Gender Gap in Learning Foreign Languages.

Abstract

Gender gap in education context has always been worthy of study. Studies provide conflicting views about gender gap in educational achievement. While some suggest that female learners outperform males, others develop evidence for females’ underperformance. Given this, this research aims at re-examining gender gap in secondary school EFL classrooms and exploring the factors contributing to this issue. To this end, this study opts for a mixed quantitative and qualitative method. This method combines two main methodological instruments; an online questionnaire distributed to eighty third year secondary school pupils and an indirect interview directed to ten EFL teachers of English language. The findings of this study reveal that there are gender differences in EFL classrooms, the majority of female students show their interests in learning English language. These differences are mainly due to gender stereotypes that reinforce the view that learning foreign language is a feminine activity. The issue of gender differences in the education achievement still exists in the EFL classrooms; however, further research needs to be carried out.