Boys' brains and girls' brains and language learning

By

Barbara

– March 7, 2008Posted in: Uncategorized

I don’t quite know how I feel about this article yet, but I thought I would pass it on and get the conversation started. Comments anyone??

Tags: gender, language learning, students, whats and whys

About Barbara

Barbara has been working for a small liberal arts college in the cornfields of Ohio for about 15 years. In addition to teaching Spanish she runs a somewhat unconventional language center. Prior to this adventure in higher ed she taught high school Spanish and loved it. She wishes she had more time in her life to write, read, swim, and watch the Red Sox. And sometimes she blogs over here as well...

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1. Reply

   Natasha

   Posted February 16, 2009 at 10:37 AM

   Interesting to think about language processing differences between “boys and girls”. I don’t see evidence in this article that the differences are biological in nature as claimed in the first sentence (neither do I see evidence against it).

   I found the comment that “areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during language tasks” interesting in terms of the language used in the sentence. “Works harder” sounds like it’s trickier for girls. If someone was saying that boys tend to do better on standardized math testing, would they say their brains have to “work harder”? I doubt it. I also haven’t heard too many people suggesting we change our math tests to cater to women’s (as a generalized group) math strengths.