Language Education - Science topic

Surya Rathore can you connect me via any of those medium in the post?

OK. Thanks alot Brian...

Your aswer is so helpful

Hi Bolanle,

I am interested. Send me more details.

Dear Prof. Gross!

I fully recognise your objectives and you really make a difference. I am a biligual researcher who have studied five different languages. I am also a football coach in Finland at HJK Helsinki, helping children with disabiilities to learn the language of fooball. Football is a language via wich you can get friends, and new opportunities to learn from life:

1) J. Albrecht, K. Elmose-Østerlund, C. Klenk & S. Nagel (2019) Sports clubs as a medium for integrating people with disabilities, European Journal for Sport and Society, 16:2, 88-110, DOI: 10.1080/16138171.2019.1607468, Available at:

2) Dennis Bengtsson, Andreas Stenling, Jens Nygren, Nikos Ntoumanis, Andreas Ivarsson, The effects of interpersonal development programmes with sport coaches and parents on youth athlete outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Psychology of Sport and Exercise, Volume 70,

2024, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2023.102558, Open access:

Yours sincerely, Bulcsu Szekely

It's ok. You can send a message to me on Whatsapp+2347035044420

thanks prof.

Kindly, if you have an article about it; we can publish it freely.

@Pernelle Lorette Sorry to disturb but I wonder whether you have got access to the cloze test by professor Yuan. I'm looking for such a proficiency test.

Finding a professor or mentor for a postdoctoral fellowship through an individual posting on ResearchGate, for example, is certainly a strategy. But whether and to what extent it is ultimately successful is an important question that points to the general conditions for the success of a postdoctoral fellowship.

Even if it is possible to establish contact with potential supervisors, it is unclear whether this person is the right one. Just because someone offers me a position or even promises me one, that doesn't mean anything. It is essential that you first clarify for yourself in which academic field and with which research focus you would like to further your academic qualification. Based on this, you should research nationally and internationally to find out which scholarship and exchange programs exist that could be advantageous for your desired academic profile.

Now, based on criteria, a targeted selection must be made among relevant universities, schools and chairs that could potentially or optionally come into question. The following criteria have to be considered in particular: the academic reputation of the host institution, the professional fit with the main supervisor or research unit, the scope, duration and funding of the fellowship, details regarding work and residence permits, etc.

At the end of this selection process, you will see which suitable programs, funding and fellowships remain and whether and to what extent you can meet the required application criteria. Once you have applied and have been shortlisted for the position, it is always important to take a self-critical look at whether the working conditions and supervision offered suit me both professionally and personally.

Hello, you can also consider the following:

International Journal of Language Studies http://www.ijls.net/

Language Learning in Higher Education https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/cercles/html

Studies about languages https://www.kalbos.ktu.lt/index.php/KStud

Regards

Patrizia

Thats great to hear dear Michelle Mitchell . I will check online. But please assist if you have any professor that who might want me to work with him or her.

Thank you.

Somnath Das Thank you

It's important to note that AR should be seen as a complementary tool, not a replacement for traditional language teaching methods. Proper planning, training, and support for both educators and students are essential to ensure effective integration of AR into language teaching. Therefore, as instructional designer we should always consider the age, language proficiency level, and the availability of technology resources in our educational context when integrating AR into language education. In this context, the general rules of technology integration could be applied to the teachings in the following steps: 1-Define learning objectives, 2-choose suitable AR apps, 3-plan activities, integrate AR into lessons, and 4-provide clear instructions on how to use the AR app. 5-Create engaging and interactive AR activities to align with learning.

Dede Kosasih, Google Scholar not always find and add articles automatically. To add a missing article to your profile, you must follow these steps:

Nice

Your manuscript should be organized around answering your research question. For each question, you should have a process to collect data and analyze it. Your Methods section and your Findings section should both be organized by research question. For example: "The answer research question 1, about _____, the researcher used ________."

I do not think the manuscript should describe collecting and analyzing data that does not answer one (or more) of your research questions.

Reading and listening are considered receptive L2 skills, while writing and speaking are productive L2 skills. It is generally more difficult to train productive skills, such as teaching students how to speak or write the L2. Receptive skills seem to emerge from doing the activity itself (repeatedly), via mere exposure. So they might seem less complex to acquire and teach. This might be a reason why there is comparatively less interest in L2 reading?

Cognitive Sense Analysis then Emphasis outlook Concern Subject Matters...

