinking,and they should pay more attention to the accuracy.Female students should limit their thinking time,facilitating judgment by using intuition,improving the problem-solving speed and comprehensive problemsolving ability.

2.2 Learning motivation

Male students are more easy to be influenced by extrinsic motivation,and they are more vulnerable to external incentives than female students.Therefore male students should enhance their English learning purpose and stimulate their achievement motivation.Teachers and parents should encourage them.And achieving success,is one of the best incentives.In addition,the female students should try to increase their interest in English through a variety of methods,and they should learn from excellent English learners in order to achieve greater success.

2.3 Differences of personality

As males are more impulsive,therefore they should keep calm when solve problems,and they should consider more deliberately before coming to the conclusion or solution to a problem.Female students should be more confident without fear of errors.

2.4 Differences of cognitive style

As the male students tend to the field independent cognitive style in general,they are more rational than female students.When encountering problems,they prefer to solve them independently.so their interpersonal skills,discourse skills are weaker than femal students.So male students need to participate in more cooperative activities in English learning and communicate more with others.Female students should overcome crowd and be more independent as well as be more active in the competition.

2.5 Differences of learning strategies

Male students need to improve their metacognitive strategies,they should plan,supervise and assess their own learning,reinforcing learning purpose and becoming initiative in English leraning.They should learn to groom their bad mood when encounter difficulties in the learning,for example,they can talk with others or ask for help.They should constantly encourage themselves to overcome difficulties and learn to use various learning strategies.Female students should learn how to optimize their learning strategies to improve learning efficiency and use more emotional learning strategies,such as communication and co-operation.

2.6 Both male and female students should know how to use their strengths as well as avoid their weaknesses and learn from each other to make progress

In practical English learning,everyone’s strengths and weaknesses vary from each other.We should recognize and respect the gender differences in English learning.At the same time,we should be aware of our special problems and adapt the appropriate solutions.By doing these,everyone can become a successful English learner.

[1]Zhou Chunfeng.Research on Gender Differences and Strategies of High School Students ’ English Learning[C].Master’s degree thesis,East China Normal University,2005.

[2]Wei Li.Comparative Study of English Learning Differences between Male and Female students[M].Heilongjiang Science and Technology Information,2008