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F. Shirzad, Kh. Musavi, S. Atmani,Azizeh Kh. Ahranjani,S. Iraji. Gender Differences in EFL academic writing. International
Journal of Academic Research Part B; 2013; 5(4), 79-87. DOI: 10.7813/2075-4124.2013/5-4/B.11

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN EFL ACADEMIC WRITING

Fereshteh Shirzad, Khorshid Musavi, Sepide Atmani,
Azizeh Khanchobni Ahranjani*, Samira Iraji

English language Department, Razi State University, Kermanshah (IRI)
*Corresponding author: azizehkhanchobani@yahoo.com

DOI: 10.7813/2075-4124.2013/5-4/B.11


ABSTRACT

The purpose of this two-phase, sequential mixed methods study was to find out whether there were any
decencies between male and female MA students theses regarding the common features of academic writing such
as syntactic complexity, means of integrating cited information, and organizing arguments. 10 male written theses
and 15 female written theses in TEFL and Linguistics are chosen. The results of this study show significant
differences between mens and womens texts in syntactic complexity, means of integrating cited information, and
organizing arguments. The structure of womens texts tended to be more complex than mens. The women also
used more paraphrases to integrate cited information, but the two gender groups used similar forms of direct
quotations. Furthermore, women presented better organized arguments. Those characteristics of the womens
texts presumably would be advantages for their success in academic writing, and indicate a higher level of
proficiency in EFL academic writing.

Key words: Gender differences; EFL academic writing; Syntactic complexity; Means of integrating cited
information; Methods of presenting arguments

1. INTRODUCTION

In recent years, increasing attention has been given to sex differences as an important variable. The results
of the studies vary across many aspects of language. However, summarizing several studies of gender differences
in second and foreign language education, Sunderland (2000) discovered only a few studies conducted on literacy.
This could be explained by the fact that speaking skill is commonly used as the measure of language ability.
However, this should not be a justification for neglecting the importance of writing skills.
Student writing is at the center of teaching and learning in Higher Education, being seen as the way in which
students consolidate their understanding of subject areas, as well as the means by which tutors come to learn
about the extent and nature of individual students understanding. Writing is a key assessment tool, with students
passing or failing courses according to the ways in which they respond to, and engage in academic writing tasks,
so it is an important part of determining success in higher education. This skill is practically required in completing
assignments such as essays, research reports, literature reviews, research proposals and term projects. Writing is
a process of forming a text as a communicative connection between the reader and the writer (Seidlhofer &
Widdowson, 1999). It is the second productive skill which may be difficult for both EFL and ESL learners around
the world. Most of the time, students complain about their problems in arranging the ideas beside each other and
organizing a proper structure for their writing. It has been suggested that many factors, such as gender differences,
cultural differences, cognitive and interlanguage development, and negative transfer from L1 to L2 may result in L2
learners problems in writing.The present study is an attempt to investigate and measure gender differences in EFL
academic writing across Linguistics and TEFL M.A. theses at the English Department of an Iranian University by
focusing on three main common features of academic writing including syntactic complexity, means of integrating
cited information, and methods of presenting arguments.

1.1. Review of the literature on gender and writing
Research on gender differences in writing have mostly been conducted among children. Punter and
Burchells study (1996) on the GCSE English language exam in the UK primary school discovered that girls scored
better in imaginative, reflective, and empathetic writing while boys scored better in argumentative and factual
writing. These findings indicate that topic choices play a role in the differences between male and female writing.
However, for the Colorado English test, Brovsky (1999) reported that forty-two percent of Colorado fourth-
grade girls were proficient or better in general writing, compared with 28 percent for boys. It was assumed that girls
wrote more outside of schoolin diaries, letters, and creative storiesgiving them a chance to hone their language
skills. They also tended to spend free time talking to or doing things with their parents, while boys were more likely
to fill time in front of a computer screen.
Regarding the methods of writing, Kanaris (1999) revealed that there were significant differences between
8-10 year-old boys and girls in the ways they used written language to construct meaning. She found that the
patterns of using pronouns, adjectives and verbs revealed a world where children were actively constructing


