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The Relationship of Gender to Second Language Acquisition |
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Children have historically been expected to absorb the lesson of that tradition, and mothers have the role of socializing and enculturating children to family norms and structures, which comes down to teaching children their proper role of obedience to their father, although Madsen describes the Latin woman in traditional, conservative households as "a skilled manipulator of her lord and master" (53) on many issue fronts, including but not limited to child-rearing matters. Fatherly displays of affection to and playfulness with children are confined to the home, since demands on men for public dignidad are so strong. Madsen's analysis is that the main message of childhood enculturation is the authority of the father in particular and male superiority in general. Among the greatest weapons a mother has against disobedient children is that she will "tell your father" (54). These features of Mexican-American family dynamics are relevant to the present research because they are the dynamics and the culture that children bring with them to the public-school classroom. And the content of what they bring has implications for their experience as users of English, the mainstream culture's language. Hernandez, et al., cite social science research showing that Latinos are more allocentric, or group-oriented, and less individualistic and competitive than non-Latino Whites; sympathetic toward needs of others; familistic, |
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Griggs, Shirley, and Dunn, Rita. Hispanic-American Students and Learning Style. ERIC Digest. Urbana, Ill.: ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education, 1996. 15 August 2004. .Sadker, Myra, and Sadker, David. (1994). Failing at Fairness: How America's Schools Cheat Girls. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994. How gender figures into classroom dynamics like these has to be connected to observations that, in general, teachers tend to prefer male to female students, i.e., inviting male participation much more than female participation in class. That preference has been found to be unintentional (Sadker and Sadker passim). However, the effect may still be striking. It has been noted, for example, that engagement is a key feature of second-language acquisition. That being so, significant male preference "could cause female second language acquisition to suffer, since interaction is crucial in the ESL classroom and language-learning is an interactive skill" (Yepez 123). Hernandez, Rudy, Siles, Marcelo, and Rochín, Refugio I. "Latino Youth: Converting Challenges to Opportunities." JSRI Working Paper Series. Working Paper No. 50. East Lansing, Michigan: The Julian Samora Research Institute, Michigan State University, 1999. 15 August 2004. Perez, Samuel A. "Teaching Second Language Learners in the Regular Classroom." Reading Improvement 37 (Spring 2000): 45-48.The practical effect of these demographics is that elementary-school teachers--particularly though not exclusively in California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois--have become de facto ESL teachers, being obliged to convey both curriculum content and language-acquisition skills to a significant student population. Reading instruction is especially challenging. Methods of engaging the LEP/ESL student in comprehension exercises have evolved, such as pairing LEP students with native English speakers and inviti |
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