Here is a PowerPoint on Native American Humor, and another PowerPoint on Sherman Alexie's humor. Enjoy.

Play is an extremely important aspect of children's development, and adult development as well. Associated with play is laughter (mainly a public phenomienon), and smililng (mainly an individual phenomenon). Here is a PowerPoint about "Play," one about "Laughter and Smiling," and one about "Humor and Education." Enjoy:

Look out for vacancies on The Linguist List https://linguistlist.org/career/search/. If you know which researchers have projects on these topics that you are interested in, write to them to introduce yourself. It's also worth asking your PhD supervisor about this.

Yes, I do want to be a volunteer editor in the journal you stated. I have diploma in English, BED in English, MA in TEFL and currently PhD candidate in ELT in Addis Abeba University. I have taught English for the last 13 years at higher institution.

Regards

Estimada Gintare,

Podéis facilitar más datos sobre vuestra Revista: ¿Estará vinculada a una Universidad o Institución de Educación Superior? ¿Es una revista electrónica? ¿Es open access?

Muchas gracias y saludos cordiales.

Thanks!

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419828691

Good Answer Maziyyatul Muslimah

Language education can contribute to the future of humanity if language teachers promote social justice and cosmopolitan citizenship. @H.Starkey (2007) defends that through language learning, learners are able to identify with members of the target language's community, develop a sense of belonging to that community, and consequently a feeling of "shared citizenship". @Bykerej (2013) talks about teaching language through a critical cosmopolitan citizenship approach. He suggests that, for teacher and students to become cosmopolitan citizens they need to: investigate the world, communicate ideas with diverse audiences, take action and accept plurality of perspectives. Language education through critical cosmopolitan citizenship is possible from a very young age. Unfortunately, the curriculum does not motivate teachers to empower language learners to become critical thinkers (de LiraSilva, 2018). Language education will contribute to the future of humanity if language teachers and teacher candidates become committed to helping learners become active cosmopolitan citizens who try to improve life at the local, national and global levels.

We use singing in a sort of choir setting as a means of teaching Swedish pronounciation och prosody to second languages learners/university students. We use both folk songs and "pure" pronounciation execises accompanied by guitar. Works very well apparently :)

children learning by playing and children learning by doing. because of their cognitive milestone is pre-operational concret and children learn with various learning style, ecpecially kinesthetic and tactile.

Language acquisition is a multi-factorial, multi-dimensional and multi-stratal phenomenon. If you focus on one aspect, the approach is at the expense of excluding other aspects. A big question as is asked entails a vast reply, the whole scholars in the universe are trying to answer just a portion of what is considered as the most complicated faculty of human species_language. Don't dismay. Btw, plasticity is sth that belongs to pre-puberty. After puberty it is claimed that the plasticity vanishes. Man is stuck in a hard shell rather than a flexible all-absorbing ability. They can master lexico-grammar and also discoursal aspects yet for people after puberty acquiring native-like pronunciation is claimed to be very hard, out of reach or impossible. Notions and factors such as the individual psychology, neurology, physiology, internal motivation; social , cultural, historical factors; power distribution; class, age, gender, ethnicity; natural vs classroom environment, authenticity real life example vs artificial classroom exposure, learning styles and learning strategies; input, intake, and output and still a longer list of factors all have an impact on SLA. We are all on the route to know just part of the system or mechanism , yet there is no conclusive answer. We can easily pose a very short question such as "What is the treatment for cancer?" but the answer is neither conclusive, nor utterable. It involves a huge pile of information concerning numerous factors inspected through various perspectives, "signifying nothing." Yet, as human beings we try to quench our curiosity. In this activity, we are fortunate enough to have a collective curiosity; that is, all the thinkers in applied linguistics collectively try to find a way to better understand SLA. From antiquity, Plato, and Aristotle , to F Saussure, Chomsky, Hymes, Halliday, Gass, Ellis, and many other important scholars they have tried to grasp some aspect of SLA and expand human knowledge on the quest for language learning /acquisition. ... you see, this is not yet finished.

Best wishes. Dr Babak Majidzadeh (PhD)

Hi , in my paper on assessment policy change- The Challenges of Implementing Assessment Policy Change and the Mitigating Factors for Success at Schools in Malaysia, I relied on Halasz (2002); Fullan, (2005); Priestley (2005), Priestley et al (2010). In describing teachers' reaction to change and reform where they feel professionally marginalized, dis-empowered and afflicted by bureaucracy, I relied on sources from Ball (2008); Goodson (2003); and Levin, 2008. Though I did not specifically zoom in on language, it is part of the overall context. I think you will these literature indirectly useful.