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themselves as gendered individuals, particularly in terms of how they construct agency. These results indicated
that the subtle and complex linguistic choices made by children, and the very act of writing, not only revealed but
also actively constructed deeply embedded gendered characteristics and behaviors.
The differences between girls and boys in L1 writing support the ideas of Joan Swann (1992) and
Romatowski & Trepanier-Street (1987), who argue that the difference between girls and boys lies in the
perceptions and preferences of girls and boys about writing. Girls tend to have positive feelings about writing while
boys are negative. More boys than girls say they prefer factual writing; girls prefer imaginative writing. Girls writings
are confessional and reflective, dealing with people and emissions, using more private forms while boys like facts
and actions, and more public forms.
A research project on adult writing conducted by Meinhof (1997), who studied mens and womens
narratives from three different social groups (professionals, academics, and university students), found that male
and female students wrote similar kind of texts. However, amongst the academics, the narrative writing of
academic women differed markedly from that of academic men, though as a whole, the academic group differed
from the students. The womens texts were strongly self-reflexive and evaluative, while the mens were more
egocentric. However, this is a very small study.
A smaller body of research has focused on gender differences in the area of written expression. Berninger,
Nielson, Abbott, Wijsman, and Radskind (2008) recruited adults and children with dyslexia for a comprehensive
study of written expression. The following instruments were used to assess various areas of written expression: the
Written Expression subtest of the Wechsler Individual Achievement TestSecond Edition (The Psychological
Corporation, 2002) was used as a general measure of written expression skills; the Wide Range Achievement
TestThird Edition (Wilkinson, 1993) was used to measure participants spelling accuracy; the Process
Assessment of the Learner (Berninger, 2001) was used to measure participants orthographic skills; the tasks of
Rapid Automatic Naming and Switching also were administered to assess automaticity. For both children and
adults with dyslexia, gender differences in measures of automatic letter naming, orthographic skills, and written
expression were apparent. Adults also exhibited gender differences in spelling scores. Orthographic skills were
measured by assessing participants abilities to quickly encode words into short term memory, to quickly write
these encoded words, and to choose the correctly spelled word among a group of words that are pronounced the
same. Significant gender discrepancies in orthographic skills were found for both children and adults. Girls
surpassed boys on all orthographic measures. Orthographic skills are helpful in breaking down written words to
verbalize them and in taking verbalized words and spelling them while writing. These researchers suggest that,
although writing disabilities occur across genders, males tend to have more severe problems in the area.

2. METHODOLOGY

Data were collected for this study from 25 MA theses in TEFL and Linguistics: 10 male written and 15
female written. We have chosen 10 male written theses and we could only find 15 female written theses on the
aforementioned majors. Although the number of female written theses is higher than the male written ones, a chi-
square test indicates that this difference (the difference in the number of female and male written theses) is not
statistically significant.

2.1. Research Design
In this study, a two-phase, sequential mixed method is followed. This study begins with a quantitative
method focusing upon statistical results from a sample of EFL student academic writing regarding the gender
differences in terms of syntactic complexity and how students integrate cited information in their academic writing,
and then follows up with how these EFL students present their arguments in their academic writing.

3. ANALYSIS

The data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. We analyzed 25 MA theses for common features of
academic writing including syntactic complexity, means of integrating cited information, and methods of presenting
arguments. In the first phase, the T-unit approach was applied to measure the syntactic complexity of the samples.
This concept is adopted as a reliable syntactic measure. For example, Polio (1997) applied a T-unit approach to
measure the grammatical accuracy in her second language writing research. The number of T-units and clauses of
each text and the frequency of the occurrence of the cohesive devices in both males and females writings were
counted; the number of direct quotations, paraphrases, and summaries from each thesis were calculated to find out
the frequency of the occurrence of means of integrating cited information. These data were entered for calculation
through the statistical program (SPSS). The statistical descriptions of each measure are then presented to
determine the appropriate means of statistical procedure. Hatch and Lazaraton (1991) suggest that one of the
conditions to opt for an appropriate statistical procedure is to check whether the data has a normal distribution. To
compare two independent samples, for instance, two possible statistical means can be applied, i.e. independent t-
test for normal distribution or parametric data or Man Whitney U for non-parametric. The normal distribution has
three important characteristics, i.e. the mean, the median and the mode are the same or similar; the distribution is
bell-shaped and asymmetric; it has no zero score. In the second phase, the methods of presenting arguments were
analyzed.
Since there was no hypothesis for all questions as the basis of this study, the direction is regarded as two
tailed. Furthermore, to determine the significance of the data analysis for this study, an alpha level was set at 0.05.
This means that the results would be accepted as significant if p<0.05. In other words the result would be

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statistically significant if its possibility of occurrence by chance alone was less than or equal to five times out of 100
(Brown, 1999).

