Men and women and language learning

Women are thought to learn languages better than men. Forget all the advanced analysis and brain scans of why women are thought to learn languages faster and easier than men, I will tell you what I observe. I have taught maybe 1000s of students though the years, languages. Generally women learn languages better than men, however, if you have a man that puts his mind to learning a language, than he can be exceptional, better than any woman.

Women do language homework

This is the reason women learn languages better than men. Women do the homework. Men do not do the homework. When I give homework to the students women always do it and take care of the details, and really try.They like to do grammar exercises in particular, men do not have time for such things.

I would also add women love listening to pop songs from around the world.  They love dance and international music.  They imitate the lyrics and translate them no problem and sing them to themselves.  Rarely do men do this.  Its a girls way.

Men and language homework

Men, do not always do the homework, many never. Maybe its because they are busy with their careers as many have very challenging time consuming jobs and they are worried about supporting a family, or maybe its because they are more abstract than women and can not focus on details.

I think most men boarder on ADD (attention deficient disorder, myself included). However, when you get a man who commits to studying they do exceptional.

I have a male student who does his homework three times every week. That is he copies the assigned language textbook pages three time. He has made amazing progress with language learning. Women on the other hand have different career ambitious. They are more balanced and rounded if they take lessons they tend to do their homework, but do not get crazy about it.

Conclusion about men and women and language learning

So the reason in my observation that women are better than men in language learning is they put more time into it. If I factor out everything else I think this is the core reason for why there are differences in language ability. I am sure there are genetic and hormonal and brain reasons for language differences among the genders but this is just what I observe.

I would add that men can be much better than a women if they studied and put in the effort, but they rarely do.

Therefore,  in conclusion its all about how much blood, sweat and tears you put into learning a language. Language is not something that is specific for one gender or intelligence level, everyone speaks a language on the earth and can speak a second language.

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