Gender effects on strategic competencea survey study on compensatory strategies in a CLIL context

  1. María Basterrechea Lozano
  2. María Martínez-Adrián
  3. Francisco Gallardo-del-Puerto
Journal:
Elia: Estudios de lingüística inglesa aplicada

ISSN: 1576-5059

Year of publication: 2017

Issue: 17

Pages: 47-70

Type: Article

DOI: 10.12795/ELIA.2017.I17.03 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Elia: Estudios de lingüística inglesa aplicada

Abstract

Second language research has shown that females usually outperform their male counterparts (Pavlenko & Piller, 2008). They also have more positive attitudes and greater motivation (Spolsky, 1989). Nevertheless, these tendencies have been found to be blurred in meaning-oriented approaches such as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) (Fernández Fontecha & Canga Alonso, 2014). As regards strategic competence, very little research has been conducted on the effect of gender on the use of language learning strategies (Ehrman & Oxford, 1989) and much less on compensatory strategies (Kocoglu, 1997). Besides, there is a lack of research investigating the effect of gender on the use of compensatory strategies by CLIL learners. This study examines the existence of gender differences in the 5th and 6th grades of Primary Education as regards amount and type of strategies preferred in a self-reported questionnaire on compensatory strategy use (i.e. guessing, miming, morphological creativity, dictionary, predicting paraphrasing, borrowing, calque, foreignising, avoidance and appeal for assistance). In terms of overall amount, no statistically significant differences emerged, which seem to be in line with those CLIL studies that credit a vanishing effect on gender-related differences. As for types, females tend to avoid answering if they are not sure whereas males prefer to guess and feel more at ease in ambiguity. Females also rely more on borrowing, which makes them feel secure that the content of their message is unambiguously conveyed. In contrast, males prefer to predict and are braver, and take more risks when communicating (see Oxford & Ehrman, 1988).

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Funding information

The authors would like to acknowledge the grants awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI2012-32212) and (FFI2016-74950-P), the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) (UFI 11/06) and the Basque Government (IT904-16).

Funders

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