4. RESULTS

4.1. Quantitative Results

4.1.1. Syntactic complexity
As defined by Kellogg W. Hunt (1964), the T-unit, or minimal terminable unit of language, consists of a main
clause plus all subordinate clauses and non-clausal structures that are attached to or embedded in it. T-unit
analysis, developed by Hunt (1964) has been used extensively to measure the overall syntactic complexity of both
speech and writing samples. The T-unit's popularity is due to the fact that it is a global measure of linguistic
development external to any particular set of data and allows for meaningful comparison between first and second
language acquisition. Hunt (1964) suggests that the length of a T-unit may be used as an index of syntactic
complexity. T-unit analysis has been successfully used by Larsen-Freeman & Strom (1977) as an objective
measure to evaluate the quality of ESL/EFL student writing.
Table 1 shows the number of T-units and clauses in the texts written by males and females in each thesis.

Table 1. The number of T-units and clauses

Male Female
TEFL (n=2)
Linguistics
(n=8)

Mean

TEFL
(n=5)
Linguistics
(n=10)

Mean
T-units 201 775 97.6 823 1115
129.2
Clauses

288

1084

137.2

1437

1854

219.4
T-units
/clauses 0.69 0.71 0.70 0.57 0.60

0.585

As it can be seen from table 1, the female students produced a greater number of both T-units and clauses.
In the female texts, the number of clauses is almost twice the number of T-units, but in the males texts the
difference is much lower. The group means were also calculated. According to Zoltan Dornyei (2011), when we
compare two group means with a parametric test, we are more likely to get significant results than if we compare
the same means with a non-parametric test. So, a two-tailed independent t-test was applied to detect any
statistically significant differences in the data. A two-tailed independent t-test is used in research designs when we
compare the results of groups that are independent of each other. According to table 1, it was found that there was
a significant difference in the ratio of t-units to clauses, t = 3.417, p<0.005. The result of the analysis indicates that
there is a significant difference in the way these male and female students structured their sentences in their
written assignments, with the females showing a higher ratio of clauses to T-units. This implies that the number of
clauses, either dependent or independent, produced by these women exceeds the number of clauses used by the
men. Since the number of dependent clause in T-unit indicates the syntactic complexity of a text, it can be
concluded that the structures of these womens writings are more complex than those of the men. The womens
writing will probably gain an advantage in demonstrating this feature. Moreover, according to Larsen-Freeman and
Strom (1977), T-unit length may indicate writing development of EFL learners. The more complex the structures of
a text, the higher language proficiency of the writers. The first research question about whether there is any
significant difference between male and female EFL student academic writing in terms of syntactic complexity was
answered. The structure of the womens texts tended to be more complex than the mens.

4.1.2. Using cohesive devices while writing
According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), the second way to measure syntactic complexity is to count the
number of the syntactically-correct cohesive devices used by each student in his/her academic writing. The aim of
this part was to explore the differences between men and women in using cohesive devices in their EFL academic
writing. In other words, we investigated which gender used more explicit cohesive devices in their writing. The
frequency of the occurrence of the cohesive devices for each subject and group were obtained, and then, two chi
squares were run to analyze the data.
According to Zoltan Dornyei (2011), if we have less precise categorical (i.e. nominal) data or if the data is
not normally distributed, parametric tests are not appropriate and we need to use non-parametric procedures.

The chi-square procedure is valuable because it is one of the few procedures that can deal
with nominal data. Recall that nominal data concern facts that can be sorted into various
categories. (Typical examples of nominal data are L1 background, sorted into Mandarin,
Hungarian, Korean, etc. or sex sorted as male or female.) (Zoltan Dornyei, 2011, p. 228)

Because the study variables were nominal, we used a chi-square test (a non-parametric test) to analyze the
data. The alpha level in this study was set to p< 0.05, as is common in language studies of this type when the
probability of the result not being real but only due to chance (for example, sampling peculiarity) is less than 5 per
cent. (Zoltan Dornyei, 2011).


