Does Gender Matter? Potential Lexical Errors among Iranian EFL Learners

Year 2015, Volume: 36 Issue: 3, 2431 - 2444, 13.05.2015

Ali Asghar Ahmadıshokouh , Muhammed Parvız

Abstract

Abstract. Post method era encourages teachers to attend to the different layers of reality of the classroom. Apparently, the most important layer of reality is" individual differences". Gender as a key factor, among other factors of individual differences, needs to be considered in teaching profession in general and language teaching in particular. A thorough review of literature gives us a vivid picture of dichotomous findings regarding the impact of gender on learning language skills. When it comes to writing, issue becomes more complicated, because, as Williams (2009) puts it, few models of writing have emerged and none is comprehensive. This study seeks to identify and categorize the lexical errors that appear in a group of high school EFL learners’ compositions in Khorramabad, Iran in an attempt to find a possible trace of gender in these errors. EFL learners including males and females were under investigation. They were asked to write an essay about computer. The SPSS program was used to process the analysis of the data. Two-way Analysis Of Variance was used to evaluate the hypothesis of significant difference between the mean scores of male and female students' writing performance in types of lexical errors. The results revealed no significant difference between male and female students in type of lexical errors in their writing task. It also was found that female learners outperformed their peer male learners in their writing scores.

Keywords

Lexical errors, gender, individual differences

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