Do you want to evaluate students' vocabulary achievement or their speaking performance?

I totally agree with Nael Hijjo and I strongly believe that any serious linguist would. Nevertheless, it is always positive challenge to discuss about it. First of all, we should define "difficult to learn", in terms of oral aspect, written aspect, grammar etc. Mandarin Chinese is an analytical language (grammatically isolating), which uses little or no inflection to indicate grammatical relationships, so from this point of view it is considered one of the easiest languages to learn. But then we have tones, and phonetics and things get more complicated. So one should specify "difficulty" with clear scientific criteria. If we step out of the strictly objective scientific area, should I be asked to make a list in order of "difficulty", and following my own multilingual experience, Mandarin Chinese would definitely be in the middle. I would probably top list Japanese, Hungarian and Slovenian, for almost exclusively grammatical reasons.

Abdullah, since you are focusing your question in the single most important quality I choose among other relevant qualities the tandem curiosity-motivation (for me it is impossible to disentangle them).

Studying is about learning, discovering, exploring... Therefore it is about wanting to learn, it is an active process and it requires fundamentally the will to learn which I think comes from this tandem of motivation-curiosity.

Having this, other qualities enhance the learning process but without it there is a problem at the heart of it.

Yes certainly. Students love teachers/professor who are motivated and enthusiastic, and research indicates that students learn better from those teachers as well.

Peripheral learning defi itely helps college student. As a teacher we knew in engineering study is about STEM but now it is STEHM.  Where H refers to humanities. Peripheral subjects like lman making courses, rural internship, rural orientation and industrial orientations helps engineering students a lot.

Whenever I encounter an unknown English word

I try to look up the translation in an online

dictionary like LEO.

My memory partially resides on external data

carriers. I store translations and meanings

of words in a big semantic network.

Wikipedia often has the option to switch between

languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setpoint_(control_system%29

Conjugation tables can be found with Google:

Sometimes you've got to determine which alternative

is a correct or better one. This can be done with "vs."

With wildcards it is possible to find sample sentences.

For pronunciation and meter I recommend

Carl Sagan's Cosmos on Youtube.

Regards,

Joachim

X-parameters represent a new category of nonlinear network parameters for high-frequency design (Nonlinear vector network analyzers are sometimes called large signal network analyzers.[1])

X-parameters are applicable to both large-signal and small-signal conditions, for linear and nonlinear components. They are an extension of S-parameters[2] meaning that, in the limit of a small signal, X-parameters reduce to S-parameters.

They help overcome a key challenge in RF engineering, namely that nonlinear impedance differences, harmonic mixing, and nonlinear reflection effects occur when components are cascaded under large signal operating conditions. This means that there is a nonlinear and as such non-trivial relationship between the properties of the individual cascaded components and the composite properties of the resulting cascade. This situation is unlike that at DC, where one can simply add the values of resistors connected in series. X-parameters help solve this cascading problem: if the X-parameters of a set of components are measured individually, the X-parameters (and hence the non-linear transfer function) can be calculated of any cascade made from them. Calculations based on X-parameters are usually performed within a harmonic balance simulator environment.[3]  

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-parameters).

Dear Percia Leyte,

Generally speaking, as you have rightly observed, you need to have an appropriate rubric serving as your analytic rating guide because you want to assess learners' speaking performance for making decisions about their rate of progress.Here, you  need to specify certain criteria and standards showing varying degrees of success in learners' performance by writing clear qualitative themes. Naturally, these qualitative statements guide you to rate the participants consistently. As an illustration, such statements should be based on predetermined behavioral objectives such as  rate of  delivery, language use,  topic development, etc. As for your second question (i.e. triangulation), in qualitative research, it is common to measure a construct using different techniques. Therefore, after rating the learners' performance, it will be a good idea to recheck them by an other instrument like interview, role play or discourse completion test (DCT).

Best of luck,

R. Biria

I would rather think towards translanguaging as the guiding concept. I feel the strict view on not using any L1 at all is not up-to-date anymore, but pros and cons would have to be considered carefully for the very teaching situation;

Basically, learning is a conscious process, and it is used for L2 learning as instruction and conscious attention/effort are needed

Acquiring mostly refer to L1 for which no instruction is needed and the language competency is believed to be activated in the environment without any conscious effort or instruction. 