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Table 2 shows the frequency of the occurrence of all cohesive devices used in the target females and
males EFL academic writing.

Table 2. The frequency of the occurrence of the cohesive devices in females and males writing

Gender
Observed N Expected N Residual
Male 118 130.5 -12.5
Female 143 130.5 12.5
Total 261

Table 3. Chi-square analysis of the target male and female writers use of cohesive devices

Test Statistics
Gender
Chi-Square 2.395
a

df 1
Asymp. Sig. .095
a. 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum
expected cell frequency is 130.5.

As you can see in Table 2, female subjects used about 143 cohesive devices in their writings whereas male
subjects used about 118 cohesive devices, 74 of which were references and 44 were conjunctions. By comparing
mens and womens writings, we can see that although the number of the male subjects is less than the number of
the female subjects, they used more references as cohesive devices in their writings than females. It means that
men tended to use references, such as pronouns, demonstratives, and comparative references as cohesive
devices in their writings, and they did not use conjunctions as the connectors between their sentences and
paragraphs, whereas women tended to use more conjunctions than references between their sentences and
paragraphs.In order to find the significance of differences between men and women in using cohesive devices, a
chi-square test was employed.
As you can see in Table 3, the results of the chi square test indicates that the observed x at 1 degree of
freedom is lower than the critical x which is 3.84. In other words, the observed x (1/25) = 2.395, p<.05 is lower than
the critical x i.e. 3.84. Thus, there is no difference between the target male and female TEFL and Linguistics
students in using cohesive devices while writing. Moreover, regarding the differences in using references and
conjunctions among the target EFL writers, chi-square analysis found no significant difference between these
variables (it is shown in table 5).
The frequency of using references and conjunctions as cohesive devices by the target EFL writers and the
result of chi-square analysis of total references and conjunctions used by the target EFL writers are presented in
Table 4 and Table 5 respectively.

Table 4. The frequency of using references and conjunctions as
cohesive devices by the target EFL writers

Cohesive Devices
Observed N Expected N Residual
References 144 130.5 13.5
Conjunctions 117 130.5 -13.5
Total 261

Table 5. Chi-square analysis of total references and conjunctions used by the target EFL writers










As it is shown in tables 4 and 5, although we could observe differences in using references and conjunctions
by the target EFL learners, the chi-square procedure did not indicate a significant difference in using references
and conjunctions among our subjects. The chi-square observed value at 1 (df) is 2.793 which is lower than the
critical value of 3.84. In other words, x (1, N= 25) = 2.793, p <.05 is lower than the x critical which is 3.84. This
implies that the target EFL learners were not significantly different from each other in using cohesive devices.
To sum up, there is no significant difference in using cohesive devices and using references and
conjunctions among the target EFL learners regardless of their gender, as well.
Cohesive Devices
Chi-Square 2.793
a

Df 1
Asymp. Sig. .095

a. 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5.
The minimum expected cell frequency is 130.5.


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4.1.3. Integrating cited information
Another common feature of academic writing is integrating facts, ideas, concepts and theories from other
sources by means of direct quotations, paraphrases, and summaries. It is important to examine the ability to
integrate information from previous researchers in relevant areas of study because it would, among other things,
add credibility and reliability to his/her academic writing.For this feature, a quantitative approach was applied to
discover the differences between males and females writings. To examine methods of integrating cited information
into the texts, instances were identified by syntactic markers. Each of the samples was categorized into direct
quotation, paraphrase, and summary.
In table 6, the means of integrating sources used by the students were totaled. It shows that men applied
more direct quotations than women, and they used less paraphrasing than women. Summarizing was very rare,
only two summaries were produced by women and one by men, therefore the mean of this category is not taken
into account. Both genders show a preference for paraphrasing to direct quotation and summarizing.

