Boys' and girls' attitudes towards French and German

Abstract

Summary Boys in our educational system (UK) generally have less favourable attitudes towards foreign language learning than girls and are less likely to take a language in a public examination. It was hypothesized that German might have a more masculine ‘image’ than French and that this might render it more attractive and acceptable to male students. It was also thought that boys might find German less difficult, in some respects, than French. However, it was found in an empirical study that although German did have a more masculine image, it was nevertheless generally perceived as less interesting, more difficult and less useful than French. It was concluded that the association between ‘gender‐image’ and language is much less powerful than the association between language and certain socio‐linguistic factors such as nationalism.

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