Hi, dear colleagues 

I thank all of you for your great comments.

Best wishes

Personally, I would say that if you struggle with the TOEFL test, you would also struggle with writing an English-language thesis.

Dear María,

I have some experience in peer-tutoring programs for language learners, but no at experimental design research, if that is your request. If you want I can provide some insigts on a two-year experience perido administering such a program.

My five cents

Jorge

I do not have a copy of this chapter to share, but it may be worth looking up: Para, M. L. Strengthening our teacher community: Consolidating a ‘signature pedagogy’ for the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language. In P. P. Trifonas & T. Aravossitas (Eds.), Rethinking heritage language education (pp. 213-235). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

@Sabrine, in 2014 a conference had been conducted in Medan City, Indonesia. The topic of the conference is the challenge in learning English for Southeast Asia countries. One of the issues arise in that conference was English pronunciation and all the ASEAN experts in that conference agreed that American or British accent should not be the main objective of teaching speaking skill but we have to control their pronunciation is understandable for others (intelligible). Here, I agree with @Michael ""do you speak in a way that people will understand you?".  

In Spain, the  adult ESL market is not as buoyant as it used to be, but there is still a lot of work available, at least for experienced teachers. However, I can see several clouds on the horizon. Firstly, companies are depending more on online courses and on blended learning, i.e. mixing face to face classes with online lessons. Secondly, recent measures like the introduction of bilingual education schemes are bound to improve the overall level of students' English in the long run, making it less necessary for them to receive classes as adults  in order to conduct professional tasks in English. Thirdly, younger adults are becoming increasingly aware of the possibilities of maintaining or improving their English level on their own through films, TV series, the Internet etc. Finally,  the competition from other languages, e.g. Mandarin, and other training needs ,e.g. information technology, may erode demand for English classes. However, my prediction is that teachers and language schools will survive if they are able to offer increasingly specialized courses.

Business English classes will need to address the need of specific companies or departments within companies far more closely than most language schools are doing now. All too frequently, teachers get away with offering general "conversational" English with a little bit of "business" thrown in, because the HR departments responsible for evaluating the classes don't  demand any more than this. In the future, some companies will become aware of the need to specialize in order to offer courses that are useful for students with a higher level of English, and others will need to be made aware of this need by more forward-thinking schools. 

EAP teaching at Spanish universities is a potential growth area for two reasons. Firstly, more universities are offering or looking into the possibility of offering courses taught through the medium of English. As a result, teachers will need specific courses to enable them to give lectures in English. Secondly, English for Research Publication Purposes will need to be developed if Spanish academics wish to get more work published in international journals. However,  this potential for growth will not be realized with current levels of  financial investment.

Dear colleague,

    The following papers may answer your question:    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276542671_SOME_STRATEGIES_OF_THE_EFFECTIVE_TEACHING_OF_FOREIGN_LANGUAGES

Good luck!

Not entirely sure, but perhaps you could look at the quantitative attainment of certain cohorts of students within the study body as a measure of their provision for equity...perhaps this might also reveal disjunctures between efforts and belief in equitable programme purchasing and practical delivery, or perhaps even some programmes that are equitable for some only signifying different definitions or understandings of what equity means. A great question! I'm going to follow closely. All the best. 

James makes a very important point about L1 abilities. From my own experience over decades of ESL teaching, I can honestly state that the research into the influence of L1 in regards to ability is significant in the ability to learn another language.  And if that target language is radically different from the L1 ( like Arabic, Chinese, Japanese are radically different from English), this factor of L1 ability is even more important. Because much of ESL teaching relies upon what a student knows of his/her own language, if that knowledge is limited, learning a new language grows much more difficult.

For the more advanced language learner, the L1 impact is still great, but at this level, I have found the difficulty lies in cultural and social differences that can make reading and writing more academic essays very difficult.  For instance, I prepare foreign university graduates for the admission exams to American graduate schools.  Most of these students are quite skilled in their first language and have a good speaking ability, but when it comes to writing essays in American rhetorical style, these students encounter dramatic difficulties. But because they are skilled in their own language, a teacher can use that knowledge and build on it to explain the American demands of argument, for instance. There are just so many factors at play in learning another language that it is difficult to determine which factors are at play in different students. 