Table 6. The number of means of integrating information

Male Female

Teaching
(n=2)
Linguistics
(n=8)
Teaching
(n=5)
Linguistics
(n=10)
direct quotations 6 49 7 21
paraphrases 13 92 55 167
summary 0 1 1 1

Because our data is categorical (i.e. nominal), parametric tests are not appropriate. Parametric tests require
interval data that is normally distributed. So, non-parametric tests are used. Besides, the samples have zero value.
Therefore, A Mann-Whitney U test was conducted to examine the difference between men and women in the use
of each category (direct quotation and paraphrase). Mann-Whitney U test is the non-parametric alternative to the
independent-samples t-test (Zoltan Dornyei, 2011). It was found that there was a significant difference for
paraphrasing U= 166.5, p = 0.01 or < 0.05, but there is no significant difference in the use of direct quotations U=
208.5, p=0.076 or > 0.05. In other words, women in this study used more paraphrasing to integrate the background
information than men did, but the two groups employed similar number of direct quotations. So, the answer to the
second research question as to how women integrate cited information is that women used more paraphrasing
than men, but the two gender groups used similar number of direct quotations.

4.2. Qualitative Results

4.2.1. Presenting Arguments
This section dealt with the third question: How do the two gender groups present their arguments? In order
to answer this research question,we focused on the ways that the men and the women presented their arguments.
In academic writing, arguing and discussing is often part of a larger piece of writing. One is expected to present two
or more points of view and discuss the positive and negative aspects of each case. On the basis of his/her
discussion, he/she can then choose one point of view and persuade his/her readers that he/she is correct. He/she
needs to evaluate arguments, weigh evidence and develop a set of standards on which to base his/her conclusion.
As always in academic writing, all opinions must be supported - one should produce his evidence and explain why
this evidence supports his point of view (Toulmin, 1958).
Specifically, the methods of presenting thesis statements and organizing arguments that are the common
features in argumentative essays are the center of attention in this study and will be discussed below.

4.2.1.1. Presenting the thesis statement
Thesis statements usually appear at the beginning of argumentative essays, or in the part of the introduction
in which identification of the problem is presented. A thesis statement is a sentence (or sentences) that expresses
the main ideas of _ your paper and answers the question or questions posed by your paper. It offers your readers a
quick and easy to flow summary of what the paper will be discussing and what you as a writer are setting out to tell
them. To analyze the thesis statements, I examined the introduction of MA theses. In all of them, the generic
structure of the introduction is identified as background, purpose, method.
Table 7, summarizes the order of argumentative moves in some of the students theses.

4.3.1.1.1. Presentation of thesis statement
In the analysis of the theses, all of the women stated the thesis statement explicitly by using an expression
such as I argue, or the essay will argue except for F5 (Linguistics). On the other hand, the mens entire essays did
not demonstrate such a feature except for M5 and M8 (TEFL). One of the men did not even present any thesis
statement in his thesis.


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4.3.1.1.2. Modality in the thesis statement
What is very striking about all of the theses is how they present a claim, a challengeable assertion that
constitutes an argument. In the use of modality, generally the two groups presented the thesis statement in
different ways. The women generally tended to prefer modality, such as should, in their statements. On the
contrary, the men had a tendency to express their claims without using modal verbs. Specifically, Lock (1996)
identifies a modal verb as a mid-requirement that can be glossed as advice. It can be a suggestion,
recommendation or caution. Such a modal verb implies that the writers try to soften arguments. Modal should is a
form of hedging. The use of hedges in presenting an argument is recommended in academic writing (Johns, 1997).
To sum up, women presented their thesis statement explicitly with hedging.

4.3.2. Organizing arguments
In order to answer the third research question about how men and women present their arguments, the MA
theses were analyzed. The parts of the texts were identified into four categories: thesis statement, argument,
evidence (the facts that support thesis statement), objection, and rebuttal (Toulmin, 1958). The ways to organize
arguments varied among the men. They did not present their arguments in an organized order. For example, their
arguments were not always provided with evidence, and not all their objections were followed by rebuttal. On the
other hand, the women tended to organize the arguments in an organized and similar way. They demonstrated a
better organization of argumentsthey seemed to present their arguments in a regular order. For example, all
arguments presented by the women were supported by evidence, and the objections were followed by rebuttal. To
sum up, the third research question _ how the two gender groups present their arguments _ was answered: women
presented better organized arguments than men.

