Boys vs. girls

As the history of my university level studies is rather long, I have engaged myself in several types of undergraduate research during the years. I started with studying translation and interpretation and wrote my pro-seminar paper on literature and seminar paper on the differences of male and female communication. As a residue of my interest in that field, I looked for to find out the differences between male and female replies on certain statements of the questionnaire. In the selection of statements for this section I used my personal experience and curiousness. The results are presented next. As in this section the survey group is again divided into two, the tables illustrate percentages, not the qua ntities of the reply scale.

Statement 9: If it is somehow possible, I would like to receive better grades than my classmates

1 not true at all, 2 mostly not true, 3 I don’t know, 4 mostly true, 5 definitely true Statement 9

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

1 2 3 4 5

Boys Girls

The aspect of statement 9 is competitiveness and whether there is a difference between how competitive boys and girls are at a secondary level. The result indicates that boys in fact are more competitive than girls when it comes to achieving grades. The percentage of boys who replied definitely true is 35.9% compared to 17.6% of girls.

This result shows that a slightly more than double the boys than girls admitted targeting to a higher grade than their classmates. Furthermore, 23.1% of boys replied mostly true compared to 17.6% of girls. This shows that boys actually seem to grow to a competitive world. Next there is a table illustrating the number of boys’ and girls’

previous English grades so that it is possible to compare if the willingness to get higher grades is reflected in the reality.

The above table illustrates that the boys’ stronger willingness to achieve better grades than their classmates is somewhat justified. Boys have achieved more grades 8 and 9 than girls, and less of the weak grades 5 and 6. On the other hand only girls have been able to achieve the highest grade 10. On one hand this may reflect that girls can easier adjust their behaviour to the teachers’ expectations, and furthermore the statement did not ask whether boys want to achieve better grades than girls or vice versa but better grades than all the classmates.

Previous English grades

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Boys Girls

Statement 15: Teacher’s feedback makes me work harder in the English lessons

Statement 15

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

1 2 3 4 5

Boys Girls

1 not true at all, 2 mostly not true, 3 I don’t know, 4 mostly true, 5 definitely true

This statement has already been discussed in the section ‘Teacher and lessons’, and there it was quite clear that teacher’s feedback makes the pupils work harder. Here the emphasis is to determine whethe r boys and girls feel differently about the teacher’s feedback. The patterns in the table seem to be quite similar with each other and coherent with the results from section ‘Teacher and lessons’. The greatest difference is in reply 5, definitely true which 20.5% of boys replied but only 8.8% of girls. Thus more than double the number of boys than girls are almost always dependent on the teacher’s feedback to work harder. In total, 59% of boys replied mostly true or definitely true whereas 47% of girls replied the same. This result confirms the importance of teacher’s feedback and especially towards boys.

Statement 20: I’m interested in American culture and way of life

Statement 20

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

1 2 3 4 5

Boys Girls

1 not true at all, 2 mostly not true, 3 I don’t know, 4 mostly true, 5 definitely true

This statement has already been discussed in section ‘Integrativeness’, where it was quite clear that today’s secondary school pupils do not blindly admire the American culture and way of life. There are no great differences between boys ’ and girls’ opinions except in the reply I don’t know where 38.5% of boys and 23.5% of girls stand. The large quantity of boys who do not know what to think may change for better or worse in the future and this may also indicate some kind of criticism – they are not able to decide yet what to think. For this statement 7.7% of boys and 11.8% of girls replied definitely true and 25.6% of boys and 26.5% of girls replied mostly true. In total, 33.3% of boys and 38.3% of girls have replied on the more positive side. The reason girls are slightly more positive in their ideas of the American culture and way of life can only be guessed, and would be an excellent target for further study.

Statement 31: I’m not afraid of making mistakes or saying them out aloud

Statement 31

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

1 2 3 4 5

Boys Girls

1 not true at all, 2 mostly not true, 3 I don’t know, 4 mostly true, 5 definitely true

Selecting this statement to represent possible differences between boys and girls is the result of the old-fashioned belief that girls are shy and more afraid to make mistakes in front of others. Even if the belief did not have scientific proof, this survey result would seem to confirm it to some extent. None of the boys but 14.7% of girls replied this statement being definitely not true. Furthermore, only 7.7% of boys replied mostly not true whereas 23.5% of girls replied so. In total, 38.2% of girls, almost two fifths of them, placed their reply on the negative side (replies 4 and 5) for this statement. Then again, 43.6% of boys replied mostly true and 20.5% replied definitely true which places 64.1%, more than three fifths, of boys on the positive side (replies 4 and 5). Less than half, 47% of girls have placed their reply on the positive side. In summary, I believe that enough girls seem to be courageous in classroom situations nowadays, but according to the result of this survey statement, girls should receive more encouragement to perform in front of others.

Statement 45: I’m active in English lessons

I selected this question to represent differences between boys and girls because from my experience boys seem to be far more active in English lessons at least at the primary level. It sometimes seems that boys compete with each other of who gets the turn to answer the most often. The survey result indicates that my experience is correct for the part of the secondary level. To this statement of being active in English lessons, none of the boys but 29.4%, almost a third, of the girls replied definitely not true. The next reply, mostly not true, was chosen by 17.9% of boys and 17.6% of girls. In total, 17.9%

of boys and 47% of girls have placed their replies on the negative side (replies 1 and 2).

The number of boys replying I don’t know is quite large, 38.5%, whereas only 20.6% of girls replied the same. 25.6% of boys and a delighting 26.5% of girls replied mostly true, and finally 17.9% of boys and 5.9% of girls replied definitely true to the statement of being active in English lessons. This puts 43.5% of boys and 32.4% of girls on the positive side (replies 4 and 5). In this matter the instruction for the teacher is the same as for the previous statement of making mistakes in the lessons: girls should receive more encouragement to actively participate in the lessons. This requires effort from the teacher: he/she needs to prepare suitable material and exercises to promote both the girls’ and boys’ participation in the lessons.

Quite interestingly, one primary level school in Tampere has started a pilot project of dividing boys and girls into different study groups. The project has just begun in September 2006 so there are no results available, but the pupils’ first impressions have been promising: they enjoy being with pupils of the same gender. It will be interesting

to learn about the results from that project and see if it will lead to permanent changes in the group formation at primary level schools.

Next I will shortly introduce the activities that pupils seem to enjoy the most.