 Dear Tesfamichael Getu,

Naturally, test wiseness is a major threat to internal validity of research. When the same per-test is also used as the post-test of a study, the outcome may become influenced by extraneous factors like memory factor. There are different ways of bringing the issue under control. For instance, it is possible to use alternate versions of the same DCT, or you can utilize Solomon design to control for test bias and likelihood of practice effect. Wish you lots of luck with your research.

Best regards,

R. Biria

Dear Mojgan,

   I came across with this writing task double- entry journal which can be used in different genres.

 Please see attached file.

Nery

No!

Esteban, I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "text simplification," but if you mean reducing the readability level of the text, the answer is no.  Such simplification actually hinders comprehension.  There appear to be two factors that have a significant effect on reading comprehension.  One is working memory disfunction associated with slow reading speed.  The other, related, factor is lack of vocabulary.  Instruction that increases vocabulary and reading speed, as well as instruction designed to enhance WM will provide benefits. 

These issues are addressed in education and psychology research, some of which is supported by the International Reading Association.

Dear Dorji,

One of the most practical ways of improving academic writing is the use of mentor texts. These texts are stylistically idealized writing tasks  which teachers use in order to show to the learners how a particular writing task can be actualized. I have tried them in my TOEFL classes and the results were exceptional.

Best regards,

R. Biria

Hi Karwan,

Just sharing my beliefs.

Best regards,

Dulce

Hi Thembi,

The theories of reading acquisition/intervention are the same regardless of where a child learns literacy.  There are two primary theoretical stances....the behavioristic and code-oriented approach and the constructivist and meaning-based approach.  Given that behaviorism and it tenets have not held sway in human learning for about 60 years....the constructivist approaches is more defensible and works best for acquisition for all human learning...including literacy.  The whole literature in Emergent Literacy supports this approach.  The best to do is read to your child and make it a positive social interaction....generally done with a share reading approach.  I will attach several relevant pieces that will help.

Jack

For me the biggest challenge is not in the complexity or accuracy of the writing in grammatical terms.  I struggle more with any analysis of the depth of the ideas within the writing.  L2 learners struggle with having their writing reflect their actual cognitive understanding.  Does anyone have a measure for this?

Check out J.P. Duquette's research on using Second Life

In these pages you can find some scripts that you can be useful

Regards

 Hi. Do you want it for an already structured online course, or a blended learning course or seek help from open learning, please specify. Technology enhanced language learning (TELL)  would be a broad term which encompasses e-learning and blended learning and even CALL. You can use various software, freeware to make the language learning-teaching process easier, interesting and effective. I would recommend Nick Peachy blogs to you for keeping yourself updated. We can have further discussion and sharing of resources if I know the exact context.

Shhram, If you look at Cihi"s paper (http://www.cartoonwordpower.com/research/pdf/conversion_methodology2013.pdf), you will see that people who had a vocabulary size of 5,902 got TOEFL pbt scores ranging from 380 to 595 with a mean of 502. If you look at the graph in the paper, it also suggests that people with vocabulary sizes of between roughly 4000 and 8000also got TOEFL scores of 502. Clearly the figures presented show that there is quite a large margin of error in these estimates, in spite of a correlation coefficient of 0.81, or 66% shared variance.

As I mentioned before, I believe that a content teacher should have content knowledge regardless the situation. I taught world history, geography and history of Mexico in English in a middle school in Mexico and despite it being middle-school, I had to spend massive amount of time brushing up on the content subjects and making meaningful and suitable material for the classes. Would I do it again? Probably not as I believe that a content teacher with a high command of the target language should be teaching topics and not an ELT Specialist. 

As for Business English, is it really a business class or is it an English class that uses publish material that is aimed at no specific area. That I think and qualified ELT teacher can do. But to teach a topic related to a business BA is a whole new ball game. You should really think of the pros and cons of doing so.

This might be of some help:

Hello, you can definitely do that. We used CYL - adapted and always cited - for the evaluation of a primary bilingual education project. Especially the listening comprehension test only covered a part of what we wanted to know. So we developed it further, added more difficult questions and tasks to it. Also seeing&listening tasks via video&audio was implementet (video&audio comprehension). We checked quality criteria with a pretest in a same age learners` group beforehand and optimized it afterwords. This I can suggest and advise. Hope it helps you a little further - all the best!