Table 7. Summary of order of argumentative moves

male female
participant order of argumentative moves participant order of argumentative moves
M1-Linguistics - thesis statement
- argument 1
- evidence
- argument 2
- evidence
- objection 1
- objection 2
- objection 3
- argument 3
- evidence
- rebuttal to objection 1
- rebuttal to objection 2
- evidence
- (restated) thesis statement
F5-Linguistics - thesis statement
- objection 1
- objection 2
- rebuttal to objection 1
- objection 2 (repeated)
- rebuttal to objection 2
- thesis statement (answer)
M5-TEFL - thesis statement
- objection 1
- evidence
- evidence
- argument 1
- objection 2
- rebuttal to objection 2
- evidence
- argument 2
- objection 3
- rebuttal to objection 3
- argument 3
- argument 4
- (restated) thesis statement
F11-TEFL - thesis statement
- evidence
- evidence
- argument
- objection 1
- rebuttal to objection 1
- objection 2
- rebuttal to objection 2
- (restated) thesis statement
M8-TEFL - thesis statement
- (evidence?)
- (evidence?)
- evidence
- argument 1
- argument 2
- evidence
- objection 1
- (possible argument 3)
- (restated) thesis statement
F15-TEFL - thesis statement
- argument 1
- evidence
- objection 1
- rebuttal to objection 1
- (restated) argument 1
- argument 2
- evidence
- objection 2
- rebuttal to objection 2
- argument 3
- evidence
- objection 3
- rebuttal to objection 3
- (restated) argument 3
- (restated) thesis statement

5. DISCUSSION

5.1. Syntactic complexity
A syntactic analysis of the writing samples reveals that there is a significant difference between the males
and females in this study. The statistical calculation shows that the ratio of T-units to clauses of the womens
writing is generally lower than that of the mens. This implies that the percentage of clauses, either dependent or

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independent, produced by these women exceeds the percentage of clauses used by the men. Since the number of
dependent clause in T-unit indicates the syntactic complexity of a text, it can be concluded that the structures of
these womens writings are more complex than those of the men.
A complex structure is regarded as a feature of academic writing. This is a part of the genre of academic
writing. The womens writing will probably gain an advantage in demonstrating this feature. Moreover, syntactic
complexity may indicate writing development of EFL learners (Larsen-Freeman & Strom, 1977). The more complex
the structures of a text, the higher language proficiency of the writers.

5.1.1. Using cohesive devices while writing
The outcomes of the research indicated that although males used more references and females used more
conjunctions as their connectors in their writings, there is no significant difference between the writings of men and
women at least in using cohesive devices.

5.2. Integrating cited information
Regarding the use of means of integrating facts and ideas, it is clear that the two gender groups mostly use
the same strategy to integrate cited information in their writings, using more paraphrasing than direct quotations
and summarizing. However, the ratio of direct quotations to paraphrasing shows there is a significant difference
the women students used more paraphrasing to integrate the background sources than men did. Regardless of
accuracy of their paraphrases, we may conclude that females reproduced the original background information in
their own words by employing paraphrasing. This strategy may probably support their success for fulfilling one of
the assessment criteria for writing style and accuracy, in which citing sources substantially in their own words is
one of the points of reference. Since the use of summaries in the male and female students writings was very
limited, implications are not discussed.

5.3. Presenting the thesis statements
The comparison of essays showed that male and female use of arguments was different. In the MA theses,
the women stated the thesis statement clearly but most of the men did not. Most of the men did not use explicit
statement to argue, but most of the women used it.
Besides, the analysis reveals a particularly noticeable feature in the thesis statements of womens theses.
The selected samples show that they mostly used hedging to soften their arguments.
Again, the womens theses tend to show much higher level of adherence to guidelines of Toulmins ways of
presenting arguments than the mens theses, and the evaluation grid richly rewarded this adherence more.
Although there is no specific instruction in the assignment sheet to write the thesis statement in a particular way,
the use of hedges in their claims of arguments would demonstrate their awareness of some conventions of
academic writing.

5.4. Organizing Arguments
Regarding the methods of organizing arguments, the analysis of the MA theses shows that the women
demonstrated better-organized arguments than the men did. Although one of the females in TEFL put the evidence
before the argument and one of the females in Linguistics did not propose any argument (she just rebutted the
presented objections), the women generally organized their components of argument after thesis statement in a
consistent order that formed a particular pattern _ argument evidence objection rebuttal _ and ended them by
restating the thesis statement in the conclusion. Such an argument organizing may ease the readers to
comprehend the whole idea of their arguments. Consequently, it would support their success in writing an
argumentative essay. Meanwhile, the ways of presenting arguments varied among the men, but did not show any
regular pattern. As a result, the flows of arguments are rather difficult to follow.
All of these findings may give a little evidence that the target EFL women learners demonstrated better
academic writing skills, or had higher levels of English proficiency, than the men. Morris (1998) showed that the
women students essays in her study demonstrated much higher level of adherence to guidelines than the mens.
This may indicate that gender plays a role in the way that learners approach the task of foreign language learning,
which in turn is hypothesized to relate to female superiority in classroom language learning.

5.5. Pedagogical Implications
As we previously explained, studies on EFL academic writing are scarce, and we could find only one study
dealing with EFL writing (by L.A. Morris (1998)). In this study, we investigated the common features of academic
writing, which as Sunderland (2000) claims were ignored in Morriss study, such as syntactic complexity, means of
integrating cited information and organizing arguments. These features of academic writing are considered to be
the assessment criteria for writing style and accuracy.
Past researchers have theorized that gender differences will affect students performance in the classroom
(Ackerman, 2006; Gibb et al., 2008; Freeman, 2004). It is important that educational practitioners be aware of the
specific academic areas in which these gender differences occur. The current study found gender differences in
some features of academic writing. It might be necessary for educators to focus more intensely on writing for males
in the classroom. It also may be essential that more varied learning strategies in writing are offered for students,
especially male students, in order to accommodate for these gender differences. For example, male students may
perform better at sequential processing tasks as opposed to tasks that require planning and attention (Naglieri &
Rojahn, 2001). Providing students with more concrete processes in writing throughout development could improve
male learning strategies overall in writing.


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One also must consider the possible outcomes of these gender differences in the classroom. For example,
Gibb et al. (2008) suggests that boys have poor classroom behavior. These poor behavioral gender differences
might stem from biological differences or from male frustration (due to subjects of no interest) in the classroom.
Girls themselves interpreted the good marks achieved for writing as attributable to their good behavior, rather than
good work, and also teachers adversely judged boys' achievement because of their poor classroom behavior.
Moreover, a mismatch between preferred reading and writing genres can mean that what boys choose to read is
rarely what they are required to write. Boys cite that they do not like the required subjects from teachers. Therefore,
in order to solve this problem, teachers might focus their efforts towards the academic success of males.
Motivational qualities have been cited as one of the variables related to gender differences in academic
achievement (Meece et al., 2006). For example, a male with higher motivation to do well in the classroom,
specifically in writing, may actually perform better than a male who is poorly motivated in writing.
Practitioners also should take into consideration different possible teaching and learning strategies for
writing. For example, if a student is struggling in writing compared to his classmates, offering different methods to
organize writing may be appropriate. For boys, such different instructional methods might include more visual
strategies and taking into account possible biological gender differences in the brain (Naour, 2001).
Although specific developmental conclusions cannot be made, it is important for educators to be aware of
specific gender differences in writing performance in the classroom. Teachers and other education professionals
should note that, on average, males write less than females.

5.6. Final Comments
These gender differences do not necessarily discourage EFL male learners to acquire higher proficiency in
academic writing, but rather become valuable input to the process of learning and teaching of academic writing in
higher education. As we said before, human gender characteristics are not just given, but rather socially
constructed. Institutions and practices can be described as gendering. Based on this concept, human gender
characteristics of a particular sex could possibly be modified. If women are socially constructed to be good foreign
language learners, particularly as academic writers, then those skills may be acquired by men, if the language
learning and second language teaching can be adjusted for male academic writers. So, practitioners should take
into consideration different possible teaching and learning strategies for writing to encourage EFL male learners to
become more motivated and proficient in academic writing. It also may be essential that more varied learning
strategies in writing are offered for students, especially male students, in order to accommodate for these gender
differences. It is important for educators to be aware of specific gender differences in writing performance in the
classroom. Teachers and other education professionals should note that literacy may be a recurring problem for all
under-achievers, regardless of gender, and it might have become lost in the focus of attention on the under-
achievement of boys.

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