To borrow Widdowson’s (2015: 359 - JELF) words, the specifications of the CEFR never question “the old orthodoxy that the objective of learning can only be the acquisition of competence defined as conformity to native speaker norms”.  Baker (2015: 135 - Lang. Teach.), for example, quotes the following specification among many similar ones: “Can sustain relationships with native speakers without unintentionally amusing or irritating them or requiring them to behave other than they would with a native speaker” (Council of Europe 2001: 122).  It may be argued that such specifications make it difficult to prepare students for real-world international and intercultural communication in a multilingual setting.

Tomlison (2003 Developing Materials for Language Teaching) claims that laughters, joy, excitement, sorrow and anger can promote learning. Therefore, I would say any communication activity where learners can get (emotionally) involved. Furthermore, possibily, any activity which raises their interest (i.e., if you're teaching English to waiters, it would be wise to relate the English lessons to the world of  restaurants etc.).

Hello Simhachalam,

I had developed three surveys, for my MEd degree (Educational Technology) concerning students', teachers' and administration's perspectives on implementing elearning practices at the University of Guyana (my home university). The three published papers, published between Aug-Oct 2015, are on my RG webpage. However, I do not have the surveys as appendices in the published articles.

Perhaps you can send me an email, discussing the issue some more, and I could send you the surveys I used.

Do let me know, thanks.

Kerwin.

Dear Sendi, 

Check these papers out if they are of help for you:

I have presented on this topic.  Fundamentally, the activities used must address the overall instructional goals, which in turn must be based on the outcome goals for the students.

My paper below suggests that too often people choose a technology and then try to fig ure out how to use it.  Rather instructors should identify requires learning activities that are requires to meet the outcome goals, and only THEN select the technology that provides the necessary affordances.

So what does your instructional design require?  Critical thinking?  That may be addressed in writing or group discussion.  Vocabulary practice? That will require different kinds of online activities. 

I know that this is a little different from your question about engaging students, b ut the learning activities must support the outcome goals.

Hello Zeineb

DO you have access to the printed books of the 4th conference of Arabic Language that was held in Dubai last May ? There, you can find plenty  of articles written concerning your area of research .

Regards,

Soumia

Are you asking if the the process of writing is different between the two mediums? An essay is an essay and the "process" of writing is the same through either vehicle. Of course word processors offer easier access to some tools (e.g. spelling, thesaurus...). Perhaps your talking about writing different genres however. Twitter as micro blogging, wikis for collaborative writing... again, these tools offer little different except access and audience in some cases. The effects of digital tools in this sense could be mimicked with paper and pencil, but I view authenticity as key. Students will be doing most of their writing through digital transcription tools - and thus, we should embrace those, just as we embraced paper. Did we still have students writing on slates and blackboards when paper became readily available?

One key word, I guess, would be "madre". Another one would be "bola", "bolas". If you have questions, feel free to ask. 

Back in the 1980s, a popular idea developed in the foreign language teaching profession that exposing elementary school children to a variety of languages would be helpful in developing their later acquisition of one or more foreign languages (the program model was labeled FLEX). Students would receive 6-week lesson sequences in a range of different languages. There is  probably some published research (you could check the Modern Language Quarterly) on the results of this experiment. Enthusiasm soon waned, and there is little of this being done now, so far as I know. Our twin boys were exposed to two years of alternating classes in Spanish and French during Kindergarten and 1st grade, and learned nothing except a few meaningless songs (which they shortly forgot). They have since taken Spanish every year for the past three years, and are scarcely able to put a single sentence together. So our personal experience would suggest that there is no significant effect of this early "exposure", without a rigorous curriculum fostering contextual interpersonal use and learning of linguistic structures and forms.

Pour les politiques linguistiques  européennes et les questions liées aux perspectives de plurilinguisme en Europe, un bon  début de documentation, c'est la lecture du rapport de François Grin :

I think this kind of different behaviour is influenced more by the social status, family background and personal experiences rather than sex. Learning methods tends to adapt to the field of study, and personal interests and other variable factors related to the social ambiance.

I don't think that being a male or a female influences ones learning process, however if we consider the gender aspect as a social issue then there could be some differences as Michael Wamg said about "different interests". If a male is supposed to like sport more than a female, than here the difference in learning methods is established by the social view given to specific interests that are considered "masculine" or "feminine".

So, in account, if there's some difference the latter is created by the entourage and the gender discrepancy. Though, in my opinion the word "gender" and all the meanings it takes shouldn't be used except for social phenomena.